sandkeeper
Google
The Hotel Zen Urban Resort (I stayed there 3 nights and I could never get the words in the right order) is in a reasonable location in Chengdu and has lovely rooms. They really are Zen as the name suggests, with tasteful decor and well-maintained. It was a lovely place to sleep. ||||The hotel didn’t seem to be full but it was quiet and peaceful, apart from one businessman at breakfast who had not yet learned that he need not talk into his phone as though communicating over the entire distance of the call. Of course if you have travelled at all in China then you must know it was a relief to have only one such other guest instead of many.||||Contrary to what the hotel listing says, there is no restaurant. There *is* room service, which would have been lovely but the staff speak such poor English that it is virtually impossible to order, even with the usual translation apps that had gotten us by in far more remote parts of China. This is not an exaggeration: it actually took us two days of staying at the hotel and several conversations with the receptionist over those days to ascertain that there is no restaurant and that room service ends at 8pm. Maybe after a few more days we would've discovered what is on the menu! In fairness, we are the foreigners and we are at fault for not speaking Chinese, but perhaps we expected too much based on other reviews.||||For what it's worth, we rarely eat at hotel restaurants and prefer to explore the area, but with a packed itinerary in Chengdu we were looking forward to an easy evening meal, and the room had a lovely table setup perfect for room service. Other reviews suggest there are plenty of nice restaurants around - which is great when you have time to look for them - but we didn't appreciate having to scour the streets after a really long day. This communication issue was really the only letdown of an otherwise fine hotel.