20 Yuan Pattern Viewing Platform

This guide to the 20 Yuan Pattern Viewing Platform near Guilin follows a fisherman on a bamboo raft below, still working the Li River with cormorants his grandfather once fished with, alongside the story of the 1999 banknote redesign that chose this exact bend of river, near Xingping, for China's twenty-yuan bill. Hold the note up against the real peaks in front of you. Watch the light at dawn or dusk, when mist settles and the reflection sharpens until mountain and mirror image are hard to tell apart.