SSAW Boutique Hotel Chongqing Jiefangbei Hongyadong

Rooms and decor

Our Design King ran about 30 sqm in dark grey with warm orange accents and one wall left as raw brick. The bed is a soft Sealy, the desk lamp is Italian design, and instead of a TV there's a projector throwing an 80-inch picture on the wall — free to watch all night. There's a Nespresso machine with four capsules, big black polished tiles in the bathroom, a high-pressure rain shower and Aesop toiletries. The detail we loved most sat on the work desk: a Polaroid camera you can borrow for free, with extra film sold at the lobby. It's a small touch that tells you the hotel knows you came to photograph Hongyadong.

Food and amenities

SSAW stands for Seven Stars at the Wing, a Chinese boutique brand that leads with design. The lobby keeps a free shelf of Chinese-and-English art books, and there's an in-house cafe-bar pouring Chongqing-themed cocktails. There's no in-house breakfast, so staff point you to a congee-and-dumpling shop nearby at about $2 a head. The building runs 18 floors in an Industrial-Chinois style — black metal married to dark pine — and the front desk is staffed 24 hours. Service is the small-hotel kind that remembers your name, and the English is good enough to get you sorted.

Location and getting there

This is the reason to book. From the front door it's a 5-minute walk to the Hongya Cave (Hongyadong) entrance and 7 minutes to the Liberation Monument. Xiaoshizi metro on Line 1 sits 400 metres off, another five-minute walk. The hotel is on Cangbai Road in Yuzhong District, the dead centre of downtown, so the pedestrian shopping street is on your doorstep. Real guests give the location a 9.5, the highest mark in the whole scorecard, and it earns it.

Things to know before booking

Facilities are more basic than a luxury 5-star — there's no pool, gym or spa, and no in-house breakfast, so plan to eat out. Jiefangbei is crowded and loud all day and well into the night, which is part of the fun but not restful; ask for a higher, quieter floor. Rooms fill quickly in high season, so book ahead. And the appeal here is genuinely the design and the address rather than a full facility set, so it suits travellers who'll be out exploring more than holed up in the room.

Our take

SSAW Boutique Hotel Chongqing Jiefangbei Hongyadong is best for couples, photographers and design lovers who want to spend their time in Hongyadong and Jiefangbei, not in the hotel. It hands you a five-star location at three-star boutique money — roughly $43 a night — and turns an ordinary trip into a set of pictures you'll keep. Book a room facing Hongyadong, head up at dusk, and watch the cliff houses light up.