Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is the greenest of China's provincial capitals — banyans and flame trees over every boulevard, parks folded between the towers — and it spends its days looking south toward Southeast Asia. Most visitors pass through en route to Guilin or Beihai, which is their loss: this is a city of rice-noodle breakfasts, night-market streets, Zhuang culture, and the staging point for a waterfall that straddles the Vietnamese border.
