The town cuts jade for a living, and the sound of it is the background to the stay. 四会市 Sìhuì Shì is one of the two great jade-working centres of Guangdong, and workshops and trading floors run through the middle of the city, dealing in 翡翠 fěicuì brought down from Myanmar as rough stone and sold on as bangles, pendants and carvings. The guesthouses here are ordinary domestic ones rather than designed hotels, and the reason to use one is position: the trading halls, the cutting workshops and the markets are within a few minutes on foot, which means you can be at the counters when they open rather than arriving by car at ten.
The jade trade shapes the town in ways that are worth understanding before you walk into a hall. The rough stone comes in sealed lots and is opened in public, and the gamble on what is inside a boulder is the central business of the place, so the mood in the halls is closer to a market than to a jewellery shop. Prices are negotiable, grading is by eye and by experience rather than by certificate, and a large part of what is sold is bought by traders rather than by wearers. Staying in the middle of it means you can watch the same hall at nine in the morning and at five in the afternoon and see how differently it behaves.
What the Rooms Are Like
These are small Chinese guesthouses: a room with a bed, a desk, a television, an air-conditioning unit and a tiled bathroom with a shower, kept clean and priced plainly. Some are on the upper floors of buildings whose lower floors are given over to the jade trade, which is convenient and can be noisy during working hours. Rooms at the back are quieter; rooms at the front look down onto the street where the stone is moved. Nothing here is designed for visitors, so expectations should be set accordingly, and the better properties are the newer ones on the edge of the trade district rather than the cheapest in the middle of it.
Practicalities
Price. A double runs roughly ¥150 to ¥400 a night. Rates are flat through the year apart from the weeks around the major jade fairs and the run-up to 春节 Chūnjié, when traders from across the country fill the town and the cheap rooms go first.
Address. The guesthouses cluster around the 玉器街 Yùqì Jiē, the jade streets, and the trading halls of 四会市 Sìhuì Shì, in the east of the 肇庆 Zhàoqìng prefecture. The exact street matters: a room on the jade street puts the workshops outside the window, and one two blocks away is quiet.
Rooms. Ask whether the room is at the back and whether the window opens, since a room over a workshop with a sealed window is unpleasant in summer. Confirm that the bathroom is en suite and that hot water is available at any hour. If you are in town to buy, ask whether the guesthouse will store purchases or arrange a courier, which the trade-facing ones usually can.
Getting there. 四会市 Sìhuì Shì is about an hour by road from 肇庆市 Zhàoqìng Shì and around an hour and a half from Guangzhou, with buses from the county town and a station on the intercity line towards 佛山 Fóshān. Most visitors arrive by car or by taxi from the station, and the jade district is compact enough to walk once you are in it.
flowcloud would say that a plain room in a jade town is the right kind of lodging, since the money in Sihui is all on the counters and none of it is in the hotels, and a guesthouse that tried to be luxurious would be misreading the place.
Where to stay: in a small guesthouse on or beside 玉器街 Yùqì Jiē in 四会市 Sìhuì Shì, an hour from 肇庆 Zhàoqìng, close enough to the jade halls to walk to them at opening. Ask for a room at the back away from the workshops, confirm the bathroom is en suite with hot water at any hour, and if you are buying, ask the owner to hold your purchases rather than carrying them around the halls.