大榕樹

The Big Banyan Tree is one of the most beloved stops along the Ten-Mile Gallery south of Yangshuo town, a fifteen-hundred-year-old specimen that has grown into a small forest of pillar-like aerial roots, shady canopy, and twisted horizontal branches. For visitors cycling or scootering the Ten-Mile Gallery route, it provides a quiet, atmospheric break from the karst viewpoints and a tangible link to the deep rural history of the Yangshuo countryside.

Local tradition holds that the tree was planted during the Sui dynasty, making it roughly the same age as Yangshuo county itself, and it has long been treated as a sacred tree by nearby villagers, who still come to burn incense under its canopy and tie red threads to its branches in hopes of good fortune. The single tree now spreads across a wide area, with its aerial roots having grown into secondary trunks over the centuries, so that what appears from a distance to be a small grove is in fact one vast interconnected organism.

The tree's fame in modern China owes much to cinema. The 1961 film "Liu Sanjie," which tells the story of the legendary Zhuang folk singer, used the Big Banyan Tree as the location for its most famous scene, in which the heroine and her beloved exchange a silk ball under the canopy as a token of their love. The scene is still replayed in Chinese popular culture, and for domestic visitors in particular, the tree carries a strong romantic and cinematic association that makes it one of the most photographed spots in the Yangshuo region.

The park around the tree is small and easy to explore, with paved paths winding through the canopy, a small shrine at the base of the trunk, and stalls selling local handicrafts and snacks. The neighboring village lanes and rice paddies extend the walk for visitors who want to spend longer in the area, and several small cafes and restaurants sit just outside the park entrance. The site pairs naturally with Moon Hill and the Butterfly Spring, both of which lie within a few kilometers along the same road.

The Big Banyan Tree is best understood as a small, charming stop within the broader Guilin Karst component of the South China Karst UNESCO World Heritage serial property, rather than a destination in its own right. For travelers cycling the Ten-Mile Gallery, it is one of the most rewarding half-hour stops on the route, and for anyone with an interest in Chinese cinema, it carries an extra layer of cultural meaning that more than justifies the detour.