The Orchid Hotel Beijing

The Orchid Hotel Beijing

Baochao Hutong is narrow enough that taxis stop short, and the last stretch to The Orchid Hotel Beijing is on foot, past Furongji's dim sum counter and through a slim passage to a courtyard that still reads as a traditional Beijing home. Inside, ten rooms sit around that courtyard or above the hutong rooftops, with the Yang room keeping its own terrace. For a property this small, the eating and drinking is disproportionate: five distinct venues, from Toast's Middle Eastern and Mediterranean plates and included hotel breakfast, to Furongji's dim sum steamed to order, a lobby Tea Gallery for guided tastings, a bakery counter, and a café doing Detroit-style pizza and coffee. Few ten-room hotels anywhere run that much kitchen. The location in Gulou, near the Bell and Drum Towers and the Back Lakes, suits someone who wants to walk out the door into old Beijing rather than a business district, and who doesn't mind that geographic data in China is deliberately shifted, so the pin on the map won't be exact. It won't suit anyone chasing elevators and convention floors: there are no listed floors here, just a flat courtyard footprint, wheelchair accessible throughout. Front desk staff speak English, Spanish, Russian and French, useful given how local the surroundings are. A dumpling class runs most afternoons, mahjong lessons depend on the calendar, and the front desk books both. What stays with you afterward isn't the room, which is simply warm and equipped with the basics, but the sense of having eaten and lived inside a working hutong block instead of merely visiting one. A ten-room courtyard hotel in Baochao Hutong, Gulou, with five distinct places to eat and drink, from included breakfast at Toast to dim sum at Furongji and tea tastings in the lobby. Good for someone who wants old Beijing outside the door, not a convention hotel.