This hotel is decent for what you pay. I have stayed in much better, and I have stayed in much worse. The room is tiny, the beds are hard, and there was mold of some sort growing out of our ceiling. However the front desk staff were very friendly, they book tours for you down at the front desk and schedule taxis for you to the airport if need be. They have a computer you can use and using google translator helped bridge the language gap between the staff and ourselves. They sell some necessities down in the lobby and some snack foods which is helpful and nice. There is a nice looking restaurant on the property that we didn't have the chance to eat in. The hotel is located to a lot of great sights. The forbidden city, mao's mausoleum, and the temple of heaven (a little further than the others) are all well within walking distance. There is no wifi, however there is a ground connection you can plug a lap top into. Like all of china the telvision options are very limited but there was a channel that played a single american movie in chinese each night. There is a great lake filled with tourist places down the street about 5 minutes walking, it's full of great places to eat and lounge. To finish up and come back around to things I didn't like, the shower has no angle built into the drain and so if you use anything more than a trickle for bathing you WILL flood the bathroom floor. The water damage along the door and wall show this is a very common thing. A housekeeper let us know that putting and leaving a single towel on the floor to soak up water and to step on and not slip was very "gross" and made a "this is dirty behavior" face, the jist of this was her trying to tell us not to do this anymore. However given that the shower is surrounded on all sides by glass and the floor floods I don't see what they expect you to do to not slip and fall and potentially get hurt. The toilets are not intended to flush toilet paper like in the west, and I found myself doing what I found myself doing growing up spending summers in central america and putting the toilet paper in the trash can to be thrown out with the garbage. There is a sign at the hotel forbidding prostitution, gambling, and drug use on the property. While this is very understandable the fact that a sign is necessary sort of makes you wonder if this sort of thing has been an issue in the past. We had a late night flight and so we were allowed to stay in the room until about 6-7 p.m. for about 15-20 bucks extra. They obliged and just kept the deposit we left in cash at the beginning of our stay as payment for this. On the whole the hotel is not a great place to stay, but for the price it isn't terrible. If you can afford better by all means stay somewhere else. However if you're on a budget i'm sure there are far worse places to stay in beijing. One of the original and oldest hutongs left in beijing is also within walking distance and is a neat way to spend an afternoon shopping.
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