Yayuncun Hotel Beijing — Hotel in Beijing

First, a warning. The Yayuncun is a complex of buildings left over from the Asian Games of 1988 (I think). It shares a huge, densely populated site with another management company, Hui Yuan. Together the buildings run from Block A to Block R.The lowest block is around eight stories. The tallest is around twenty. I have stayed in half a dozen of them. They vary enormously. Indeed, the quality varies floor by floor. Several of the buildings (e.g. Block A and Block M, among others) are "proper" (albeit Chinese style) hotels (i.e. they have a limited sense of "service"). Others are "service apartments". In my experience, the service apartments are better than the hotels. (Less aggravation, possibly because of lower expectations?) Anyway ... on this trip I stayed in Block B Service Apartment. You check in at Block A and then trundle around the back to Block B. ||||As other reviewers have noted, the check in staff are unhelpful and have limited English. ||||I really want to write a good review of Block B. They really tried hard but, unfortunately, they just don't get it quite right. The suite (service apartments always seem to be suites. A sitting room/lounge, a bedroom, a bathroom, and, frequently, what can only be called a sun room. Although the hotel's website says that there are kitchens, as far as I can tell these are always sealed.) had been recently renovated/modernized. It's an enormous step in the right direction. Unfortunately, they just don't get to the finish line.||||The suite I was in was recently redecorated and was a pleasant change from the shabbier suites I have had in other blocks in the past. Everything was re-done -- ceiling and trim repainted, walls had new wallpaper, new vinyl "wood effect" floor, new electrical sockets that took Chinese, US, and European plugs (Brits, take an adapter), new light fixtures on the ceiling (flourescent strip lighting gives everything a bluish tint -- which is pretty ghastly on cold winter evenings). The furniture was new or nearly new. So no stains, no badly mended tears. New curtains. Best, the bathroom was entirely re-done to a high standard. Although there was no bath tub, there was a proper 4-star style shower stall (so, no more wet bathroom floors), a new sink, mirror, lighting. The walls were freshly tiled. The floor, I think was also new (hard to tell because it was pretty filthy -- the housekeeping staff didn't seem to know how to clean a room properly -- possibly didn't have the right equipment. I never saw a proper mop or a vacuum cleaner). The biggest downside to the bathroom is that it is tiny. This was made worse by the fact that although they had replaced all the doors and door hardware, the door was hung backwards. It opened into the bathroom. The result? You must stand in the shower stall to open and close the door. This was a real shame as they really tried hard to modernize the apartment. But too often they got it wrong.||||The bedroom had two (very hard) beds, a chest of drawers, a beside table, a flat screen TV. What's missing? A bedside reading lamp would have been appreciated.||||The sitting room had a table and four chairs, a sofa, an arm chair, a desk, a chest of drawers, a large 3D TV, and a full-sized refrigerator. Internet connection was via cable. It was a reasonable connection. Again, no desk lamp.||||At the end of the living room was what I can only call a "sun room". I have no idea what this room could be used for. (Possibly, when the buildings were built they were used to dry athletes' clothes?) Anyway, you enter the room through sliding glass partition-style doors (which basically perform the function as a glass partition between the lounge area and the sun room). The sun room is 4.5 feet wide and 11 feet wide. There is no furniture in it. Again, the people who did the make-over tried hard, but didn't quite get it right. All the other service apartments I had stayed in had grubby sun rooms. This one was clean. New patio doors, freshly painted ceiling, the exposed brick walls and freshly tiled floor were finished to a high standard. But to what purpose the room could be put I cannot begin to guess. The room is too narrow to accommodate the table and chairs. Indeed, it's too narrow for the armchair. You could, I guess, move one of the dining chairs out there but I'm not sure why you would do it. Not only are the dining chairs uncomfortably hard but, much more importantly, there is nothing to look at through the windows. This is because the windows in the sun room (which were also the only windows to the sitting room) faced the wall of the adjacent (say 15 feet away) building. This wall was, without a doubt, the ugliest wall I have ever seen -- a melange of duct-work, guttering, dangling wires. You could not see the sky. Just the wall. Without a doubt the most horrible view I have ever had in a hotel room anywhere, ever. (Note, the windows in the bedroom also face this same wall.) As far as I can figure out, all the rooms in the hotel face the same way. ||||On the plus side? The heating worked well (note: there is a delay of several minutes between when you make a setting and when the heating fan turns on. It's like hitting a brontosaurus on the tail and waiting for the message to reach its head). The shower was terrific. Excellent shower head, excellent water pressure, excellent drain. The new refrigerator was useful (there is a good supermarket in the building adjacent to Block A and the newspaper kiosk has the English language edition of the China Daily). The internet connection was reasonable. It is close to the convention center and to the Bird's Nest stadium. The residential neighborhood across Anli Road has a wide variety of local restaurants. While English-speaking staff and English-speaking menus are few and far between, but most menus have photos.||||By the way, there are also restaurants in some of the Yayuncun and Hwai Yuan blocks. Near Block M there is a good Hot Pot restaurant (with beer garden) and a Baskin & Robbins ice cream shop.||||Would I stay there again? In the complex, yes. In this block, no. The view is...

Overall, the hotel was not that bad. Sure, it'd be nice if there were more amenities in the building, but I really didn't have all that much time to use them considering I was there on business. ||||Location: corner of Anli Road and Huizhong Road. Make sure you tell the cab driver this because otherwise you'll be walking across the entire North Star Center for 20 minutes like I did. ||||Reason for Being There: I had to do a TEFL in China training program there, which was 7 days long, but I stayed at this hotel for 10 days. ||||Room: I stayed in a room with 2 twin beds in the A building (YaYunCun Hotel). In the room there are two beds, a nightstand, a closet (no ready iron or anything), a TV on a drawer, a desk, a study room, and bathroom with western toilet, shower, sink (the usual). Oh, and there's A/C that works amazingly -- great after walking back in the heat. ||||TV: they just replaced the TV's on the 2nd or 3rd day that I was there, so now ALL the rooms have flat screens. English channels include HBO, Cinemax, and a couple other movie channels, so that was nice. ||||Study Room: In my room, there was also a study room that had a square table with 4 chairs. that was separated by sliding glass doors. ||||Bathroom: As everyone else mentioned, the bathrooms are not the best -- water didn't flow down the sink fluently and the shower was not divided from the rest of the bathroom so the floor would get wet, but not to an extent where it was unbearable (it doesn't go past the sink and doesn't even come close to the bathroom door). ||||Air-Conditioning: works well -- had the room set at 18* C the entire time. Perfect. ||||Internet: No Wi-Fi; only plug-in ethernet cord on the desk. ||||Employees: very friendly employees, but when I first arrived, there were about 4-5 employees working the front desk and absolutely none of them spoke English, so I didn't know how to mention my reservations to the hotel, so I had to just book a room right there with them... using my very limited elementary Chinese. However, every time I came to the desk after that, there was always someone who spoke decent English.||||Pros: decent price (~380 RMB/night); convenient location (near the Olympic Bird Nest Stadium); clean rooms; A/C; cable & internet; ||Cons: wet bathrooms; no Wi-Fi; employees' English is very limited; no fridge or snacks in the room; no view of anything but the back of...

I stayed in Block B of Yayuncun Hotel for 10 days while at a conference at the CNCC, which is about a 15-20 minute walk from the hotel.||||Location:||IMPORTANT NOTE: Google maps puts this hotel in the wrong location! It's actually located NE of the google maps location, near the corner of Anli and Huizhong Rd. The sign for the hotel isn't huge, and many of the towers are actually labeled something like "Northstar service apartments," so it's easy to be fooled.||Aside from the Olympic park, there is not much to see in the area. Subway stations are all about a 20 minute walk away as well. There are a few restaurants in the area, but not many--the majority of the stores in the area appear to be cell phone stores. There is a nice grocery store about 2 min east of the hotel on the corner.||||Room:||The room was big for the price, and unlike other reviewers I found the bathroom quite nice. My bathroom was not a 'wet floor' style, and the drains worked fine. The beds though, I found to be very hard and uncomfortable. The AC worked well enough. I never tried using the internet because my new Mac doesn't come with an ethernet port, which is the only way to connect at the hotel.||||Staff:||Staff were friendly and tried to be helpful--when my adapter didn't actually fit the electrical sockets, they found one for me to borrow. Having said that though, almost nobody speaks English. At most, they might speak a few words. I showed them my adapter and how it wouldn't work for them to understand, but once they understood they were great.||||Food:||I found the complimentary breakfast to be not very good. Though, I actually didn't like authentic Chinese food all that much either, so I might just be a picky eater. Their restaurant has a couple fish tanks (not the decorative kind, like the kind where you know that's where your dinner is coming from), and in one of them was a large dead fish that was left there for a few days. Wasn't exactly appetizing...||||Amenities:||You have to boil the water out of the faucet, but that's standard in Beijing. They provided soap, shampoo, combs, toothbrushes, and slippers. I'm actually not sure if they ever changed the sheets in the 10 days that I was there--it seemed like they just made the bed. I think they did change the...