PRICE:
Frommer's Highly Recommended

Located down a lane just off one of Beijing's trendiest shopping streets, the 19-room Haoyuan is among the most exclusive of the city's popular courtyard-style hotels. Red doors hung with lanterns and flanked on either side by stone lions mark the entrance. Inside is a neatly restored Qing-era house, with a small unadorned courtyard in front and a sublime larger courtyard at the back, decorated with flowers and tree-shaded, stone chess tables. Larger rooms in the rear courtyard are furnished with canopy beds and custom-made Ming reproduction furniture. A bonus for fans of Communist Party history: The house once belonged to Hua Guofeng, Party chair after Mao, who aped the Great Helmsman's coiffure but didn't gain his stature.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Beijing, 5th Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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