The Peninsula Beijing

Beijing is a city of long distances and imperial scale, and the hotel’s reply is to give every guest a suite. On Goldfish Lane in Wangfujing, sleeping and living are kept apart in every category, which changes the rhythm of a visit: the return in the middle of the day stops being an interruption and becomes the point of the afternoon.

The interiors carry the capital without quoting it too loudly, hanging contemporary Chinese art against a restful palette. Three dining rooms hold the ground floor: one Cantonese, one French, one given over to tea and music. In-room dining runs around the clock, which in a city of these distances counts as a kindness. Wangfujing supplies the shopping, the great set pieces of the capital are a short drive further, and the suite upstairs is the part that makes the arithmetic work.

An address in Wangfujing

Wangfujing is central Beijing at its most useful, with shopping on the doorstep and the capital’s great set pieces a short drive away. The hotel stands at 8 Goldfish Lane, a little back from the main run, which spares it the noise without costing it the position. Days in this city tend to be long and monumental, and an address like this one is best understood as a way of shortening the journey home from them.

The case for a suite

The all-suite format is the whole argument. A separate sitting room means one traveller can read while another sleeps, that breakfast is laid on a table rather than a bed, and that a week in the capital never compresses into a single room. Contemporary Chinese art and fine joinery give the interiors interest without noise, and the categories climb from Superior and Deluxe through duplex layouts to the largest signature suites. Space, in this city, is the real indulgence.

Cantonese courtyard, French counterpoint

Huang Ting borrows the form of a Beijing courtyard house and fills it with Cantonese cooking, dim sum among it, so the most local room in the hotel is also the most sociable. Jing changes the register to contemporary French gastronomy with Asian inflections and a lighter mood. The Lobby holds the hours in between, with tea in the afternoon and live music, and it is the room guests come back to when one plan has ended and the next has not begun.