4/10 Fair
Jan 6, 2012
Nice Amenities Lacks Ambience
The only reason why I chose this hotel was because it was the closest to the sights I wanted to see mainly Zhou En Lai's Former Residence, Zhou En Lai Memorial Park, and Wu Cheng En"s (author of Journey to the West) Former Residence.
The hotel did have a nice computer in my room and a nice flat screen t.v.
It's the ambiance that I have a problem with. I spent 3 nights there. The first night my room wreaked of nicotine. The guests across the hallway were mainly men who loved to smoke. In China, they have just implemented a national smoking ban on office buildings and buses. This ban, however, does not apply to places of entertainment such as bars, hotels, and restaurants. And, yes. The hotel's restaurant had the same problem which is why I only ate there twice. For the rest of my meals I went out (where no one was smoking) or I ordered take out.
The second night I had noisy neighbors. Several times I tried, in vain, in Chinese, to ask them to quiet down. It wasn't until I shouted "shut up" in English that they finally got the message.
One final thing. While my room was nicely decorated I found that the bathroom glass door had nothing to guard my privacy. Perhaps the hotel could stick some contact paper on the door...