Guilin West Hill Park

Guilin West Hill Park

Guilin West Hill Park is a national AAAA-level tourist attraction.

West Hill Park is located to the west of Guilin city, covering an area of approximately 2 square kilometers, and includes Hidden Hill and West Hill. West Hill was once a sacred Buddhist site during the Tang Dynasty, home to the Xiqinglin Temple, which was one of the five major Zen temples in southern China at the time. Today, over 90 Buddha niches and more than 200 statues remain.

Before the Ming and Qing dynasties, there was a West Lake covering 700 acres at the southeastern foot of West Hill, featuring lotus ponds under the moonlight and misty waters, with a delicate small hill emerging faintly from the lake, known as Hidden Hill. Later, due to lack of dredging, it became silted up. Today, only 74 acres of lake surface and 25 acres of lotus ponds remain. The main attractions in the park now include the Six Caves of Hidden Hill, West Peak, Guanyin Peak, Dragon Head Peak, Qianshan, as well as the Bubushkin Tomb, Guilin Museum, Guilin-Kumamoto Friendship Hall, Hidden Hill Fahua Temple, West Lake, the Zigzag Bridge, and pavilions. It has now become the second-largest comprehensive park in Guilin.

The Guilin Museum is located within West Hill Park in the urban area. It covers a land area of 10,000 square meters, with a building area of 8,500 square meters. The architectural layout is shaped like a crescent moon, with a stilted-floor style facade, walls clad in imitation stone bricks, and green glass-tiled roofs, giving it an elegant and simple appearance rich in local and ethnic characteristics. It houses eight naturally lit exhibition rooms, one academic lecture hall, two cultural relics storage rooms, and an arts and crafts service hall, with a total exhibition area of 5,400 square meters. The museum is the main institution for excavating, collecting, preserving, and researching historical relics of Guilin, revolutionary relics, and the folk cultural relics of Guangxi’s ethnic minorities, currently holding a collection of 21,500 items. It features five permanent exhibitions: “Exhibition of Historical Relics of Guilin,” “Exhibition of Folk Customs of Guangxi Ethnic Minorities,” “Exhibition of Gifts from International Friends,” “Exhibition of Ming and Qing Porcelain,” and “Exhibition of Cultural Relics and Historical Materials of Guilin Cultural City,” as well as various thematic exhibitions held from time to time.

The Guilin-Kumamoto Friendship Hall is located within West Hill Park in the urban area. It was completed in October 1990. The building covers an area of 947.2 square meters, with a memorial garden spanning 1,200 square meters. It features an architectural style modeled after traditional Japanese homes. The hall consists of a permanent exhibition room, a special exhibition room, and a memorial garden. The permanent exhibition room includes a traditional Japanese tatami room and tea ceremony room, as well as displays of photographs and traditional crafts introducing Kumamoto. The special exhibition room hosts various exchange exhibitions between the two cities. The Japanese-style garden reflects the lifestyle and sentiments of Kumamoto residents. The Kumamoto Hall is a symbol and fruit of the friendly cooperation between the people of the two cities.

The West Hill Cliff Carvings are the earliest grottoes in Guilin. They are a key cultural relic protection unit of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Located in West Hill Park in the urban area, beside the Lishi Road in Guilin, they are distributed across connected peaks such as Guanyin Peak, Shiyu Peak, West Hill, and Qianshan. This area enjoys an elegant environment and was the center of Buddhism in Guilin during the early Tang Dynasty. The carvings mainly depict Vairocana and Guanyin. West Hill is one of the earlier developed scenic areas in Guilin and was a Buddhist sacred site as early as the Tang Dynasty.

The Xiqinglin Temple was one of the five major Zen temples in southern China. There are currently a total of 98 Buddha niches and 242 statues, along with two relief stone pagodas, 29 lamp niches, and seven inscriptions related to the statues and lamp niches. The carvings mainly depict Akshobhya, Vairocana, and Guanyin. Most niches contain one, three, or sometimes five, seven, or even eleven statues. The largest statue is 1.65 meters tall, while the smallest are just a few centimeters. The earliest carving is the Akshobhya Buddha statue created by Li Shi in the first year of the Tang Dynasty's Tiaolu era (679). These statues are characterized by broad foreheads, high noses, full faces, earlobes reaching the shoulders, broad chests, slender waists, tightly fitting robes, flowing diagonal lapels, exposed chests, gentle expressions, resembling the large Buddha statues at the ancient Great Stupa of Bodh Gaya in India and those at the Buddhist towers in Java. Scholar Luo Xianglin visited this site during the War of Resistance and believed these to be relics of Buddhist art from the southern transmission route of Indian Buddhism into China, dating back to the flourishing Tang Dynasty—extremely precious artifacts. Some Buddha statues here are headless, armless, or missing feet. According to the "Guilin Local Records," this was caused by the nationwide Buddhist destruction campaign carried out during the Huichang era (841–846) under Emperor Wuzong of Tang (Li Yan). After the emperor’s death, Emperor Xuanzong reinstated policies to suppress Taoism and revive Buddhism, leading to some recovery for the religion. However, as a once-thriving Buddhist sacred site, West Hill never regained its former glory. After the chaos and wars of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, by the Song Dynasty, it had already declined. West Hill was no longer exclusively frequented by monks and Buddhists.

Ticket price: 75 RMB per person

Opening hours: 8:00–18:00

Scenic highlights: The West Hill scenic area is located in the center of Guilin, covering an area of 1.25 million square meters. It became a tourist destination over 1,000 years ago during the Tang Dynasty and is the earliest developed tourist attraction in Guilin. The area consists of the West Hill mountain range, West Lake, and Hidden Hill, surrounded by peaks, with West Lake and Taohua River complementing the landscape to form a picturesque scene of mountains and water. At dusk, when the setting sun hangs over the peaks, the shifting clouds and forests glow with golden light and purple haze, creating the renowned “West Peak Sunset,” one of Guilin’s Eight Famous Scenes. Additionally, it is recorded that among the thirty-six West Lakes in the Tang Dynasty, Guilin’s West Lake was the largest, with crystal-clear waters mirroring the surrounding verdant mountains, making it the only West Lake in China where mountains and water are directly connected. The lake is fragrant with lotuses, shrouded in mist, and features a small, delicately emerging island—Hidden Hill. Hidden Hill is dotted with caves, the most famous being Beiyou, Chaoyang, Baique, Jialian, Nanhua, and Xiyang, collectively known as the “Six Caves of Hidden Hill.” The Qing Dynasty scholar Ruan Yuan wrote in his “Inscription on Hidden Hill”: “The entire mountain is hollow, with six caves interconnecting.” Each cave has its own unique features, many connected to springs, forming underground “dragon palaces,” hailed as “the most spectacular caves in Guangxi.” The West Hill scenic area also boasts a rich and profound cultural heritage, as it was the original site of the Xiqinglin Temple, the foremost of the five major Zen temples in southern China during the Tang Dynasty. The over 1,000 surviving Tang Dynasty stone steles and cliff carvings, dating back more than 1,000 years, represent the earliest and most numerous cliff engravings in all of Guilin. The area has been frequented by visitors throughout history. Notable figures such as Jianzhen and Li Bo of the Tang Dynasty, Mi Fu, Fang Xinru, and Fan Chengda of the Song Dynasty, Xu Xiake, Yuan Chonghuan, and Dong Chuanze of the Ming Dynasty, as well as Li Zongren, Xu Beihong, and Lao She during the Republican era, have all left their footprints here.