The room is above a shop that is above a pavement that is above nothing, because the whole building is lifted on a colonnade. This is the 骑楼 qílóu, the arcade, and staying inside one is the only way to understand how it works. The ground floor is recessed so that the pavement continues under the building as a covered walk, and the columns hold up the upper floors, which lean out over the street by a storey or two. From a second-floor room on 中山路 Zhōngshān Lù you open a shutter onto a colonnade that runs away in both directions, and the market noise arrives from below all through the morning. It is a hotel room inside a piece of colonial-era city planning, and the city planning is the reason to be here.
The arcades were built in the 1920s and 1930s by returned merchants who had worked in Southeast Asia, and they brought back the shophouse with them: a narrow frontage on a plot deep enough for light wells, a shop below and living quarters above, and a continuous covered walk along the front so that business could go on in sun and in rain. The result, repeated along half a dozen streets, is the most distinctive townscape in Hainan. Much of it fell into disrepair in the later twentieth century, and a long restoration of the 中山路 Zhōngshān Lù stretch has turned a run of collapsing facades into a working street of shops, cafés and small hotels, with the 南洋 Nányáng, South Seas, style of the plasterwork and the tall narrow windows carefully put back.
What the Rooms Are Like
The buildings are narrow and deep and the rooms are a consequence. Front rooms look onto the street and the colonnade and get all the noise and all the light; back rooms face a light well or an interior wall and are quiet and dark. Rooms are small by modern standards, because a shophouse floor is only about four metres wide, and the good conversions have used the height instead, keeping the original timber floors, the high ceilings and the tall shuttered windows. Bathrooms are squeezed in and vary from a neat modern box to something assembled with more enthusiasm than skill. Some houses have a small roof terrace over the colonnade, which may be the best reason to take a room here at all: at dusk you sit above the street lights with the whole restored run of facades to either side.
Practicalities
Price. A double room runs roughly ¥250 to ¥600 a night. The bottom of the range buys the back room with no window; the top buys a front room with shutters onto the arcade and, in one or two houses, a roof terrace. Rates hold up through the winter high season, which is the reverse of most of China, because this is when the mainland comes south; summer is hot, wet and cheaper.
Address. The boutique conversions cluster on 中山路 Zhōngshān Lù and the surrounding streets of the old quarter, in 龙华区 Lónghuá Qū, a short walk from 人民公园 Rénmín Gōngyuán and the 钟楼 Zhōnglóu, the old clock tower, on the waterfront.
Rooms. Ask which floor and where the window looks. A front room on the arcade is the experience and the noise; a third-floor room is quieter than a second; a room facing the light well is the only one that is genuinely dark, which matters if you want to sleep past seven. Ask whether there is a roof terrace and whether the bathroom is en suite, because in a converted shophouse the answer is not always yes. Sound travels through timber floors, so a room above a shop that opens early will wake you.
Getting there. The old quarter is in the centre of 海口市 Hǎikǒu Shì, walkable from the 钟楼 area and about twenty minutes by taxi or bus from 海口东站 Hǎikǒu Dōng Zhàn, the high-speed rail station. The airport at 美兰 Měilán is around forty minutes by road. If you arrive by car, note that the old streets are narrow and largely one-way: park in one of the lots off 滨海大道 Bīnhǎi Dàdào and walk in.
flowcloud would say that a room in the qilou is a room in the colonnade rather than beside it, and that the noise from the street below is not a defect of the building but the thing the building was designed to hold.
Where to stay: in a converted shophouse on 中山路 Zhōngshān Lù or one street back from it, on the third floor or higher, with a window onto the arcade and, if the house has one, a claim on the roof terrace. Ask at booking whether the room faces the street or the light well, whether the hot water is a boiler or a small unit, and whether the shutters actually open, because part of the pleasure is being able to close them again.