Beijing, China

The Opposite House

Price per night from$270.91

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (CNY1,950.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Gleaming glass glamour

Setting

Sanlitun urban village

A gorgeous glassy boutique hotel in the centre of Beijing’s glossy Sanlitun village development, The Opposite House is as appealing for its light and luxe rooms as it is for its two restaurants, with alluring design care of renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. No need to go looking for the heart of the action – you’re staying in it.

Smith Extra

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One Signature cocktail per guest per stay

Facilities

Photos The Opposite House facilities

Need to know

Rooms

98, including nine suites and a penthouse duplex.

Check–Out

Midday (check-in, 2pm). Both are highly flexible, subject to availability.

Prices

Double rooms from £248.37 (CNY2,274), including tax at 16.6 per cent.

More details

Rates exclude breakfast.

Also

The hotel is built at the heart of the Village at Sanlitun, a massive open-plan complex of shops, restaurants, cafés and entertainment venues, so it’s very unlikely you’ll be stuck for things to do.

At the hotel

Two spa treatment rooms, gym, free WiFi throughout, valet parking. In rooms: LCD TVs, Denon DVD/CD with iPod dock, French press coffee, Ploh bed linen, rain showers, free minibar, Appelles bath products and deep oak soaking tubs in bathrooms.

Our favourite rooms

Light, modern, and delightfully spacious, The Opposite House’s Studios are all uncluttered apartment-style suites. There are four grades of Studio – 45, 70, 95, and 115 – increasing in size as the numbers go up. The seven Studio 95s are our top choice (although the 115s come with the added bonuses of dining tables and Jacuzzis), as they feature balconies equipped with cosy Chinese day-beds. The huge penthouse has a fully fitted kitchen.

Poolside

The hotel has a 22-metre pool lined in striking stainless steel and illuminated with a ceiling of tiny lights.

Packing tips

Bring a hearty (and discerning) appetite – to ensure you try the Opposite House’s eateries.

Also

The hotel has a high-tech gym with Technogym equipment.

Children

One child can stay free, and extra bed or baby cots can be supplied. There’s a kids’ menu in the Village Café.

Sustainability efforts

The Opposite House is largely built from reclaimed materials and has a recycling programme in place.

Food and Drink

Photos The Opposite House food and drink

Top Table

By the windows or bag a banquette at Sureño; windowside at the Village Café for airy snacking.

Dress Code

Preen/McQueen trapeze dresses if you're dining in Jing Yaa Tang; add a jacket for Sureño.

Hotel restaurant

Come hungry: the hotel has Alan Yau's first outpost in mainland China, Jing Yaa Tang. Here, you can expect a lot of delicious duck, roasted to crispy-skinned perfection. With midnight blue walls and chocolate leather chairs, Sureño serves delectable Mediterranean dishes cooked in a wood-fired oven. The Village Café offers lunch-orientated lighter bites, with an international flavour. Mesh is a cool contemporary lounge catering to those with sophisticated tastes and a nose for fine wines. 

Hotel bar

Sit on the ketchup-red low leather sofas at Mesh, the sexy lounge bar, and sip a cocktail or two.

Last orders

Sureño and Jing Yaa Tang are open from noon to 10.30pm. Village Café opens early at 6.30am and closes late at 11pm. Mesh is open 5pm to 1am.

Room service

24 hours.

Location

Photos The Opposite House location
Address
The Opposite House
The Opposite House, The Village, Building 1, No. 11 Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing China
Beijing
100027
China

The Opposite House is in the heart of Sanlitun's cultural centre just steps from Beijing's trendy shopping and nightlife areas. It is also six km from The Forbidden City, nine km from the Temple of Heaven, and lies near Worker's Stadium and Chaoyang Park.

Planes

Fly into Beijing International airport, it services international and domestic flights daily. The Opposite House is 21km from the airport, which is about 30 minutes by car. You can get a taxi from the airport.

Trains

You can get a train from the airport to the city. Beijing Railway Station is close to the hotel.

Automobiles

Get the shuttle bus from the airport to Dongzhimen. Then a taxi to the hotel.

Worth getting out of bed for

Conveniently located in the cosmopolitan district of Sanlitun, the hotel is part of the Village at Sanlitun – the glossy entertainment complex in which has enough bars, shops and restaurants to keep the most avid urbanite sated. If you prefer more historic diversions, the immensely impressive Forbidden City is easily accessed.

Local restaurants

There's no shortage of excellent eateries in the area around the hotel. Alameda (+86 10 6417 8084) is a local favourite, specialising in Modern Brazilain cuisine and featuring glass walls and rustic stone floors.

Local cafés

Beijing's largest English bookshop, coffee shop and restaurant, The Bookworm Café on Nan Sanlitun Road, not only has an exceedingly browsable library of literature, but also brews an excellent espresso, has a thoroughly respectable menu of wines and whiskies, and serves wholesome, healthy meals of all sizes.

Local bars

'Beer' proclaims the neon sign at Jing-A Taproom, one of Jing-A Brewing Co's hip city hangouts. Hipsters are drawn here like a moth to a filament bulb, but 16 taps of fine craft beer, and a food menu with artisan sausages and grilled cheese toasties, will help you overlook those who are there to be seen.

Reviews

Photos The Opposite House reviews
Ian Douglas-Jones

Anonymous review

By Ian Douglas-Jones, Adventurous architect

The plane has barely touched down in Beijing before the rabble is up and fighting the overheads for crammed cases. We join the surge and jostle out of the plane, then, like sun seeping through cloud, the crowds part and we’re greeted at the gate by a serene, professional smile. If it weren’t for that grin we’d swear we’d done something wrong. Guiding us through the bedlam is Lara (not Interpol), who escorts us swiftly to the pick-up point – now this is service.

Feeling a little like Posh and Becks, we wonder where all the paps are as our driver helps us into the four-door Maserati. That’s right, Maserati baby, a Quattroporte,’ we exclaim with wild gesticulation, transformed into elegant sophisticates.

Gliding through the chaos, we swap highway for boulevard in the shade of the leafy embassy district and cruise towards the Opposite House. Betwixt the cafés, restaurants, bars and high-end shops of the north and south Sanlitun Village, the hotel is hard to miss; its form is confidently squat, like a crafted lacquer box.

Faced with an attractive Abercrombie-like army of receptionless receptionists, we are treated to a hi-tech, low-stress welcome. We’re introduced to Frank, who checks us in on his iPad as we sit eyeing the crisply beautiful surroundings.

Beyond the lobby, coolness pervades a bright atrium, where billowing steel drapes skillfully diffuse the light as it seeps into the 22-metre stainless-steel pool below. ‘Yep, he definitely knows what he’s doing,’ I mumble, trying not to dribble too much. If architecture is the masterful, correct and magnificent play of volumes brought together in light, then Kengo Kuma, the Japanese architect of the Opposite House, has hit the nail on the head. We like. A lot.

Filled with shiny curios, such as Chen Wenling’s Red Memories, a series of gawky, oversized and undernourished figures, the art-flaunting lobby gets us excited about the burgeoning Chinese art market we’ve heard so much about. Frank tells us where it’s at, but we decide not to stray outside just yet, and settle into the hotel instead.

So far, so ace. Every little detail has been thought of, and all those other things you couldn’t possibly imagine have been fastidiously sorted. When Frank enquires if there’s anything he can do for us, I balk at a diva request (a white tiger, 57 bottles of Cristal, a Learjet and private council with Wen Jiabao) and instead ask for his dinner recommendations. The hotel’s line-up includes The Village Café and Mediterranean eatery Sureño.

We’re led into our Studio 45 room, which resembles a Japanese master’s inner sanctum, with clean lines and natural materials that convey a Zen sense of calm. Frank guides us through the hi-tech extras: those nice shiny buttons don’t launch sub-orbital nuclear warheads, they control the Denon/Bose sound-system that also plays in the shower. And that one closes the blinds with a gentle whirr. With an all-in minibar, 24-hour room service and an endless supply of Opposite House jelly beans, it’s hard to leave this refuge of luxury… but leave we must.

Jolted by a memory of the lobby, I stand and declare to a long-suffering Mrs Smith: ‘We need art!’ Gently reassuring her that our apartment isn’t big enough for a Chen Wenling piece, we head off in search of collectables, on the condition that we see some sights first. Minus Maserati for this outing, we take in the real Beijing, and head to the hutongs, the city’s fast-disappearing communes. Braving the throng of the hutongs is fun: all manner of things are for sale, such as tempting scorpion-on-a-stick treats, flowering teas and calligraphy knick-knacks. Art, art, art, we must acquire art, damn it. We flag down the nearest cab and head to 798 – Beijing’s premier design district, darling.

This converted industrial zone’s seemingly endless spread of warehouses, factories and units are filled with installations and pieces by some of the country’s most sought-after emerging artists, so this is where it’s at: cheers Frank. While Mrs Smith is preoccupied with more manageable acquisitions like postcards, I sidle off to the nearest gallery – and narrowly escape buying a 700,000 RMB sculpture. It seems all that numerical banter and hand-waving stuff was auction action… Yikes, that was a close one.

Empty-handed except for Mrs Smith’s postcards, it’s with great relief that we return to the Opposite House’s serenity and 400-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. Room service has left a hand-written note along with two facemasks. So skipping the Spa, we don the masks and soak in our room’s beautiful oak bath with some soothing Mongolian BaYanKaLa salts.

When it does come time to rouse ourselves from our langour, we’re whisked away to the airport in an Audi Q7. As we step back into the mayhem, I realise it’s the little things that have made a difference to this stay: even before we arrived at the hotel we were made to feel special, which in the maelstrom of daily life in China is a coveted commodity. With the right designer and 50,000 hours of Venetian polish, any hotel can look stylish, but substance is harder to achieve, and the Opposite House has it in spades. We will be back – and not just for the Maserati.

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Price per night from $270.91