The 100 Best Places to Drink and Stay in China

Soy sauce in a martini garnish is the kind of move that either makes you put down your phone or pick it up to photograph the menu. Hope & Sesame is a Cantonese cocktail bar that runs sous-vide infusions and centrifuges alongside familiar pantry flavors from the region, landing on Asia's 50 Best Bars at number seven and the World's 50 Best Bars at twenty-nine. The room has expanded recently, which tells you something about how the city feels about it.

The art deco lobby on the Bund sets the tone: celadon walls, black marble floors, and the quiet suggestion that Shanghai's golden age never quite ended. This Forbes Five Star hotel carries a Michelin 2 Keys distinction and makes good on both with rooms where the tub fills at a button press and the drapes obey accordingly. The spa channels 1920s Paris, and the in-house restaurants cover fine dining and Cantonese without either feeling like an afterthought.

Forty-two restored siheyuan scattered across a historic hutong neighborhood, each behind its own wooden gate with its own address. That's the hotel, a Forbes Five Star and number fourteen on the World's 50 Best Hotels list. Getting to dinner means wandering laneway alleys past laundry lines and e-scooters, which is either charming or inconvenient depending on your mood, though a butler escort and buggy are always on call.

A 48-story tower cantilevered above a lovingly restored 1916 Chamber of Commerce building, all red brick and imposing columns, isn't a subtle move, but Bvlgari pulls it off. The hotel holds a Forbes Five Star and two Michelin Keys, and the rooms occupy the skyscraper's upper floors with views split between the Bund and the Pudong skyline. Bronze accents, travertine, and dark woods run throughout, and the subterranean spa is a serious operation.

The Rosewood Guangzhou occupies the top 39 floors of the CTF Finance Centre, which means you're checking into what may be the tallest five-star hotel on earth. Seven restaurants and bars, an expansive two-story spa, and some vertiginous views come with that altitude. The interiors run sleek and contemporary without feeling corporate. It holds both a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key, so expectations are set accordingly before you even reach the 70th floor.

The villas here were once shikumen townhouses, the narrow-lane brick dwellings that somehow survived Shanghai's tower-block era, and Capella has turned a preserved clutch of them into a boutique luxury hotel in Xuhui. Three-story interiors mix French and Chinese influences, and Pierre Gagnaire's only mainland China restaurant sits on the grounds. The spa runs to flotation tanks and traditional Chinese medicine treatments, which is a combination that feels very Shanghai.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Huangpu River from every room at this Forbes Five Star hotel on the Pudong side of Shanghai, where the skyline is newer and the architecture doesn't do the nostalgic Bund thing. Some 4,000 works of contemporary art fill the property, curated down to the last hanging angle. The spa has a separate lounge just for foot massages, a tepidarium, and a crystal steam room, which tells you how seriously they take the whole operation.

The sculpted gardens by landscape designer Enzo Enea are the quiet surprise, a genuinely serene ribbon of green tucked into Chaoyang's embassy district. This is a luxury hotel where the Italian design firm Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel did every room, butler service comes standard, and Maserati handles the airport run. Forbes Five Star and Michelin's 2 Keys confirm what the imported marble and subterranean mosaic-tile pool already suggest.

A Frank Gehry fish lamp in red, pink, and peach dangles from the lobby ceiling, which is either a bold opening statement or a gentle warning about what follows. This Forbes Five Star, Michelin Key hotel sits steps from Wangfujing and a short walk from the Forbidden City, and the rooms face that direction deliberately. The spa has a skylight lap pool, the bar staff wear Vivienne Tam, and MO Bar runs late with cocktails and a sunset terrace.

Pearlescent white marble stretches across the lobby beneath a pair of Qin Feng ink paintings, with Peninsula Afternoon Tea laid out below them as if to say the British era never quite ended. This all-suite luxury hotel sits a short walk from Tiananmen Square, with Cantonese and modern French restaurants on site, a Clarins spa, and rooms where a bedside panel controls everything short of your mood. It holds a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key.

A 17-foot ceramic tree anchors the glass-ceilinged courtyard at the center of this 186-room hotel in Jing'an, and it's the kind of statement piece that actually earns the room. Rattan and blonde wood marquetry nod to old Shanghai without cosplaying it, and the geometric bathroom tiles are lifted straight from the city's classic mansions. The heated fifth-floor pool looks over the skyline, and Taikoo Hui is directly across the street for anyone who needs retail therapy first.

Piero Lissoni's near-monochrome modernism meets Shanghai's jade greens in a lobby so theatrical it makes the chandelier work for its keep. This boutique luxury hotel in Jing'an holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star, and its crowd runs to fashion people who dress for the lobby like it's a second outfit. Café Grey Deluxe spills onto a terrace; the spa and pool keep things civilized. Rooms run large and quiet, which is rarer than it sounds.

Cloisonné metalwork hangs in every room, paintings drawn from ancient gongbi and ink-wash traditions line the lobby, and the sixth-floor pool is ringed by sculpture from leading Chinese artists. This is a luxury hotel in Chaoyang's business district that takes "cultural programming" seriously enough that you almost forgive them for calling the concierge a "curator." Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Guide 2 Keys. Seven restaurants, a Sense spa, and Frette linens round things out.

The Long Bar's 110-foot mahogany counter is the old Shanghai Club's most famous survivor, painstakingly restored from archival photographs, and it sets the tone for this luxury hotel on the Bund. Two buildings in one, the neoclassical wing houses the suites while a modern tower holds the rest of the 260 rooms, all of them large, all of them equipped with Japanese electronic toilets and mirror-embedded TVs. Forbes Four Star. The in-house florist and personal shopper are not a joke.

The 105-foot bar running the length of the lobby sets the tone: a design hotel that takes the calm seriously. Dark wood, black stone, and muted fabrics give the place a spa-like stillness unusual for the middle of Jing'an District, and floor-to-ceiling windows look out onto the park rather than the street. A Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key, with a 25-meter pool and full spa downstairs for anyone who came to Shanghai to genuinely decompress.

You enter through a restored Qing Dynasty courtyard, then an elevator delivers you to rooms that start at nearly 700 square feet of white linen and black stone. The hotel, part of a conservation and modernization complex around an old temple, holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star. Sichuan cuisine awaits outside, but with Italian, a teahouse, cocktail bar, and a spa with its own courtyard, leaving becomes optional.

Art deco gets a Pudong makeover here, all cream marble bathrooms with gold accents and floor-to-ceiling views of the Bund. The Ritz-Carlton Shanghai is a full-scale luxury hotel that earns its Forbes Four Star and Michelin Key without making you feel like you're staying inside a brochure. The rooftop bar, Flair, draws a crowd that's genuinely split between locals and guests, which is the clearest sign a hotel has figured something out.

Stepping off Nanjing West Road into this hotel is a mild form of culture shock, the lobby so deliberately quiet and unadorned it reads almost like a provocation. Local design duo Neri and Hu stripped out every chandelier and gold leaf flourish that usually signals luxury in Shanghai, replacing it with an organic minimalism that somehow still feels warm. Holding a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star, it has 170 rooms and suites, a Thai-style spa, and a transplanted Italian restaurant.

The top floors of a 79-story Futian skyscraper, where the rooms are among the largest in Shenzhen and the panoramic windows do a lot of the decorating for you. This Forbes Five Star, Michelin Key hotel has eight restaurants and bars, including the much-talked-about Bay by Chef Fei, plus a 68th-floor spa with treatments that involve quartz sand, which sounds either deeply relaxing or like something you'd need explained twice.

Seventeen acres of gardens, lily ponds, and black-tiled pavilions arranged around a UNESCO-listed lake, and the whole thing still manages to feel like it simply grew here. This small luxury hotel, holding a Michelin 2 Keys distinction, keeps only 78 rooms, from traditional doubles up to three-story villas. The restaurants run Chinese and Western, with eleven private dining rooms, each one opening onto the gardens, which is a lot of rooms for a hotel that already feels like a retreat.

The green copper roof has presided over the Bund since the Twenties, back when Noël Coward was allegedly writing plays here between drinks. This Art Deco landmark is a luxury hotel where the octagonal marble lobby, glazed dome, and original Lalique wall art do most of the talking. Rooms are elegant and genuinely comfortable, the Jazz Bar's house band holds a Guinness record, and the location, where the Bund meets Nanjing Road, is as central as Shanghai gets. A Forbes Four Star property.

The interiors, by Yabu Pushelberg, layer black lacquer and brushes of red and gold against a restraint that reads as quietly Western, somehow making both coexist without apology. This 175-room luxury hotel sits in the heart of Wangfujing, close to the Forbidden City, with a staff-to-guest ratio that the Michelin Guide calls nearly one to one but that feels like ten to one. A full-service spa, heated pool, and three restaurants round things out. It holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star.

A 20-story inner atrium lined with 400 stainless-steel butterflies by Australian artist Jayne Dyer sets the tone for this luxury hotel in Chaoyang. Deluxe rooms run nearly 500 square feet, with bathtubs angled toward the city skyline. The spa has 11 suites and a treatment menu long enough to require reading glasses. Forbes Four Star, and selected by the Michelin Guide.

The rooms begin on the 74th floor, which should tell you everything about what kind of hotel this is. Four Seasons occupies the upper third of a 103-story tower in Guangzhou's Pearl River New City, and the views over the city are genuinely hard to argue with. The atrium alone will stop you mid-sentence. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Multiple restaurants, a spa, and a pool round out the floors below.

The Park Hyatt occupies floors 79 through 93 of the Shanghai World Financial Center, which means the infinity pool sits on the 85th floor and the views from your room are, by any measure, absurd. Inside, the palette runs to gray, cream, and dark wood, the whole thing feeling more like a very well-appointed private residence than a tower hotel. Contemporary Chinese art and the occasional patch of grass keep it from reading too serious. A Forbes Four Star property.

The lobby sits on the 64th floor, which tells you everything about the kind of hotel this is. Part of the Shangri-La family, it occupies the top stretch of Beijing's tallest tower, with an infinity pool on the 78th floor and views that make the city look like a model set. Rooms are large by any standard, the spa is enormous, and the tea selection is reportedly among the biggest in the capital. A Forbes Four Star property.

A glass-and-steel tower whose LED facade pulses through hexagonal patterns after dark, this luxury hotel sits at the center of Sanlitun, Beijing's liveliest nightlife and shopping neighborhood. Rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows, curvilinear layouts, and freestanding tubs, and the lobby tea bar runs afternoon service for anyone needing a quiet moment amid all that fashionable noise. It holds a Forbes Four Star.

Some rooms look straight down onto a centuries-old temple that the surrounding mall simply absorbed, which tells you something about how Chengdu works. This Forbes Four Star hotel sits at the top of the city's International Finance Square, and the rooms lean into the height: oversized windows, deep soaking tubs, 500-thread-count linen as standard. Yue Hin handles Cantonese, Sichuan and Huaiyang cooking; the Tea Lounge has its own sommelier.

The bathrooms alone justify a conversation at dinner. This luxury hotel tower in central Tianhe holds 263 rooms finished in Tony Chi's clean, contemporary lines, with views across a city that moves fast and builds faster. The Taikoo Hui mall connects directly from the lobby, so you can spend a week without stepping outside if that appeals. A Forbes Four Star property, and the Cantonese restaurant is the right flagship for Guangzhou.

Rooms at this 500-room business hotel look one way toward the Forbidden City and the other toward Wangfujing's shopping stretch, which is a genuinely useful piece of urban luck. Interiors run to aubergine and gold, with full-length windows, deep soaking tubs, and glass-walled bathrooms that outdo most home setups. The Serenity Spa runs until 1 a.m., and Lei Garden draws Cantonese food devotees who aren't staying here at all.

The Art Deco chandeliers are hard to miss in the lobby, but the rooms are where the formula quietly earns its keep: iPad controls, integrated surround sound, floor-to-ceiling views, and an oversize marble bathroom with a rainforest shower. This 29-story business hotel sits between Tianfu Square and Chunxi Road, with 24-hour butler service handling the flowers, the suit pressing, and the morning coffee before you've thought to ask. A Forbes Four Star hotel.

Floors 38 to 62 of the Deji Plaza tower, which means Louis Vuitton is somewhere far below you and the Nanjing skyline is at eye level. Every room in this luxury hotel looks out over the city, Xuanwu Lake, or Purple Mountain, with interiors that translate bamboo screens and traditional lanterns into something unmistakably contemporary. Curated books acknowledge Nanjing's UNESCO City of Literature status. It holds a Forbes Four Star.

The rooftop draws almost exclusively young Shanghainese, which tells you everything about how this hotel plays its hand. Ian Schrager's EDITION brand runs on glamorous public spaces over quiet rooms, and the Shanghai outpost delivers: five bars, two of them on the roof, a full nightclub, Japanese and Cantonese restaurants, and a modern British kitchen from Jason Atherton. The 145 rooms are sleek and light-toned, many facing the Bund.

Foster and Partners designed this luxury hotel on the Bund, and the 32-foot lobby ceiling with its jade-and-marble tile makes the intent clear before you've even checked in. Rooms on the upper floors look out over the historic riverfront skyline, and the afternoon tea service has developed its own following. The crowd skews toward Shanghai's fashion-forward set, which makes the whole thing feel less stuffy than the opulence might suggest.

A curvy tower in Xintiandi that leans into contradictions, the Andaz is a boutique-feeling hotel inside a 28-story Hyatt property, where the rooms run red and rich hardwood, LED lighting shifts to suit your mood, and an iPad controls everything from the shades to room service. The French patisserie and modern Shanghainese restaurant give you reasons to stay in. Shopping and the Metro are a short walk out the door.

Floors 84 to 120 of China's tallest building, which means the Bund, the Huangpu River, and the Oriental Pearl Tower arranged below you like a scale model. This luxury hotel keeps 131 rooms and 34 suites, each angled differently by the tower's spiral form, all with full-length windows and round-the-clock butler service. Diptyque and Hermès in the bath, a spa, a pool, and seven restaurants, one of them up on the 120th floor.

The two-story Ritz-Carlton Suite has 270-degree skyline views and its own marble tubs, which is the kind of detail that makes a Rolls-Royce airport transfer feel like a reasonable opening move. This 280-room luxury hotel sits across from the Convention and Exhibition Center in Futian, Shenzhen's central business district. A Forbes Four Star property, it runs three restaurants, a jazz bar, and a spa whose Heaven & Earth ritual pairs warm stones with foot reflexology.

The lobby announces itself with a spritz of ginger flower scent, which you can buy bottled at the gift shop if you fall hard enough. The Langham is a 357-room luxury hotel sitting directly across from Xintiandi's cobbled shikumen lanes, with a three-story chandelier that sets expectations the guest rooms wisely dial back, trading drama for lacquered wood and modern Chinese calm. Club floors come with round-the-clock butlers, and the Chuan Spa handles the rest.

Ole Scheeren's glass cube sits a short walk from the Forbidden City, its facade patterned to echo Beijing's old hutong brick walls. This luxury hotel's 116 rooms lean into calm minimalism, with many looking straight out at the imperial complex. Two restaurants, a Guerlain spa, and a tea room dedicated to Chinese tea culture give guests plenty of reasons to stay put in the Wangfujing corridor. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

The rooms start on the 53rd floor, so the view of Guangzhou's Zhujiang New Town skyline is less an amenity than a given. This luxury hotel occupies the upper stretch of a 66-story tower, which keeps it literally above most of the neighborhood's competition and figuratively above quite a bit of it too. Service runs attentive without tipping into formal, and the design threads contemporary and traditional together without making a fuss about it.

A golden cloud of sculptural butterflies floats above the lobby seating, which tells you something about the register this hotel is pitching at. It's a Shangri-La property in everything but name, updated for guests who've stayed in enough boutique hotels to notice the difference. Rooms are high-tech without being fussy, the 35-meter pool is serious, and the window view of Rem Koolhaas's CCTV Tower is worth requesting specifically.

A three-story LED waterfall anchors the lobby of this Pearl River luxury hotel, which takes feng shui as a design brief and runs it through a nightclub filter. Three restaurants, a spa, and a heated indoor pool cover the daytime; a cocktail lounge with a resident DJ handles the rest. Guangzhou's CBD and convention centers are right outside, which explains the crowd, though the energy skews considerably more festive than the usual business address.

On the 79th floor of the Mandarin Oriental, this cocktail bar trades in vertigo and seasonal menus built around traditional Chinese solar terms, which is a more poetic organizing principle than most places manage. The current menu maps each season to a drink, fermented rose jam and buckwheat for autumn, Fenghuang dancong tea for spring. It holds a spot on Asia's 50 Best Bars list, and the crowd up here knows it.

A 65-foot Czech crystal installation spirals through the lobby of this 27-story business hotel in Guangzhou's CBD, where the design nods to a traditional Xiguan mansion without taking itself too seriously. The 309 rooms come with pillow menus, free-standing tubs, and automatic shoe dryers, which is the detail that tells you the level. Five restaurants, a cocktail bar, an indoor pool, and a spa fill the rest of the time.

Perched above the Grand Canal in a mixed-use tower, this Four Seasons leans into what the design firm called "urban Zen," layered stone and pale wood doing quiet work against a floor-to-ceiling skyline. It's a full-service city hotel where the Chinese restaurant takes regional cooking seriously and tea service in the lounge is treated like a ritual, not an afterthought. The spa and pool sit high enough above Hangzhou to feel genuinely removed from it.

Purple carpets and hand-painted cloud murals make an unlikely opening statement for a business-district hotel, but that's the Four Seasons in Futian for you. The 26-floor tower sits across from the Convention and Exhibition Center, which tells you exactly who fills the rooms, though the green courtyard terraces and morning tai chi sessions suggest the staff would prefer you forgot the agenda. A Michelin Selected Hotel with a full spa and multiple restaurants.

Fifty antique Ming and Qing dynasty houses were dismantled stone by stone and reassembled here, alongside ten thousand ancient camphor trees rescued from a rising reservoir, which is an unusual origin story even for an Aman resort. The 25-acre retreat southwest of Shanghai holds Michelin's 1 Key and a Forbes Four Star, and delivers the full Aman formula: obsessive quiet, flawless service, and architecture that makes you feel vaguely unworthy of the room.

Positioned on the Suzhou River with views across to the Bund and the Lujiazui skyline, this hotel sits in Hongkou, one of the few Shanghai neighborhoods where art deco facades still stand and elderly residents haul groceries home from the wet market. Inside, the mood shifts to grand: over a thousand artworks sourced globally fill the interiors. A Forbes Four Star property, it's the first Bellagio outside the United States, with 162 rooms, dining, and a full spa.

The interiors by André Fu hide behind a glass tower: dark oak parquet, Carrara marble bathrooms, and marquetry woodwork that feel more Old New York than new Shenzhen. This 51-floor hotel on Qianhai Bay holds 289 rooms, a Cantonese restaurant, afternoon tea framed around Caroline Astor lore on the 35th floor, and a rooftop bar where the bay finally comes into focus. It holds a Forbes Four Star.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame Canton Tower and the Pearl River from the upper reaches of G.T. Land Winter Plaza, which is where Jumeirah plants its Guangzhou flag. The hotel runs a Forbes Four Star property with marble interiors, bold art, and bathrooms that make checkout feel like a personal failing. Cantonese dining and a rooftop bar share the building with a pool and gym, all of it landing squarely in Tianhe's orbit of malls and business towers.

Stone pathways and clay-tiled roofs wind through what was, not so long ago, an actual village: Amanfayun is a luxury resort built from 47 restored traditional courtyard dwellings set among tea fields and bamboo groves near West Lake. Behind the calligraphy scrolls and pitched wooden roofs are king-sized beds and underfloor heating. Buddhist temples are walkable, West Lake is a short drive, and the spa menu runs from traditional Chinese massage to tai chi.

The indoor pool here streams black-and-white films on a full-wall screen, which sets the tone nicely for a hotel that otherwise leans sharply modern and Chinese rather than gilt-and-chandelier Ritz. A glass skyscraper on Financial Street, it draws a weekday suit crowd that fills the Crystal Bar and afternoon tea service without much fuss. Rooms run large, with zebrawood bathrooms and full electronic controls. The spa and movement studio are worth the detour.

Marble foyers with fresh flower arrangements set the tone at this Ritz-Carlton in Chaoyang, which leans into the brand's old-school grandeur rather than chasing whatever the newer one is doing across town. It's a full-service luxury hotel with a heated pool, a spa, and all-day dining. Guest rooms come with a Chinese-style teapot and complimentary tea, and the marble-lined tubs have their own TV for anyone who considers that a necessity. Forbes Four Star.

An in-house craft brewery inside a luxury hotel is either a very good idea or a sign the minibar committee got out of hand, and at Kerry Hotel Pudong it reads as the former. This contemporary five-star sits beside Century Park in Pudong, with a vast sports and spa complex, a formal Cantonese restaurant, a casual steakhouse, and a brewmaster producing the IPAs. Rooms are spacious, the atmosphere a notch less stiff than the Shangri-La sibling upstairs.

The exterior looks like someone stacked enormous glass blocks and left them slightly askew, which turns out to be deliberate, a design by Andrew Bromberg that looms over Guangzhou's riverside with cheerful aggression. Inside, a 22-story atrium floods the marble lobby with light. This is a large luxury hotel with a spa, pool, rooftop bar, and multiple restaurants, and it draws everyone from Canton Fair regulars to leisure travelers happy to never leave the building.

The lobby is on the 37th floor, the pool is higher still, and the glass-bottomed bar platform juts past the building's edge, so you spend the whole stay slightly airborne. This luxury hotel in Hangzhou's eastern business district has New York firm Yabu Pushelberg's fingerprints all over it: plum blossom headboards, lake-blue tones, and marble, with Qiantang River views through floor-to-ceiling windows. West Lake is a short drive away when you finally come back down.

The lobby shifts from afternoon tea to Japanese street food to a drinks lounge over the course of a single day, which tells you something about the ambitions of this large international hotel near the Olympic Village and the National Convention Center. Floor-to-ceiling windows pull in natural light and views of the Bird's Nest. Earth-toned rooms run to deep soaking tubs and city panoramas, and the airport is a 30-minute drive.

KPF's glass facade borrows the silhouette of Suzhou's layered tile roofs and folding screens, so the hotel reads as local before you've even walked in. Silk wall panels and hand-worked lattice carry that same logic through the 190 rooms, which face out over the city. The indoor pool has the hush of a garden courtyard, and Lingering Garden is a short walk away for anyone who wants the genuine article.

A cocktail bar that doubles as a scavenger hunt: find Tipsy, the secret bar hidden somewhere in the building, and you've earned bragging rights for the evening. Sober Company runs three floors of drinking and eating, but Sober Society is the heart of it, where the team behind Speak Low works through a menu of cocktails built around Chinese ingredients. It has landed on Asia's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks.

Rooms at this 352-key luxury hotel on Shennan Boulevard start at a generous 40 square meters, and the decor reads timeless enough that you could plausibly lose track of the decade. The Langham brand leans hard into its English hospitality heritage, which here means Wedgwood china at afternoon tea, two pools, a spa, and a handful of restaurants running from Cantonese fine dining to whatever mood you're in.

Checkered tiles, timber walls, and green leather stools that look like a diner lost its passport and ended up in Huangpu. Pony Up is an all-day bar on Jinxian Road, open from early afternoon so the post-lunch crowd has somewhere respectable to be. The signature Cigar cocktail layers vermouth, absinthe, and a house smoke-infused spirit. Asia's 50 Best Bars has it on their Discovery list.

The St. Regis occupies the top 25 floors of the Kingkey 100 tower, which means your room sits somewhere around the clouds above Shenzhen's sprawl. It's a luxury hotel with 290 rooms and suites, butler service around the clock, six restaurants and bars, an Iridium Spa, and a rooftop infinity pool. Inside, the design runs from Art Deco to street art without quite explaining itself, and the views of the city and mountains do most of the talking anyway.

A Forbes Five Star hotel rising 41 stories above Tianfu Square, with guest rooms that borrow their bones from traditional Chinese courtyard homes, dressed out in damask, warm wood, and marble with city views. The central business district location puts pandas, teahouses, and spicy Sichuan markets within easy reach, which is a good thing, because a city this charismatic deserves more than a lobby.

The indoor pool sits under a glass enclosure that tricks you into thinking you're outside, which is a neat trick for a luxury hotel in the middle of one of the most densely packed cities on earth. Rooms run large, the lobby runs larger, and personal space is treated less as an amenity than a guiding philosophy. Business travelers use it as a base for the Jing'an commercial district, a short walk away.

Occupying the 41st through 72nd floors of Zhuhai Tower along the Wanzai waterfront, this Forbes Four Star hotel positions itself somewhere between the Pearl River Delta and the clouds. Wilson Associates designed the interiors with Gilded Age New York in mind, so expect creams, muted greens, and a certain studied grandeur. Two pools, butler service, and 251 rooms with sweeping views toward Macau make it easy to forget that ground level exists.

You enter through a sliding bookshelf inside a cocktail equipment shop, which sets the tone nicely. This three-floor cocktail bar from Shingo Gokan has long since shed any real secrecy, but the ritual of getting in still earns its keep. The second floor is where the serious drinking happens; the top floor, rare whiskies and a members-only door. The crowd knows what it ordered before it sits down.

The 52-story sail-shaped tower is hard to miss from anywhere on Haitang Bay, and inside, the aquatic theme goes well past decor: the Neptune and Poseidon suites put your bedroom below the waterline, glass wall facing a live aquarium. It's a sprawling resort in the Atlantis mold, 130 acres of waterslides, marine encounters, pools, and 21 restaurants. Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen handles the British contingent. Forbes Four Star.

The sky lobby is on the 62nd floor, which sets the tone for this luxury hotel perched atop Changsha's tallest tower inside the IFS complex. Conran and Partners worked Hunan's landscape into the interiors, so the rooms carry sage greens and timber in place of the usual corporate palette. The pool and wellness floor sit high enough to make a spa day feel mildly vertiginous. It holds a Forbes Four Star and a Michelin Key.

A rose gold glass facade shaped like a bridge announces this Fairmont hotel before you've even walked through the door. It sits in Beijing's Central Business District, close to Sanlitun and a short drive from Wangfujing, and the interior keeps the gold theme going from the two-story marble lobby to the bell-shaped rainshower heads upstairs. Rooms are spacious and quietly luxurious, with Bose speakers, Toto washlets, and bedside panels that handle most things you'd rather not stand up for.

Floors 36 to 48 of a downtown tower, which means the skyline views start before you've even unpacked. This Forbes Four Star hotel runs 287 rooms with dark wood floors and jet tubs, and the design works in latticework and calligraphy-inspired details without tipping into theme-park territory. The onsite garden grows actual vegetables for the kitchen, a small fact that lands differently once you've seen how high up you are.

Thirty acres of beachfront palms on Hainan Island, closer to Vietnam than to Shanghai, where the Mandarin Oriental traded its usual city-tower format for a sprawling low-rise resort along Coral Bay. Rooms come with balconies, villas sit right on the beach, and the spa village is large enough to get genuinely lost in, which seems to be the point. Bill Bensley designed it, and the warm wood and open-air architecture feel right for a place that holds a Forbes Four Star.

A golf resort on Hainan Island sitting inside Mission Hills, one of the largest golf complexes on earth, with ten championship courses rolling across volcanic terrain outside every window. The rooms and villas lean into the clubhouse fantasy: dark paneling, leather, tartan, marble. The spa runs on local volcanic mineral springs, and the rooftop bar on the 20th floor is a solid reason to put the clubs away for the evening. Forbes Four Star.

A man-made private ocean sits at the center of this sprawling Hainan Island resort, which is exactly the kind of sentence that sounds like marketing copy until you see it. The Sanya Edition spreads across fifty acres of waterfront, with gondolas ferrying guests to a floating restaurant, lotus pools in the lobby, and over five hundred rooms all facing the sea. Forbes Four Star. Pack light; the dress code is essentially "near water at all times."

The lobby chandelier is modeled on a dress Caroline Astor once wore to one of her legendary late-night parties, which tells you where this hotel's head is at. Floors 58 through 78 of the Haitian Center above Fushan Bay, the St. Regis Qingdao has the full complement: butler service, a spa, Cantonese seafood at Yan Ting, and a Bloody Mary spiked with Qingdao beer and local clams. It holds a Forbes Four Star.

A glass pyramid in Chaoyang that turns out to contain a very serious business hotel, with Dalí and Warhol on the walls and a Panasonic massage chair waiting in every room. Bang & Olufsen audio, Philippe Starck at the desk, Riedel glassware stocked at the in-room bar: the amenity list reads like a very confident magazine spread. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Parkview Green puts a city's worth of dining and retail just outside the door, though leaving feels optional.

A light installation in the lobby is meant to echo the ripples of nearby West Lake, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and, conveniently, a short walk from the front door. This 13-story Shangri-La hotel sits on the northeastern edge of the lake, with open-air courtyards, four restaurants, and a spa inside. The Wulin Night Market and a scattering of parks are close enough to fill a long afternoon without planning much.

Walled inside its own private compound right beside the Summer Palace, this Aman property holds a collection of century-old guest houses arranged around ponds and gardens that the public never sees. The electronic amenities hide discreetly behind bamboo blinds and hand-carved screens, while pools, spa, and squash court all sit underground. Staff outnumber guests by a wide margin, which is rather the point. A Michelin Key property.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame either the Pudong skyline or the slower curve of the Huangpu River, depending on which side of this large luxury hotel you land. The atrium soars, the beds are reliably cloud-soft, and Bvlgari amenities in the bath signal where this place sits on the spectrum. An infinity pool and spa add to the case for staying in, and rooftop cocktails come with the kind of panoramas that make the city feel like a prop.

Eighty-seven villas folded into the hills of Jiuzhaigou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, each angled toward the Minshan mountains as if the views were part of the room service. This Ritz-Carlton Reserve leans hard into its setting, with Tibetan art and design throughout, a spa drawing on local tradition, and three restaurants cycling through Sichuan, Chinese, and Mediterranean menus. The Michelin Guide awarded it 3 Keys.

Two futuristic glass towers rise above the Qiantang River, and the hotel leans into that drama at every turn: rounded corners, polished marble, metallic accents, and a rippling glass installation in the lobby that riffs on nearby West Lake. The 324-room luxury hotel sits in one of China's ancient capitals, with Hangzhou's famous willow-fringed West Lake close enough that the designers couldn't stop referencing it, and neither can you.

A 400-foot pool stretching toward the South China Sea is the orientation point here, and it sets the tone for everything else at this large luxury beach resort on Hainan Island's southern tip. Rooms are spacious and contemporary, most facing the water, while freestanding villas add private pools and butler service for anyone going full Bond villain. Eight restaurants, five pools, and a Michelin Key round out a property that somehow stays calm despite its scale.

A private island hotel on 22 acres of lake and garden, reached by a short bridge outside Suzhou. The grounds are calibrated to bloom on a seasonal schedule the hotel actually tracks and shares, which is either charming or mildly controlling depending on your mood. An infinity pool hangs over the water; a glass-enclosed one handles the colder months. Suzhou's canal network and its classical gardens are close enough for a day out and back.

Floor-to-ceiling windows cap the top floors of this 48-story tower hotel, designed by Yabu Pushelberg, with the kind of views over central Shenzhen that make you feel vaguely important for no good reason. Rooms run lavish, a well-equipped spa and indoor pool come standard, and the speakeasy-style bar at the very apex of the building gives the whole thing a satisfying sense of occasion. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

The infinity pool lines up almost perfectly with Xianglu Bay, and on a clear day you can pick out the twin-scallop shells of the Zhuhai Grand Theater and the long arc of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge beyond it. This coastal hotel reopened recently after a full rebuild, with the rooftop bar, mountain-view gym, and Chinese and all-day restaurants carrying the new look. Jingshan Park and the famous fisher girl statue are a short walk away.

Check-in happens on the 14th floor at the Sky Lobby, which tells you exactly what kind of resort Rosewood Sanya is. Perched on Haitang Bay with the South China Sea filling every window, the rooms lean into natural wood and stone rather than shouting about their luxury. Some floors get balcony plunge pools. Three restaurants, two bars, a Sense Spa, and seafront walking trails spread across 40 acres, with the rooftop infinity bar doing steady work at sunset.

A four-sided glass hearth burns at the center of the lobby, lit on every side, which sets the tone for this full-service luxury hotel in Xi'an's business district. Rooms run deep plum with marble baths and jetted tubs, the spa occupies an entire floor with a Zen garden alongside, and the rooftop bar, Flair, closes out the night above a city that still has Terracotta Warriors in the ground nearby.

The angular glass facade was designed to echo the fractured ice sheets that cover the Songhua River below each winter, which tells you everything about how seriously Harbin takes its signature season. This luxury hotel leans into that identity throughout, with sculptural chandeliers, swirling blue artwork, and Russian lace details nodding to the city's tsarist-era past. All 366 rooms face the river or skyline, and every bathroom has a soaking tub.

Floor-to-ceiling bay views, marble that catches every angle of the South China Sea light, and a butler's service window in every room set the tone at this beachfront St. Regis resort on Hainan's southern tip. The property cloisters you completely, with private pools, beach massages, yacht services, and four restaurants covering everything from Cantonese to fresh seafood. The Drawing Room does a nightly champagne-sabering ritual, in case you needed permission to stay another night.

A 52-story hotel in Chengdu's Hi-Tech Zone where art-deco chandeliers the size of small spacecraft anchor the lobby and every room comes with its own butler service window. The Waldorf Astoria holds a Forbes Four Star. Six restaurants and bars cover everything from Cantonese to a rooftop whiskey bar on the 52nd floor where the jazz carries further than the skyline.

Floor-to-ceiling views of Shenzhen Bay anchor this Hyatt luxury-boutique hotel, set among the gleaming tech campuses of Nanshan. Designer Tony Chi gave the rooms a clean, contemporary frame and then softened it with leather chairs and marble baths, so it reads more New York loft than sterile business hotel. A 19-meter indoor pool and two restaurants round things out. It holds a Michelin Key.

Raffles occupies the central tower of One Shenzhen Bay, which means rooms look out over the bay from a height that makes the city feel theoretical. The hotel carries its colonial Singapore heritage lightly, pairing classic room details with butler service, Ferragamo bath products, and enough high-tech convenience to keep you busy. Cantonese, Japanese, and Western restaurants share the building with a spa and a 25-meter indoor pool. It holds a Michelin Key.

The buildings are sand-colored and scattered across a hillside in China's Min Mountains, staged to look more like a village than a luxury resort, which is either modest or very clever marketing. Either way, Jiuzhai Valley National Park fills every window, and the Conrad earns its Forbes Four Star rating by leaning into that view without coasting on it. Sleek interiors and polished service keep things feeling properly high-end once you're inside.

Perched on floors 37 through 54 of a sail-shaped tower on Xiamen's southwestern coast, this Forbes Four Star hotel arranges wall-to-wall windows so that the views over Gulangyu Island and the bay follow you from the pool to the bar to your bathtub. Staff the hotel calls "curators" will help you plan excursions into the city, though the attached shopping mall makes it easy to never leave the building at all.