This restored luxury hotel in Beijing lets you live in a 600-year-old neighbourhood

Most luxury hotels claim to be part of their neighbourhood, but Mandarin Oriental Qianmen doesn’t try to blend in — it is the neighbourhood. The Asian hotel group’s second Beijing property (Mandarin Oriental Wangfujing opened in 2019) is set in Caochang Hutong, a collection of narrow streets lined with siheyuan (courtyard houses) over 600 years old.

Located in Beijing’s Central Axis and just a 10-minute stroll from iconic sights such as the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, Mandarin Oriental Qianmen comprises 42 courtyard houses which offer every modern comfort but also pay tribute to their origins in a way that goes well beyond decorative flourishes.

Restoring old-world charm

“This area was once crowded with merchants and guild halls and was one of the liveliest neighbourhoods in Beijing,” says Joe Cheng, the founder of Hong Kong-based firm CCD, which was behind the hotel’s transformation.

But like many areas in the old city district, Caochang — named for the grass it stored for the imperial court — also faced common problems such as dirty streets, poor drainage, and a lack of everyday facilities. 

“The biggest challenge was to strike a balance in maximising the protection to the original style of the old buildings and to retain the unique hutong charm while making improvements with municipal facilities that would improve the neighbourhood’s current living environment,” says Cheng.

Today, 90 per cent of Mandarin Oriental Qianmen’s 42 luxurious courtyard houses (sized from 103 to 525 sq m) are original. According to Cheng, every tile and brick from the original buildings was restored and reused in a painstaking process. It retained everything from the houses’ windows and wooden rafters to their grand entrance gates, adorned with brass lanterns and petal copper-shaped plates. 

Similar materials were also used to match the greys and browns of the traditional siheyuan courtyard style, while restrictions meant bathrooms (but not pools) could be added. In the hotel’s lobby area, two large original trees — one of which is a 130-year-old tung tree — were carefully preserved, and you can still spot ancient details everywhere, like hanging wooden lintels filled with tiny cutouts of calabashes.

Part of the neighbourhood

While significantly transformed, I like to think the houses would still be recognisable to their former inhabitants, including imperial inspectors, opera stars and influential scholars. For instance, the hotel’s “presidential suite”, the lavish Peking Mansion, once housed a family descendant behind traditional Chinese medicine brand Tong Ren Tang.

Other small clues, like the size of doorways and the small stone sculptures outside them (a book for officials or a drum for military personnel), hint at the status and occupations of their previous occupants.

I stayed in a Grand Courtyard, which aptly describes my expansive one-bedroom, villa-like dwelling wrapped around a spacious courtyard with its own dining table. More elegant residence than a hotel room, it had high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and exquisitely embroidered screens. 

Present is a surfeit of modern indulgences from Frederic Malle amenities to nightly turndown gifts, including a fan depicting a custom commission by Chinese artist Xu Bing (his famed work of a tiger rug made out of cigarettes named 1st Class has been exhibited in Los Angeles and Singapore), which reimagines the English phrase “Unveil Beijing’s Soul” as Chinese calligraphy. 

If you’re sufficiently intrigued by the latter (and you will be), calligraphy, tai chi, and even gong healing sessions are available.

All I had to do was pop my head out my front door. I’d be in the thick of everyday life, nodding to the friendly octogenarian who lived in the siheyuan across from mine, passing displays of waxed pig’s trotters curing in the winter air, or marvelling at a neighbour’s sprawling rooftop racing pigeon coop.

The dumpster trucks may now be electric, but some still follow the old ways here, like an elderly gentleman known to carry his fighting cricket around with him in his pocket. 

While you can easily summon the hotel’s buggy — a petite “minibus” for four — walking around is the best way to discover the neighbourhood’s eclectic delights, which include jianbing and “punch lemonade” vendors alongside a German transplant’s haute couture boutique and a tiny cafe that morphs into a cocktail bar at night.

International luxury

The imbibing is also easy at the hotel’s cocktail bar, TIAO, a slick two-floor affair on a street corner just a five-minute stroll from my abode. A Proof Creative-curated menu photogenically alludes to the city’s myriad flavours, like a miniature “barrel” filled with whisky, baijiu, and yoghurt, and the Quicksilver, a blend of Plantation white rum and osmanthus wine served with a show-stopping cloud of sparkle.

For something more substantial, Yan Garden is a masterclass in refined Cantonese and Chaozhou cuisine, including lavish Beijing (copper) hotpot feasts, complete with pipa player. Michelin-starred chef Fei’s signature deep-fried pigeon, flown in from Guangzhou, arrives impossibly crisp and is a welcome twist on Peking duck.

Don’t miss his braised superior fish maw, a square of unforgettably collagen-y, gummy goodness which takes 10 days to prepare. 

Italian restaurant VICINI offers handmade pasta and pizzas, but the highlight is the sgroppino, a blend of lemon sorbet, prosecco, and limoncello energetically whipped up tableside to enthusiastic acclaim.

In a city where history is often bulldozed in favour of the future, Mandarin Oriental Qianmen offers something increasingly rare: The chance to slow down and slip into Beijing’s past without sacrificing the luxuries of the present.

Commenting on the hotel’s redesign, Cheng perhaps said it best, “It instantly pulls the guests away from the noise of modern urban life into the tranquil, traditional and leisurely Beijing life of old.”