Yiwu ShangCheng Hotel — Hotel in Jinhua

I tried out three hotels during my six week business trip to yiwu. The Shang Cheng hotel was the last hotel of the three, and where stayed five of six weeks. I came for the fast internet (20mbps down, 10mpbs up), good breakfast, and clean smell. But stayed for the luxurious service and room features. This is the longest I've ever stayed at a hotel. Overall, my experince was stellar: 4.5/5 star. ||||The Shang Cheng hotel - or Yourworld Plaza ShangCheng as it's recently been branded - was remodeled about a year ago so nearly all fixtures are new and fresh. I saw a few different room layouts, but generally you can expect a lot of granite, giant windows, and bright warm lighting. ||||ROOM FEATURES:||There are a few notable room features worth mentioning. The lighting, first of all. There are two seperate room lighting systems: Recessed lights which shine directly down like a sunny day, and Inset Ceiling lights which indirectly illuminate like a cloudy day. These two systems can be used independently or together. Next to each side of the bed are master switches that turn off all the lights in the room, except for the floor, table lamps, and bathroom concave mirror backlight which operate independently. This isn't the first time I've seen bed-side master light switches, but perhaps the time I've seen one implemented so well.||||If I ever design my own house, I'm copying the bedside light switch, and rotating tv platform. Not every room has a rotating tv platform, just rooms at the corner of the building I believe. But it's a brilliant contraption that allows the TV to rotate 180 degrees to face the couch, the bed, and the bathtub for the room layouts that allow it. (See picture) Other notable features are the remote control window curtains, and a mousepad for the glass desk.||||SERVICE :||||This is the only hotel I've ever stayed out where housekeeping usually visits twice a day. The first time they come between 10am and 4pm just to clean and restock consumables. Then about 70% of the time they surprise you around 6-8pm so that you'll frantically put your cloths back on to answer the door. When you do answer the door, one of the three kind old housemaids will offer you a newspaper, a small snack, and I believe take orders for "pillow service". ||||The housekeeping at Shang Cheng hotel goes far above and beyond any sort of hotel cleaning service I've previousy experienced. I was initially uncomfortable with the cleaning ladies folding all my clothes (including all of clothes inside my open suitcase), but now I see it just as a service feature that every other American or European hotel fails to offer, along with a bunch of other features like fresh fruit provided to my coffee table every other day.||||There were two times that housekeeping catered specifically to me without having been asked to. Once was when they gave me some laundry detergent when they saw that I had a pile of socks building up in the laundry basket but didn't want to use their 5USD/pair of socks laundry service. The other was when they added a shoe rack to my room because they saw a cheap chinese shoe collection building up. In both cases, they left a cute little note that said "Hey we saw x, here's some y, we hope you like it!". Awww thanks. Delightful gestures.||||Admittatly maybe I haven't seen such fancy stewarding only because I usually only go for mid-range hotels, where such fluff isn't available. Or maybe it has to do with how cheap the labor is in Yiwu, and therefore have a surplus of worker hours to utilize. I don't know which. (If you're wondering how cheap, about 20 USD for a full days work - so one month of staff salary would not pay for a one night stay in a room - said the best of the few english speaking staff at the front desk lobby. (Yea, she's cute but has some farmer boyfriend, pfft whatever lol.))||||ACCESSIBILITY & AMENTITIES:||||The two most iconic images that are used to represent it are the giant velvet draped columns that frame the entrance, and the expensively decorated sixth floor lobby. The point is they are relatively high end. You won't have to worry about them not accepting your Visa credit card, or being stranded without cash. The free breakfast is, in my opinion, incredible. But to be fair, a few other travelers I met thought it was just 4/5 really good. ||||English is not something that you can expect most staff to understand, and if you have questions that are at all complicated then you'll probably have to wait to have somebody contact somebody to contact somebody that knows what you're trying to say or ask. To be fair, YiWu is not a big city like Shanghai or Beijing. You will not find any english speaking people outside trade confrences and high end hotels.||||The location is very good. Very near, if not inside of, what the taxi drivers refer to as downtown. It's a 12 minutes walk to an underground walmart and a foreigner-centric restuarant/pub area. Search "M-Box pub" or "CoCo Thai Restaurant" if you want to find where. Right accross the street from the hotel is the most gigantic clothing market I've ever seen. Each floor has the surface area of two football fields full of vendors that sell from their room size spaces, and there are eight floors.||||This is not to say that experience was perfect. Cigerette smoke often lingers in the elevators despite the no-smoking signs. Of the six room service burgers I ordered during my stay, one was a thin tough cut of beef rather than ground beef. Once, power cut off in the middle of the night and I lost a few hours of work on my laptop. ||||OVERALL:||||When I come back to YiWu, I'm pretty sure I'll be coming back here. Hopefully to stay in the same awesome room as long as it doesn't smell like smoke when I get back.||||The price is on the higher end of YiWu, but in an unfamiliar and rather chaotic city, it was a great comfort to know I could count on my temporary home to be clean, welcoming, and comfortable when I...

The Shangchen Yiwu hotel is a new hotel with 265 rooms. It lies directly on the Dongyangjiang River, right next to the clothes wholesale market. ||It is slightly disconcerting that the lobby in the 6th floor. At the entrance is a hairdresser and the lower floors are used as a garage. The comfort rooms are located on the upper floors and provide a good view on the river. The small extra cost is worthwhile. ||The rooms are modernly furnished and spacious with over 40 sqm. They offer a good comfort; and are furnished with a large and comfortable king size bed, a work desk, a recliner chair, a fridge, kettle and TV with English channels. The bathroom is equipped with a shower and bath. The view from the room to the bathroom can be covered by a blind. The rooms and the bathroom are spotless clean. WiFi is free and worked flawlessly, ||The breakfast buffet is plentiful. There are Western and Asian dishes. In the evening, the buffet is offered for hotel guests at a discounted price of CNY 128.-. Regular price is CNY 198.-. Wine and beer are included. There is a large selection of seafood, BBQ. Cooked Asian and Western dishes and desserts. ||The trip to the bullet train station costs CNY 40 and takes about half an hour. The small trade zone is located in 15 minutes’ distance. ||The price / performance ratio for this hotel is excellent. Good comfort, central location and varied food makes this hotel an attractive...

1st hotel I stayed in during my visit in Yiwu - good location.||||Reception staff were great and so was the reception on 6th floor.||||In the corridor where our room was situated - unpleasant smell, may have been due to a mixture of lingering smoking odour and something else.||||Breakfast wasn't so great - not many options for non-chinese. ||||We saw an employee who was clearing the buffet breakfast dropping some food on the floor and then putting it straight back - sure it would have been offered to someone later!||||Hotel didn't seem clean - glass & windows had hand marks & smears everywhere which suggested an overall unclean appearance.||||A let down considering the...