Dong Jiao State Guest — Hotel in Shanghai

Stayed here for a conference that took place in the adjacent Conference Center. This is a beautiful small hotel/guest house. Only a little over 100 rooms. The rooms are very large for a Chinese Hotel and are five star type rooms. I found the staff to be very helpful and courteous and their English was pretty good--even the cooks took my orders in English. There is only one restaurant--with a huge buffet both for breakfast and also lunch/dinner. Wifi was very good. The setting is in the middle of a huge garden/park complex which is simply gorgeous! You don't feel like you are in an urban area but rather a Chinese garden!||||The downside is that you are very, very isolated. It is quite a hike to the closest subway--you have to get a taxi. Downtown Shanghai or even Pudong Financial district is some distance. So staying here is not convenient if your goal is sightseeing or meetings in downtown Shanghai. But if you are doing business in the near by tech park or just need a nice place before/after your flights it is really excellent. The only other downside is that the recreation center is not located in the hotel but about a ten minute walk away on the other side of the park--so good for exercise but you have to plan your time.||||All in all I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the Dong Jiao Guest House was and greatly enjoyed my stay for...

Stayed here for a conference that took place in the adjacent Conference Center. This is a beautiful small hotel/guest house. Only a little over 100 rooms. The rooms are very large for a Chinese Hotel and are five star type rooms. I found the staff to be very helpful and courteous and their English was pretty good--even the cooks took my orders in English. There is only one restaurant--with a huge buffet both for breakfast and also lunch/dinner. Wifi was very good. The setting is in the middle of a huge garden/park complex which is simply gorgeous! You don't feel like you are in an urban area but rather a Chinese garden!||||The downside is that you are very, very isolated. It is quite a hike to the closest subway--you have to get a taxi. Downtown Shanghai or even Pudong Financial district is some distance. So staying here is not convenient if your goal is sightseeing or meetings in downtown Shanghai. But if you are doing business in the near by tech park or just need a nice place before/after your flights it is really excellent. The only other downside is that the recreation center is not located in the hotel but about a ten minute walk away on the other side of the park--so good for exercise but you have to plan your time.||||All in all I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the Dong Jiao Guest House was and greatly enjoyed my stay for...

Don’t get me wrong, this is a beautiful hotel in beautiful grounds BUT......||You need the name and address in Chinese because taxi drivers don’t have a clue about it. Even when on the extensive grounds there was confusion on which way to turn to find the hotel. Then there was the fact that they had lost our reservations and didn’t know what to do with the confirmation numbers we had. Never mind, just book a couple of rooms. Except their credit card machines rejected the seven different (foreign) credit cards we offered - Visa, Mastercard & Amex. I ended up having to go to an ATM and get out (on one of the rejected cards) the full amount in cash. It wasn’t a problem with the card issuer - the rejection was instantaneous before their machines had had any time to communicate with the issuer. ||Fortunately I was able to call a good Chinese friend on WeChat who spoke to the front desk (English skills are limited as is the case with hotel information) which helped a little ||But if you are not Chinese with Chinese credit cards, probably best avoided. Which is a shame as it is a...