Eden in Shanghai

The garden-like Xijiao State Guest Hotel mesmerizes visitors with its environment and is a compelling choice for a secluded place. Provided to china daily

Guestrooms feature good views of sprawling green fields.

Xijiao Hotel provides warm, relaxing retreat. Yang Yijun reports.

One tour around Xijiao State Guest Hotel will convince visitors that it is more than just a hotel.

Close to Hongqiao International Airport and the Hongqiao Central Business district, the hotel is well connected to the buzz of the city.

One step into the garden-like hotel and guests will be taken aback by the hotel's environment and ambience, which makes the hotel a green resort for businessmen, frequent travelers and heads of state.

It takes at least one hour and a half to take a quick tour around the 800,000-square-meter hotel, which is the largest in Shanghai. With the lush trees, grasslands, rivers, lakes and gardens, the hotel is a retreat away from the world. In fact, the greenery takes up some 80 percent of the whole area.

"Our hotel is where you can refresh and totally relax," says Ma Kejun, general manager of the hotel.

He says that the hotel has more than 300 species of plants and some of the trees are more than 100 years old. The hotel has also designed eight flower gardens.

"In some of the guestrooms, you can see swans and red-crowned cranes downstairs as soon as you open the window," he says.

The hotel has 108 villas tucked away in the luxuriant trees, each of which features the views of the sprawling green fields. Fifty-nine of the villas have private balconies where the guests can easily embrace the natural surroundings.

The architectural highlight among the villas is no doubt the Main House, which has been renovated recently. Also known as No 7 House, the building features styles favored in the regions in south of the Yangtze River. The three-story house hosts 180 guestrooms under a huge roof designed to drain rainwater.

The building also houses the hotel's renowned Floating Restaurant. Surrounded by water lilies in the summertime, the restaurant offers not only tranquil and picturesque views through the French windows but also authentic and elegant Chinese cuisine, some of which used to only appear on the tables of State banquets.

While the Executive House, or No 3 House, welcomes the guests in a more personal, modern and international manner. Its 74 executive rooms offer butler services.

In 2005, the hotel established its conference center, which offers more than 8,000 sq m of meeting space. Over the years, the conference center has become an upscale and favored location for conference organizers.

The conference center boasts a 9-meter-high ballroom, which can accommodate 400 people, and a number of banquet rooms of different sizes.

"Because of the full-function facilities inside the center and the peaceful greenery outside, our hotel is especially popular for wedding ceremonies," Ma says.

The State guest hotel was built in 1960 and didn't open to the public until 1978. Before that, the hotel only provided foreign affairs service. As the city's top state guest hotel, Xijiao State Guest Hotel has hosted Queen Elizabeth II, Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, US President Barack Obama, former Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, president of France Nicolas Sarkozy and many more.

"Our sophisticated experiences in serving these exalted guests have shaped the unique service style of our hotel: detail-oriented, personal, careful and warm," Ma says.