The Best Places to Eat and Stay in China

The dining room sits inside the Four Seasons on West Lake, which sets certain expectations, and Jin Sha mostly ignores them in the best way, leaning hard into Zhejiang soul food rather than globe-trotting hotel cuisine. The chef builds a modern Cantonese-adjacent menu around seasonal local ingredients, and what arrives at the table looks architectural but eats like something a grandmother would have strong opinions about. It holds a Michelin star.

Floor 68 of the Shanghai Tower, with The Bund spread out below like a very expensive screensaver, is where the Burgundy institution Maison Lameloise set up its China outpost. It's a fine-dining French restaurant, the kind where the tablecloths mean business, turning classic Gallic technique toward ingredients that cross cultures with more grace than the concept deserves to sound on paper. The Shanghai kitchen holds a Michelin star.

A restored courtyard mansion in a Beijing hutong, with high ceilings and a view that shifts through the seasons. This is a Michelin-starred dining room built around traditional Beijing cooking given a careful modern rethink. The Peking duck, fired over jujube wood and served three ways, is the anchor, but the kitchen ranges further than that. Beijing-themed cocktails round out a meal that takes the city's culinary past seriously without turning it into a museum.

Antlers on the white walls, no moose on the menu, a century-old Shanghai mansion doing its best impression of a gallery. This is a polished Jiangzhe restaurant where the chef's decades in Huaiyang cooking show in dishes built around technique rather than trend. The crispy white teat fish, a sea cucumber preparation that arrives in a crackling crust, is exactly the kind of thing that earns a Michelin star without needing to explain itself.

A private collection of Chinese antiques lines the walls of this low-lit, polished-wood dining room inside the Tangxiang Cultural Space on Xikang Road. Obscura holds a Michelin star for its tasting-menu cooking, which folds Sichuan tradition and forgotten regional techniques into something genuinely its own. The chef duo spent a year crossing China before opening, and the research shows on the plate without feeling like homework.

Seafood pulled from the East China Sea arrives at this contemporary Chinese restaurant in Hangzhou's Binjiang district with a precision that suggests the kitchen takes terroir as seriously as any French farmhouse. The team builds a menu around Taizhou produce, threading classical Chinese instincts through a modern, almost architectural presentation. One Michelin star and a spot on The 50 Discovery list confirm the room is not just scenery.

Ningbo cooking occupies a specific lane: intensely briny, fermented-forward, and proud of it. This upscale restaurant on the 56th floor of Raffles City The Bund leans into that tradition, anchoring the menu around wild seafood pulled from the East China Sea that morning. The room runs to aubergine walls, linen, and chandeliers, which creates a pleasant contrast with dishes built around deliberately pungent ingredients. It holds a Michelin star.

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 brick-red interior is a deliberate nod to the Minnan courtyard houses of southern Fujian, set against floor-to-ceiling windows with the Shanghai skyline doing its thing beyond. This is Fujianese fine dining, a regional cuisine that prizes the clean, layered flavour of the ingredient itself over any attempt to dress it up. The tea pairings run from jasmine to aged pu-erh, and the kitchen holds a spot on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list.

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 name refers to smoke, and the kitchen earns it, charring and curing its way through a "province-less" take on Chinese cooking that borrows freely from France without tipping into fusion cliché. Chef Reina Chen runs an eleven-course tasting menu that pairs each dish with cocktails, landing combinations like duck piped with prawn mousse or glutinous rice beside Jinhua ham and sea urchin. Asia's 50 Best lists it at number 65 for 2026.

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.

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.