What It’s Like to Stay at One of China’s Most Decadent Hotels

The Peninsula Beijing sits on Goldfish Lane, but the scene at ground-level is not as placid as this charming street name would lead you to believe: cars and rickshaws whiz by at breakneck speed; street vendors shout out in Mandarin at all hours of the day and night, peddling everything from silk scarves to deep-fried scorpions; and elegant women emerge from nearby stores like Prada and Bottega Veneta draped in furs and carrying armfuls of bags. China’s contrast of traditional culture and luxury consumption is especially pronounced in this part of town. And the Peninsula, rising like a fortress above the street, is at the heart of it all.

It all began in 1989, when it became the first “Western” luxury hotel brand to open in Beijing. The front of the hotel is adorned with a traditional Chinese entry gate. Guests pull up — usually in a Mercedes or Rolls Royce — to the entry, and are whisked away by uniformed doormen into the lobby. The soaring three-story space is lined with over 3,500 pieces of Palissandro marble, the stone’s ivory finish and cool grey veins creating a sense of purity and weightlessness. Six grand columns anchor the space, each hand-carved from traditional han bail yu white marble, the same as used in the emperor’s palaces in the Forbidden City. A rotating display of seasonal flowers and plants is changed every couple of months to reflect the seasons, so there might be peonies and plum blossoms for spring and pear wood and cherry blossoms for Chinese New Year during the winter. You can practically smell the opulence as soon as you arrive.

An interesting aspect of the Peninsula’s lobby is the utter absence of any sort of front desk. As part of a $123 million basement-to-roof renovation to be completed this month, the hotel did away with clunky, old school check-ins. Instead, not unlike Apple stores, guests are welcomed by staff armed with iPads, all of which can provide check-in and check-out, concierge services, book spa appointments, and so forth. The tech trend continues into the rooms — down from 525 to only 230 post-renovation, making these among the largest and most comfortable in all of China — where an iPad in every individual room allows climate and lighting control as well as provides paperless hotel and city information at the swipe of a fingertip. You can even use the tablets to book an entire health and wellness day during your stay. The on-site gym and pool are among the best you will find in any hotel. The spa offers a dazzling menu of treatments featuring traditional Chinese techniques and materials, like a Yin-Yang massage that starts with a skin brush and exfoliation, then moves into a cool stone massage and calming linen wrap of chysanthemum, black lychee and green tea essential oils. And if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the workout class options, spa services and so forth, you can ask for some advice from your very own physiotherapist — the hotel keeps one on staff.

The rest of the renovation is no less spectacular. Despite the hotel’s cutting-edge amenities and emphasis on technology, every inch of the building pays homage to traditional Chinese aesthetics. Luxurious materials such as bronze, jade, white marble, rosewood, and high-polished mahogany are present on every floor of the hotel. And the design carries on into the dining areas, of which there are three in total: farm-to-table at Jing; traditional Cantonese at Huang Ting; and all the spectacularly proper pastry and tea offerings one would expect of a Peninsula inside the lobby. You can make a selection from the hotel’s staggeringly extensive tea menu and enjoy a hot cuppa on white linen in the lobby, or at authentic Ming Dynasty-era tables and chairs downstairs in Huang Ting. China past or China present, the choice is yours.

The Peninsula’s understanding of the alchemy between luxury and Chinese culture is especially on display at The Peninsula Arcade, a shopping area that starts on the ground floor and continues underground. There’s a reason that Louis Vuitton and Chanel decided to enter the Chinese market in 1992 by opening shops here. Today, those two anchor tenants still occupy the prime retail spots to either side of the hotel’s lobby, and the other thirty-three shops read like a who’s-who of luxury, from Ralph Lauren and Bulgari to Giorgio Armani and Gieves & Hawkes.

For so many people, traveling to Beijing is an otherworldly experience and the Peninsula captures everything that a trip to China’s capital city should entail: tradition, elegance, luxury, and sense of place. If you consider the availability of luxury shopping, the Chinese-influenced design of the hotel, the variety of food and beverage options and the spa treatments which use traditional techniques, the hotel itself becomes something of a microcosm of modern China. There are only a few hotels around the world that feel like a seamless part of the cultural fabric of where they sit, such as The Ritz Paris and The Plaza Hotel in New York. When recommending a place to stay in Beijing, it would be hard to think of somewhere more fitting or decadent than the Peninsula.