After years of contemplating expansion options in Beijing, a unique site in a most fantastic area (by our standards) became available. Construction began in May 2014, with an opening scheduled for early 2015. This is an active construction site at the moment, so pictures and commentary will go up in a fairly delayed fashion..  But please stay tuned, and feel free to email us any questions or comments along the way.

Central garden facade goes up!

Today the workers have built up the main facade bordering our central garden from the South. The facade also creates a main floor alleyway separating the two south bedrooms.


A worker standing on a make-shift platform for placing the bricks


Two hours later — Done.

Brand new North-west Room

Oh – look at that — A new room has been made!

In only two days the structural walls have come up and all the support beams are in place to hold up the concrete ceiling. The grey brick facade has also been placed around the private garden. If we wall in the room with glass at the front as planned then this room will have a total area of 20 square meters. That’s a nice size room for a hotel, but a very generous room considering it will exist within a traditional courtyard in the hutongs of Beijing.


Siuming and Mr. Guo discussing the plans


Private garden space facing the room


Large bathroom area facing the stairs up to the unbuilt second floor


From the bathroom facing the unfinished wall and stairs


Looking out of the room towards the small private garden.

The Lookout

A 10th room has been recovered. Loosely defined public space on the second floor has been repurposed into a wonderfully positioned luxury room with a generous amount of space, a superb view and a unique 2nd floor entrance. It would have made a great lounge space, but we feel we might have enough with the restaurant/bar and main floor lobby area. We hope you agree.


Seeing both South-west rooms – a garden room below and the Lookout above it


Another view from the main yard.


Here’s why it’s called the Lookout. That’s the bell tower right there..

South Room Fisheye

Those familiar with our constantly updated building plans might also be aware of the plans for the South room. Looking from the point of view of Sketchup, this south room evenly fits in two identical small bedrooms with adjacent bathrooms. The reality — and CAD image — however, shows a completely different story; one that was ignored until today. As of now, the walls and foundation are in place. A lot happens overnight! A cursory glance at it shows that if these are both supposed to be wonderful bedrooms with attached private gardens, then aside from beds, they will not have space for much else! Two solutions can be taken at this point: Either the foundation wall separating the garden area moves in by up to 40cm to make the rooms bigger (and gardens smaller) or the main wall separating both rooms comes down, turning it into one extremely large room with an equally generous garden. We have nearly instantly decided on the second option. Recovering the lost room will be a job for another day. The idea of having two rooms minimized but functional doesn’t bode too well for us.


Youngcall wondering why the rooms suddenly look so small


Walls going up around the foundation on the south room

Making use of the walls

When everyone’s busy, Mr. Guo’s little boy has to find ways to entertain himself. Having a yard full of bricks and pipes, glass and dirt everywhere sometimes does have its advantages:

Can’t say for certain who the little boy on the right is though. They said he’s a neighbour’s son, but he seems to spend all his time on our worksite.