Just steps from the Mansion of Prince Gong lies Shichahai Shadow Art Hotel – the ideal location from which to discover Beijing. This new Beijing boutique hotel brings you a return to residence and tour in nature, yet offers you a cultural experience that has never been done in any other accommodations.
A cultural conviction
Shichahai Shadow Art Hotel values travel as an interactive boost between man and his environment, to admire the original beauty of a city and the cultural depths of a country. Holding this belief, the hotel came up with an idea completely new to China: an opera house-structured exquisite accommodation. The installation of a Chinese shadow art theater and a small library are one integrated theme, and on this platform the hotel builds its unique cultural gallery. Chinese shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment using opaque , it is originated in China and spread to the Middle East and Europe in the 17th century. Nowadays, shadow art is gradually losing its appeal in China because modern bustling life masks people from the historic beauty of culture. Shichahai Shadow Art Hotel is now trying to restore this endangered intangible cultural heritage by putting this element into the hotel design, yet the design is a breakthrough from mere repetitions of historical customs and a brainchild of modern trendy style fused with the almost lost tradition of shadow art. It is the debut of a cultural themed boutique hotel.
The dragon pulse of Beijing, the most sacred site of Fengshui
The hotel is nestled in the old Hutong (Alley) of the capital city, just steps from the Mansion of Prince Gong and Houhai. The hotel arranges the Beijing traditional rickshaw to take you to the destination passing through the imperial lake, Shichahai, and the Beijing Hutongs. Let the spring breeze brush through your hair, watch the light green willow branches sweep the lake surface, smell the air that is sweetened by Chinese cherry blossoms, and finally reach the hidden gem in the hutongs, a cultural sanctuary near the waterfront. As to its name, Shichahai Shadow Art Hotel offers you an exclusive experience to getting close to Chinese shadow art play, the show is being performed by well-experienced shadow puppetry artists at night after your nice dining in town. You also get to see the backstage area of the performance, play with shadow puppetry, and let the artist show you how the earliest form of Chinese movie works.
Shichahai Shadow Art Hotel encourages you to be a traveler rather than a tourist. It is located in the hutong district of Houhai. You can get up early and have a pleasant jog along the imperial lake of Beijing, or you can rent a bicycle just searching out for the hidden treasures of Beijing by yourself as well as the grand historical sites nearby. Walking down the alley where normal Beijingers live and work itself is an exotic experience . You won’t be disappointed. Shichahai Shadow Art Hotel brings you to a lakeside, over the waterfront, into hutongs, and this dwelling in a city district with waterscape and nature puts us back on the path to nature and reshape our heart to value respect and tranquility that go for natural environment and culture.
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Our Concept:
Forms are created through leather cuttings, and shadow puppetry is born through light.
Here is the debut of this “cultural themed boutique hotel.”
Here, our design is a breakthrough from mere repetitions of historical customs and a brainchild of modern trendy style fused with the almost lost tradition of shadow art.
Here, the installation of shadow art theater and a small library are one integrated theme, and on this platform we build our cultural gallery.
Here, you penetrate into the origins and depths of Chinese cultural richness, as you zoom into the duality of culture and art.
Through this cultural sanctuary near the waterfront, we envision to pass down our culture for the next five thousand years.