During my recent trip to Jilin, I stay for 3 day in EMPIRE GARDEN. The lobby area is nice, and the hotel entrance is also nice. However, the beds are a bit hard and a train passes near the hotel during the night.

I recently stayed in the Empire Garden hotel during a business trip to Jilin. I won’t be staying there again. Be warned that it is right next to a train shunting yard and they work all night long – banging, clunking, and blowing horns through the night. There is no soundproofing so the noise reverberates through the room. My colleagues and I got no sleep during the night. We requested to move to rooms on the other side of the hotel, which they happily granted. The train horns were still audible but not at nuisance level.

Other than the train issue, the place wasn’t too bad. The location is near the center of the city, about a 10-15min walk to the river. The riverside parks make for a great place to run or walk any time of day. There are plenty of restaurants and shops nearby.

Upon entering the hotel, it looks fairly impressive, with a huge atrium filled with extravagant fountains, fake Stonehenge-like structures, trees and gardens, but all very dimly lit. In fact the entire hotel was very dimly lit and had a lonely, deserted feel to it. However, the rooms don’t quite match the standards of the lobby.

The room was very big but sparsely furnished and dimly lit – not very inviting. Windows run along the entire wall but only 2 very small ones actually open, and not very much. The room was hot and stuffy and cracking open the small windows didn’t really help at all – and it just let in more train noise. The carpet was looking fairly tatty – stained and unravelling in places. The TV had no English channels and was far across the room from the bed. There was a computer desk with free high-speed internet connection which was very nice. The bathroom was huge as well. The shower tray was pretty disgusting with lots of black mold growing around the caulking. In addition, it didn’t drain very well, and overflowed out onto the bathroom floor after about 5 minutes.

The free buffet breakfast was actually really good. They had a good range of both western and Asian fare. No complaints there. There was a swimming pool however they disappointingly didn’t have any real fitness center. There were only 2 lifts servicing all the rooms, which was inadequate, making for long waits at certain times. The reception staff and cleaning staff were all friendly and helpful and they happily granted our request to change rooms after the first night.

I felt this was a fairly average hotel, but with the train debacle, I doubt I would risk staying here again. At RMB 370 (US$53) it actually represents decent value, however I would not recommend it to other travellers. If you do stay here, just make sure that you get a room on the opposite side of the hotel from the train yard. Without the train noise, it’s not too bad.

Likes – Good breakfast, fast internet connection, nice lobby

Dislikes – Train noise!, inadequate maintenance, lonely deserted feel, no fitness center.

As part of our first ever trip to Jilin (city), we first stayed at the Century Swissbel hotel. However, the hotel messed up our booking (gave us two beds instead of one) among other problems, so we moved to Empire Garden Hotel the second night. That turned out to be a mistake.

The first thing we noticed is that the cream-coloured carpet inside the room was somewhat stained and the washroom floor looked old. The tiles were chipped and dirt was trapped inside. Then we noticed that there were a couple of small flies on the shower towels. Yuck!

All in all, this hotel was not as good as the Century Swissbel Hotel but then again, good hotels are very difficult to come by in Jilin.