Tang Cheng Hotel

Unable to get into the excellent Bell Tower Hotel (Zhonglou Fandian), we stayed at the Tangcheng Hotel which is out in the south of the city (just beyond the second ring road).

This is a definitive tour-group hotel, and the staff are more used to dealing with tour leaders and huge groups than individuals or families.
The rooms are the usual domestic 4-star hotel standard (TV - but no BBC or CNN, good bathroom, a/c, etc). The main building is ugleeeeeeeee: tobacco-yellow tiles, but the main entrance is "China grandeur" - gilt, columns, marble, dimly lit. There is, unusually for an urban China hotel, a small rather nice garden at the back, but no bar or coffee shop out there.
The Western restaurant is poor - poor choice, long time to be served, plenty of "mei you's", and desperately dark. The breakfast buffet was cold.

Despite this, a perfectly comfortable hotel, which is convenient for the south-side attractions of the city.

Unique Quality: Nothing specifically unique: far from it. Chinese 4-star hotels do not want to have anything unique.

The huge stone mural of Tang beauties on the back wall of the lobby is impressive though, and I suppose the garden is almost unique in northern China!

Directions: South of the second ring road (Hanguang Nan Lu is wrongly marked in the Blue Guide to China if you are using that guide book: it runs north/south not east/west)