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Why these 4 new Chinese hotels are topping every traveller’s wish list right now
A quartet of new hotel openings across the Chinese mainland showcases diversity, modernism and a reverence for culture – from the karst formations of Chongzuo, where Lux group has expanded its portfolio with a 53-suite property that looks out over mountains, rice paddies and the Mingshi River; to Chongqing, where Chinese brand Sunyata has breathed new life into a former church and hospital built in 1900 with the 25-room Sunyata Ren’ai Hall Hotel.
Meanwhile, at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, Norden Camp, Xiahe offers an introduction to nomadic hospitality; and Mandarin Oriental Qianmen, the company’s second outpost in Beijing, extends across beautifully restored courtyard homes in a 600-year-old Hutong district. Here are our favourite new hotels in China.
Mandarin Oriental Qianmen, Beijing
Hotels may increasingly talk up their neighbourhood cred with -locals-welcome gyms and co-working spaces in the lobby, but few fold themselves into their home turf’s daily life quite as seamlessly as Mandarin Oriental’s second outpost in Beijing. Not far from the Forbidden City, the hotel’s 42 suites take over meticulously restored courtyard homes scattered around the stone-paved lanes of a 600-year-old hutong district. Each suite is unique, hidden behind heavy wooden doors with brass knockers and feng shui threshold steps, and arranged around a leafy courtyard with brick walls and, in some, a private tea pavilion. Interiors fuse the buildings’ original wooden bones with fine hand-painted screens, wallpaper with the texture of satin and lashings of Chinese lacquerwork, brass and porcelain. The shared spaces are similarly dispersed: the maple tree-shaded lobby on the hutong’s outer edge doubles as a tea lounge pouring rare oolongs and pu’erhs (and Louis Roederer, if guests fancy), and the rootsy wellness centre, in a stone-walled courtyard nearby, doles out Qi Yuan gong baths and Chinese meridian massages. Deeper inside the alleys there’s an easygoing Italian restaurant, Vicini, and a haute Cantonese kitchen by Huang Jinghui (better known as Chef Fei), whose char siu pork, dim sum and double-boiled soups have already earned a local fanbase. Chief concierge Bob Shi, who grew up along these lanes, is on hand to guide guests around the hutong’s best noodle joints and most storied corners.
Price: Doubles from about £1,370.
