Lijiang or Yangshuo?

Neither city is a beach destination, but Yangshuo at least lets you get in the water. In the hot months, people swim from the gravel banks of the Yulong and in calm stretches of the Li, often at the end of a cycling or rafting day. Lijiang's lakes sit high on the plateau and are too cold to swim in, so they are for boating and birdwatching only.

The two eat about equally well, and in both the main tourist streets serve the weakest meals. They differ in flavour. Lijiang offers Naxi and Yunnan cooking: baba flatbread, black-goat hotpot, yak and cured ham, wild mushrooms in the rainy season, and good Pu'er tea in courtyard cafés.

Yangshuo's cooking is built around the river. Beer fish is the dish everyone orders, alongside stuffed snails, tofu and bitter melon, with Guilin rice noodles for breakfast. The best versions come from the riverside villages rather than West Street.

Lijiang is far ahead here. Dayan's grey-tiled lanes and canals, the Mu Family Mansion, Black Dragon Pool with its Dongba museum and the mixed Buddhist, Taoist and Tibetan murals at Baisha fill two or three good days. The catch is that much of the Old Town was rebuilt after the 1996 earthquake and is now given over to shops and inns.

Yangshuo has little to set against this. It has the Ming-era Dragon Bridge, the old brick villages along the Yulong and the Big Banyan Tree, but no museums worth the name. Most visitors there treat history as a side interest to the landscape.

Nights out are much alike in both places. Each has a single loud strip that stays packed past midnight with domestic tourists, with singers and drums by the Old Town canals in Lijiang and dancers and table games on West Street in Yangshuo. Neither has proper clubs. The quieter options differ: Lijiang has tucked-away courtyard bars and the calm of Shuhe, while Yangshuo has a few backpacker bars, riverside terraces and completely dark, silent villages.

Both are outstanding for scenery, but the landscapes are very different. Lijiang's is high and alpine. Cable cars climb to the glaciers of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain at around 4,500m, and the classic two-day trail runs above Tiger Leaping Gorge. The mountain is crowded and tightly managed, and the thin air at the top is a real factor.

Yangshuo's karst peaks are lower and more intimate, and they begin right at the edge of town. You can raft the Yulong, walk the Li between Yangdi and Xingping or climb Laozhai Hill for the view without arranging a full-day excursion. Climbing, kayaking and caving give it an active edge as well.

Lijiang has the better outings. Dali, with its walled town and Erhai Lake, and Shangri-La, with Songzanlin Monastery, are both a short train ride away, so you can see Bai and Tibetan culture without changing base. Shigu and the first bend of the Yangtze are within an hour's drive.

Yangshuo's excursions are pleasant but smaller in scale: the old streets of Xingping and Daxu, the fan workshops of Fuli, Ming and Qing Huangyao, and Guilin with Reed Flute Cave about an hour away.

Yangshuo works better with children, especially older ones who like being outdoors. Rafting, mud-pool caves and village bike rides on a tandem or with a child seat keep them busy, and Chinese families visit in large numbers. Busy roads and hot summers still call for care.

In Lijiang, children enjoy following the streams through the Old Town, but there is little else for them. The altitude also rules out the snow-mountain trips for young children, and the uneven paving makes pushchairs hard work.

Getting around is about equally awkward in both, and the reasons differ. Lijiang's car-free Old Town is easy on foot. Its sights, though, are spread across a wide valley and beyond, so most visitors rely on taxis or a hired driver. In Yangshuo, the countryside itself is what you come to see, and hiring a bicycle or electric scooter to ride the lanes along the Yulong is part of the pleasure. In both, the train station lies outside town, and Chinese-only signs make life harder for independent travellers.

Neither city is worth visiting for shopping, though Lijiang gives you more to browse. Its Old Town houses sell silver, Dongba-painted woodcarvings and Pu'er tea cakes, and a few workshops still work silver in view. Yangshuo's West Street stalls are mostly mass-produced, and its one genuine craft is the hand-painted fans from Fuli.

Both are inexpensive day to day, and Yangshuo comes out slightly cheaper. In both places, the extra costs come from tickets. In Lijiang that means the fee to enter the Old Town and the snow mountain with its cable cars, one of the dearest outings in the region. In Yangshuo it means Li River cruises, rafts, caves and the night show. A visitor in Yangshuo who mostly cycles and walks can avoid nearly all of those costs, and that is much harder to do around Lijiang.

Lijiang has the one tradition genuinely worth seeking out. Older Naxi musicians perform its ancient Taoist ritual music in evening concerts in the Old Town, and that offers something more authentic than the tour-group song-and-dance spectacles held below the snow mountain.

Yangshuo's best-known performance is a single event, the large outdoor night show on the Li River with floodlit karst peaks behind it. It is impressive to look at, but it is a spectacle rather than music or drama.

Yangshuo is the more restful choice, as long as you stay out in the Yulong valley or the villages towards Xingping. There, days slow to cycling, swimming in the river and evenings looking over the rice fields, with tai chi classes, massage and a warm mud pool in one of the caves.

Lijiang has fewer of these extras. Its quiet comes from tea in a sunny courtyard inn and early morning walks through Shuhe and Baisha before the crowds arrive.