Yangshuo or Zhangjiajie?

Neither town is a beach destination, but Yangshuo at least offers swimming of a kind. In summer people swim from the gravel banks and weirs of the Yulong and in calm stretches of the Li, often at the end of a day of cycling or rafting.

Zhangjiajie has nothing like it. Baofeng Lake is for boat rides, gorge rafting is the only real time in the water, and if you want to swim you will need a hotel pool.

Both are cheap places to eat with regional cooking rather than serious dining, and the main difference is the heat. Yangshuo's food is milder: beer fish braised with tomatoes, stuffed snails and bitter melon, and Guilin rice noodles at breakfast, plus cafés with Western food for climbers.

Zhangjiajie serves the hot, sour, smoky food of western Hunan and the Tujia and Miao hills. Look for the three-pot stew simmered at the table, bacon cured over wood fires and a fierce rice wine. Its city food streets are where locals eat. In both towns the menus nearest the tourist crowds, on West Street and at the Wulingyuan park gates, are the weakest.

Nobody visits either town for its sights. Yangshuo's heritage is spread through the countryside: brick villages along the Yulong, the Ming-era Dragon Bridge and the ancient Big Banyan Tree, all best seen from a bicycle.

Zhangjiajie's sights in town are slight. The quiet Ming temple of Puguang and a Tujia folk-customs park with stilted houses and crafts fill half a day at most. Its stronger heritage lies outside the city, in the old towns and Tujia sites further out. Neither town has a museum worth planning a day around.

Yangshuo has a real night out and Zhangjiajie barely has one. After dark West Street fills with loud bars, dancers on stage and crowds of domestic tourists until well past midnight, and quieter backpacker bars and riverside terraces are close by.

In Zhangjiajie everyone gets up at dawn for the parks, so evenings end early. There are night-food streets, karaoke and a beer by the river, and Wulingyuan is close to silent once dinner is over.

Both towns exist for their scenery and both deliver, but the landscapes are very different. Yangshuo's karst peaks rise straight out of flat rice fields at the edge of town, so you move through the landscape by bicycle, bamboo raft or kayak, or on hundreds of bolted climbing routes.

Zhangjiajie is vertical and huge. The UNESCO-listed Wulingyuan forest has thousands of sandstone pillars over 200m tall, with macaques beside the paths, and a long cable car climbs to Tianmen Mountain's natural arch. Here you mostly look out from viewpoints on paved, stepped paths, and those viewpoints get crowded at busy times.

Zhangjiajie has the better day trips. The best is Fenghuang, a river town of stilted houses an hour away by high-speed train, which is worth an overnight stay. Furong, a Tujia village on a cliff over a waterfall, and Laosicheng, the overgrown stone capital of the old Tujia chieftains and a UNESCO site, are also within reach.

Yangshuo's list is pleasant but less striking: the old quarter at Xingping, the fan workshops of Fuli, the merchant street at Daxu and the better-preserved Huangyao. Guilin and the Reed Flute Cave are about an hour away.

Yangshuo is the easier choice with children. Bamboo rafts, mud pools in the show caves and flat bike rides with a child seat suit most ages, though you need to plan around the noise on West Street at night and the summer storms.

Zhangjiajie thrills older children with cable cars, glass walkways, a lift up a cliff face and macaques by the path. Long queues and steep stone stairs wear out small legs and are hard going with a pushchair.

Zhangjiajie is the easier of the two to get around, despite its size. Buses link the city, the rail station and Wulingyuan, around 30km away. Inside the park, free shuttles, cable cars and lifts connect the main areas, though signs are mostly in Chinese and queues are long at busy times.

In Yangshuo the small town centre is easy to walk, but the countryside you come for really needs a bicycle, an electric scooter or a hired driver. The high-speed rail station is a drive out of town.

Neither town is worth visiting for shopping, and the souvenir stalls on West Street and at the Wulingyuan gates sell much the same things. The one thing worth buying differs. In Yangshuo it is the hand-painted fans from the workshops of Fuli village. In Zhangjiajie it is xilankapu, the geometric Tujia brocade, and some Miao silver, with smoked bacon and dried mushrooms to take home.

Both are cheap for rooms, meals and getting around, and in both most of the money goes on tickets. In Yangshuo you can keep spending very low by cycling and walking, because much of the landscape can be seen free from the village lanes. Rafts, river cruises and caves cost extra.

Zhangjiajie is harder to do cheaply, because the main sights are the expensive part: the forest park pass, the Tianmen cable car, the glass bridges and the lifts are all ticketed separately. In both towns room prices rise sharply in Golden Week and at the Spring Festival.

In both towns the main evening event is a large outdoor show, and Yangshuo's is the more memorable. Zhang Yimou's spectacle tells the legend of Liu Sanjie with hundreds of performers on the Li River, lit against floodlit peaks.

Zhangjiajie has polished theatre productions of Tujia and Miao folklore and an open-air show below the cliffs of Tianmen Mountain. Apart from these, neither town has a theatre or a real live-music scene.

Yangshuo can be truly restful if you stay in the Yulong valley or in the villages towards Xingping. Days there slow down to cycling, river swims and evenings on a terrace above the rice fields, and tai chi and massage are easy to find.

Zhangjiajie is a place of early starts, crowds and thousands of steps. Rest there means a foot massage after the trails, a hotel spa or a hot-spring resort outside town.