We decided to give this hotel a shot for the price, to be honest, in spite of the fairly mixed reviews on TripAdvisor! We booked it for 4 nights through Booking.com. We didn’t have problems in finding the hotel (Make sure you have the address and the map in Chinese to show it to the taxi driver!).
The hotel is wonderfully located in the Historical District of Beijing (Dongcheng District – where the hotel is situated - is the heart of Beijing; the cultural, political & commercial center of the city). The Hutong lake area is a 5 minute walk, the Hou-hai bars and restaurants are very near and the Forbidden City is only about 1.5 kms. So, location is perfect! However, some other things are not perfect! It feels like staying in a hostel rather than a 3 star hotel. Coffee- tea making facilities provided in the room but breakfast is very poor. You also have to pay for toiletry (shaver, shampoo, soap, etc.). As mentioned in other contributions, the shower is above the toilet. There are no curtains to separate the place from the toilet. The whole bathroom gets wet after shower. We had a problem with the toilet too (which didn’t flush properly), which was worked out quickly by the hotel staff. No hangers to hang clothes in bathroom either. Finally, we did have to specifically ask for more toilet paper!
But the hotel also has pros: The heating worked properly (we stayed in winter, a very cold one indeed!); bed size is comfortable and linens were spotlessly clean. Our room overlooked the Drum Tower (Both the Bell and Drum Towers are only 100 metres away from the hotel!) and was adjacent to a Hutong, from where a home -made food smell came! You could hear neighbours washing dishes and talking loudly (China is noisy)! That was not a problem for us, since it is a way to “catch” pieces of lifestyles of the culture! In fact, we loved the proximity to the Hutong and the courtyards, with everything that implied!
Only 1 staff member could speak English (the Manager) and she makes a real effort to communicate. She was courteous and helpful, but not very much polite indeed! I completely agree with one of the previous contributions that “If you want to get away from the big hotel chains and into a neighbourhood where generations of families have lived, this is the place”. I would be on a return visit to the hotel, given the opportunity!