Huangshan Paiyun Hotel

The hotel was located in an awkward area, which isn’t easily accessed when the nearby cable car isn’t active. I wish we’d been told when booking. We had to hike over an hour just to arrive at the hotel, lugging our luggage. You can pay to have workers carry it (which felt so wrong but we physically couldn’t carry it back). The hotel assisted in this, which was nice—but suddenly, we found the price climbing higher and higher as we talked with them. The restaurant food wasn’t great, either. I don’t eat meat and I about near starved, haha. There was smoking inside too, which wasn’t pleasant. The room itself was nice for a night. There were jackets and torches inside, the hotel alerted us to the weather conditions. All in all, a bit of a mixed bag!

Nice and clean hotel, with pretty and awesome food.

Hotel was great - particularly as it's on top of a mountain - and that in itself is special! Costs for everything are expensive but fair considering the location. The room is fairly small (but very functional), you won't need space as you won't have luggage. Room comes with warm jackets and a torch so you don't need to bring those things for a sunset/sunrise. We were in what seemed like a newer block so the interior was modern. Shower was hot and decent. Breakfast and dinner (180 yuan per person) had impressive variety considering everything gets up the mountain on a cable car and then manually carried to the hotel. Location is good as it's next to the Taiping cableway but we walked from the popular Yuping cableway carrying small overnight packs. It is very possible in one day! We descended the next day via the Yungu cableway which was a much easier walk. Note the closest lookout for both is a 20min uphill walk with the path starting from the hotel (and another path for those who aren't staying there.) We saw a spectacular sunset and not much of a sunrise. Both were well worth it but of course you're at the mercy of the weather. Receptionists could speak basic English and will also give you bottles of water and communicate weather and sunset conditions to you via WeChat. If you can't understand Mandarin you can use the translate function in WeChat. Free laundry service too but we didn't use it.