Pat and I took a 4½-hour boat cruise on the Lu River from Guilin to Yangshuo, a bustling tourist town surrounded by majestic karst peaks that are so close you can practically touch them.

The riverbanks are lined with peaks whose unusual shapes have inspired colorful names: Painted Hill of Nine Horses, Snail Hill, Bat Hill, Five Fingers Hill, Lady Buddha Hill and Goats Hoof Hill. When we passed the Painted Hill of Nine Horses, our tour guide Johnny asked us how many horse shapes we could detect. Pat saw five, while I could only see two. Johnny told us that the ability to identify the horses was a sign of intelligence. That explains why Pat saw more than I did.

Along the way, we saw villagers digging holes by the river. Johnny said they use the sand to build homes or to sell to others as construction material. The digging mars the scenic landscape and is prohibited by local authorities. “It’s illegal, but nobody stops them,’’ Johnny said.

Sometimes we saw locals selling clothes and snacks from shacks on tiny stone islands in the middle of the river. Their customers are mostly tourists who cruise on the river in small bamboo rafts, which now are made with plastic bottoms that belie their name.

We traveled in a spacious, three-deck, flat-bottom boat that is designed to make the long trip from Guilin to Yangshuo. The river is so shallow in the winter that occasionally we could hear the propellers scraping against the river bottom.

After disembarking in Yangshuo, we walked down yet another pedestrian mall catering to tourists and stopped for lunch at the Cloud 9 restaurant, which specializes in spicy Szechuan food. The menu included a full page of “Chinese medicinal soups’’ that promised to cure what ails you. Pigeon soup, it claimed, would “invigorate’’ your kidney and pig’s brain soup would improve your memory. Pig lung soup would cure a dry cough and duck soup with ginseng would give you smoother skin.

According to a sign on the wall, drinking the local rice wine also would improve your health by increasing blood circulation and boosting your immunity. Johnny told me the wine had another unadvertised benefit. “Drink it and you will make your wife very happy at night,’’ he said with a conspiratorial smile.

Like our hotel in Guilin, the one in Yangshuo has no heat in the lobby. It’s cold this time of year, so the front-desk receptionists and gift shop workers keep themselves warm with space heaters. China preserves power whenever possible, which in this case gives the Cold War a new meaning.