Lodging Review: Meizhou Chengyu Hotel
When I was telling my newly-found relatives in Meizhou which hotel I was staying at, the name drew a blank. When I told them its approximate location, next to a mall, they asked, “how did you find this place?” To be honest, when I was booking the hotel in Meizhou, I had no sense of scale or urban layout, and based my decision mainly on the hotel’s proximity to the Meijiang river, the pictures in the listing, and the reviews. In the end, I was quite satisfied with the hotel, and would certainly stay again.
The lobby, typical of Chinese many hotels from low to high end, had a marble-filled ornate look.
River View Room
I specially reserved a river view room. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides made the room really nice and bright. You can see the design theme of this hotel, from the logo to the room decor, is purple!
The reason why I wanted a hotel near the river, with a river view, was because my grandfather’s ancestral home was along the river. And I heard a story from his childhood which involved him playing by the river, so somehow the Meijiang was quite significant to my visit to the city. And I wanted a front-row view of it!
Here’s the view towards the other side of the hotel.
The bathroom was modern and functional. I had been choosing between this hotel, and another one, Federal Hotel (where I had dinner with my relatives). The two factors for choosing the Chengyu Hotel over the Federal Hotel were 1) the ability to reserve a river view, and not leave it up to chance, and 2) the bathroom in the Federal Hotel had this odd brown brick pattern! So these decoration choices do matter…
The shower side had one of those glass walls facing the bedroom, bringing natural light into the bedroom (I’m not sure if it had a curtain…)
Interesting Amenities
The hotel was chock full of interesting amenities, that I hadn’t come across before. Here were what think were disinfected shower shoes. Now, I did find these as well in my bathroom at the Changdi Inn inside of the tulou, but that was needed because the whole bathroom was a wet room. But maybe these weren’t shower shoes? I did see a lady wearing them in the breakfast room…
On the desk, there was also a mosquito-killing lamp (which I didn’t use), and also several different charging plugs. This came in so handy, because my power bank charges with a USB-C head, but I didn’t bring a USB-A to USB-C cable!
Also, like a lot of hotels, you need to put in your card key in a slot by the entrance, to activate the power. Unlike a lot of hotels, the slot is not just a mechanical switch, where inserting any ol’ card works (I tried). ONLY your card key works. Inserting it turns on a the blue light indicator outside of each room, saying that someone is inside the room. I guess this helps the staff with their service? The red light is for do not disturb, and the green light is for cleaning the room.
Next to the beside, was a strange machine that promised anonymous purchases. I thought it might have things of a sexual nature, but from what I could tell through the smoked plastic, there was a menstrual cup for sale inside?
A great feature of the hotel was this laundry room, with Haier laundry machines. There was even a sink and ironing facilities. It was so hot these days, that I sometimes changed clothes multiple times a day, so it was handy to do laundry here to renew my fresh laundry supply for the next leg of the trip!
Unfortunately, the laundry room is not open 24/7, and it was locked before I could put my wet clothes into the dryer. In fact, I had to go to the front desk to get them to call housekeeping to unlock the door. Both the front desk and housekeeping admonished me for doing laundry to late as I would disturb the guests nearby; the housekeeping staff gestured to the illuminated blue “inside the room” lights around to show me how every room was occupied.
She did come by my room with a whole armful of clothes hangars afterwards, which was thoughtful. So I took advantage of my many window sills to hang clothes, along with my trusty braided elastic clothing line which I thankfully brought. The next morning, I put the clothes in the clothes dryer to dry the residual dampness, to be sure I’d have perfectly dry clothes in this humid weather.
Location
The best part of the room was the view.
I got up pretty early, and admired the sunrise.
I could see one of Meizhou’s attractions across the river, Thousand Buddha Pagoda (千佛塔). So I skipped a visit there on my itinerary!
The hotel is right next to a modern shopping mall, Keduhui (客都汇). This mall was something that my relatives knew, so I guess it’s a bit of a landmark. Behind this mall is a convenient PCR testing station.
You can see, from the pedestrian boat bridge crossing the river, the hotel with its purple logo on the left, and the mall on the right. This is regarded as the newer part of town, but Meizhou is relatively compact so I walked from the old town street of snacks back to the hotel for example. Crossing this bridge also takes one from the hotel to the Hakka Museum of China in about 20 minutes by walking.
Breakfast
Unlike Federal Hotel, Chengyu Hotel didn’t have a restaurant. But breakfast was served in this little breakfast room on the second floor.
There was a variety of hot dishes in the buffet, and you could also order “客家特色“ Hakka Specialties which they would hand you through the window on the left.
In the buffet there was stir-fried vegetables and steamed root vegetables.
Hard boiled chicken eggs and quail eggs, and turnip cake.
“Hakka” stir-fried rice vermicelli.
The drinks on offer were quite basic! Room temperature bottles of 7up, orange beverage, and Pepsi. Packets of Nescafe.
I got a little of everything.
This was kind of like a fried yellow 白糖糕 sugar rice cake, only yellow.
This was a steamed sweet, chewy rice thing (like niangao 年糕) in banana leaf, but it was not warm enough, so was rather stiff.
This was one of Meizhou’s Hakka specialties, yan mian 腌面. It kind of seemed like a rather plain ramen?
Another specialty is this soup, sanjidi 三及第. It had some rather chewy pork pieces and tomato, in a rather insipid broth. Thankfully I gave both another try the next morning!
To finish off breakfast, I had a cup of soy milk on the right, and filled up another cup with hot water for the instant Nescafe, on the left.
Nescafe with the sugar and creamer all mixed in is kind of pleasurable, I would say!
The Chengyu Hotel is in a more modern part of town, but it’s still fairly central, and Meizhou is pretty compact so it’s easy to get around and walk to a lot of places. I’d certainly stay again, because of the modern and functional rooms. Breakfast was only so-so, but it’s not hard to find great breakfast on the street nearby. That will be my next post!
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梅州诚御酒店 (Meizhou Chengyu Hotel)
Address: 广东省梅州市梅江区梅水路18号(客都汇旁) (No. 18, Meishui Road, Meijiang District, Meizhou City, Guangdong Province (next to Keduhui)
I paid 447 RMB (US$62) per night for my river view room, with breakfast included, during October holiday. Looking at mid-November pricing, the same room is about 331 RMB (US$46).
