The Best Hotels in Fuzhou

A full-service hotel a short walk from Sanfang Qixiang, the historic lane district locals say holds half of China's history, which makes the InterContinental's position between old city and new skyline feel less like marketing and more like geography. Rooms come with floral relief panels and dark timber; the Presidential Suite adds a four-poster and gold leaf ceiling for anyone who finds restraint overrated. Two restaurants cover Cantonese cooking and Asian night-market energy.

Wuyi Square sits just outside the front door, which puts you in the middle of Fuzhou's Gulou District without any effort at all. This is a full-scale luxury hotel, 26 stories of it, with 414 rooms, an indoor pool, and the kind of health club that makes a long-haul flight feel like a reasonable idea. The Michelin-starred Jiangnan Wok is on-site for Huaiyang cuisine when you'd rather not go anywhere.

Cloud Pavilion, a steakhouse perched across the 22nd and 23rd floors, gives you a reason to look up from your room at the Kempinski Fuzhou, a 327-room business hotel in the Taihe Plaza commercial district. Four restaurants, a vast ballroom, and the kind of scale that suits a city whose name literally means good fortune. Taifu Restaurant handles Cantonese and Fujian cooking at ground level, for when the view can wait.

A full-service Marriott hotel in Fuzhou's Donghu Digital Town, close to the Digital China Convention Center and about 20 minutes from the airport. The 315 rooms look out over East Lake or the East China Sea, and the Dew Bud Tea House pours local jasmine tea and Wuyi Mountain rock tea against the same view. The Changle District has seafaring history most visitors skip entirely, which gives the setting a little more texture than a convention-hotel address usually gets.