Huaihua Hotels

Xi Nan binguan: "The hotel for foreigners"

It's a 3-star hotel. According to the locals, "The hotel where the foreigners stay."
None of the staff speak any foreign language. No internet booking. Bring a Chinese friend at check-in to bargain the price!! The price I got was much lower than those printed in the information leaflet.
The beds are extremely hard. For a short stay: pile together all other matresses and quilts in the closet to put over the standard mattress. For a stay of 7++ days: buy an additional mattress at the central market (with the help of a Chinese friend).
Breakfast: you can use the hotel restaurant. Other meals: By all means, find a restaurant elsewhere!
The telephone works inside Hunan, not for foreign calls.
There's no heating, so autumn and winter may be chilly even inside.
There may be a lot of disturbance, shouting and partying at night, so it's adviceable to bring ear-plugs. The guests are usually business-people, and they do like business-people do everywhere else. But don't dispair: 3 out of 4 nights will be quite on average.

Unique Quality: I used to ask my Chinese friends: "If this is the best hotel, how are all the others?" But they kept insisting that all the other (hundreds!) hotel in town were inferior. I don't know.
There's a water heater, and drinking water is supplied every day. TV with many Chinese channels, including CCTV-9 in English. Room service consists in changing towels and making the bed. Soap, shampoo, toothpaste/ brush and shover cap is supplied as needed.

From this description, it seem this hotel has nothing whatsoever to recommend it. But the staff really try to do their very best. The only thing you can do yourself to make the stay as pleasant as possible is to be polite, smile and just accept the realities. If you can make yourself understood, the service people will happily supply more water, another towel, more soap, etc.