The Opposite House

The village location was designed to resemble a traditional hutong community, with buildings separated by narrow alleyways, but the buildings themselves couldn’t be further from traditional. The hotel is a great green glass edifice with the 108 rooms and suites arranged around a soaring atrium where reception staff check guests in sitting on sofas and using iPads.

The rooms themselves are studio-sized with wooden floors and full length windows, minimal clutter and open-plan bathrooms behind glass walls. The lobby area features a regularly changing exhibition area showcasing work by hip contemporary Chinese artists stainless and in the basement there is a stainless steel swimming pool and gym.

Breakfasts are served in the Village Café, and consist of everything from a full English to dim sum and pretty much anything in between. Elsewhere, the Bei restaurant serves Japanese, Chinese and Korean recipes and Sureno specialises in Mediterranean dishes.

For night owls, the Mesh bar is a sophisticated space serving high quality cocktails, and there’s even a nightclub, Punk, that lures Beijing’s gilded youth at weekends.