Paris in Beijing

Amongst the glass-steel cutting edge architecture of Olympic Beijing, there’s a fin-de-siècle building, unashamedly French in its lines and décor. It’s a novelty in the Chinese capital, as is as the Portuguese restaurant in its interior. Closer visits the five-star Legendale Hotel, by Macau’s entrepreneur David Chow.

There’s a mezzanine overlooking the lobby where businessman

David Chow and his wife Melinda like to sit for tea, whenever they’re not checking with their many assistants on the final touches of the Legendale. The spot is actually the epicentre of the hotel. You can see the guests and staff at the lobby and if you look up, one can admire the multiple-domed roof that casts natural light over the 17 floors, where every room opens to a circular English-style balcony and you can see the hotel from different angles. The concept has been tried in other hotels in China, but the effect remains spectacular. When I meet Mr. Chow at the grand ballroom for dinner, he tells me that there are still many things to do before completion. He knows that August 8th is near and that his hotel is one of the two VIP hotels in the capital to welcome the official guests present for the Games (the other is the China World).

Later, during the Chinese banquet, he humbly asks the media to give suggestions for improvements ahead of the opening (the ceremony open to the general public is only on September 1st). But the man who owns the Landmark and co-owns Macau Fisherman’s Wharf with Stanley Ho, knows that this Beijing move was a clever one.

In a city where there’s already a certain architectural fatigue, Chow managed to surprise Beijing with a Parisian end-of the nineteenth-century building. The Legendale Hotel with its boulevard aura aims to establish itself as a solid address in the high-end hotel market of the Chinese capital.

The location couldn’t be better. Situated in the central shopping area of Wangfujing, the Legendale is a mere 10-minute drive from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City and 15 minute walk from the Temple of Heaven. Competition though, is near and tough with neighbours the Peninsula and Grand Hyatt, trying to attract the same kind of clientele.

But general-manager Karman Yeung says that more than room occupancy, “consistent quality service is our mission.” “Our objective is to fulfill our guests’ expectations and obtain their maximum satisfaction,” he adds.

So what does the Legendale have to marvel potential guests? Above all, the interior decoration and attention to detail.

Forget clean lines and Japanese settings here. Think of Versailles and you’re close to the real thing. Marble, mirrors, stuccos and gilded ceilings are de rigueur even in the simplest room (RMB 3,600 a night), which by the way is airy and very comfortable, with a large toilet complete with a separate bathtub and shower and soft cotton-silk robes.

The Royal French blue and gold are predominant colours, and the craftsmanship is perfect and frankly only possible in China these days.

But the pièce de resistance is the impressive collection of antiques, adorning the Chairman and Presidential suites (48,000 and 68,000 RMB a night, in case you fancy eighteenth century original pieces, a canopy bed and in-room sauna).

The most impressive objects d’art are in the public area of the lobby, starting with the nineteenth-century French fireplace. There are only three in the world, one of them in the Louvre. The one at the Legendale (shown in these pages), made of marble, silver and bronze, and weighing 6.5 tons, was brought from the castle of Villeroy in France. All these pieces had to travel with an official passport from the French government as they are considered national patrimony. The other treasure is a magnificently preserved eighteenth-century Louis XIV pendulum wall clock. Instrumental in all this was décor expert Philippe Guillemot, from French company Romeo. He has been working with David Chow for 20 years and was the main adviser on the decoration of the hotel. He tells us that the result is “a superb accomplishment, with a mix of a contemporary style in terms of building techniques, and the French décor of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

“Mr. Chow is an esthete with a very assured taste,” he adds. If you’re thinking at this point of the staggering cost, you’re right: RMB 200 million only for the antiques, a total cost RMB 2.6 billion materialized in 17 floors, 390 rooms and 79 serviced apartments (the cheapest costs RMB 34,000 a month, but a three bedroom rises to RMB 188,000). But David Chow thinks that the investment is an almost-sure bet in a city that now boasts the biggest airport in the world, but actually according to Mr. Chow, doesn’t have more than 4000 beds in the 10 leading hotels. Chow himself has plans for a hotel chain on the mainland. He’s already looking for locations in Qingdao, Lijiang in Yunnan, Beihai in Guangxi, Xuzhou in Jiangsu and Urumqi. But the make or break will be the Olympics. He said that he has been building the Legendale over the past three years to offer something to the Motherland, a huge memento to celebrate the Olympics. And is the Motherland happy?

“It’s still too soon to say who is happy now. It is our responsibility to make everyone happy, and if the Games are successful, everyone will be happy,” says David Chow. He will be one of the first to smile.

photos by Nuno Mendonça and Legendale Hotel
Nuno Mendonça traveled to Beijing by invitation of the Legendale Hotel.

Legendale Hotel, 90-92 Jinbao Street, Dongcheng district, Beijing 100005. / Tel: +86 (10) 85113388 / HYPERLINK "http://www.legendalehotel.com" http://www.legendalehotel.com/