The Mandarin Hotel in gentle Xiamen is one of the few 5-star hotels where one can not only open the windows, but one can sleep with them open, as just about the only sound one will hear is the birds singing. The hotel consists of several buildings and villas set in a park and was a delicate entry to China.
It’s not necessarily for everyone, particularly burger lovers, and has a very Asian charm, including obsequious staff who are forever volunteering help – even when one simply wishes to be left alone – and who visit one’s room ten times a day to perform various and sundry services, from polishing shoes, to turning down the bed (and repeatedly shutting the windows that one has deliberately left open...)
The staff must have memory training, for when I returned to the Mandarin three weeks after my first visit, they all jumped up to greet me by name.
Stardom is fleeting.
