The rediscovery of the countryside by China’s middle classes has led to a boom in rural tourism, which has helped redirect cash from the wealthy coast into the undeveloped interior. However, this has often resulted in insensitive building projects, and the ‘nong jia le’ (‘happy farmer home’) idyll frequently turns out to be a mass tourist hell. In response, an eco-tourism movement has developed, offering smaller scale, more deeply embedded experiences of life away from the city. For the more adventurous, this can mean home stays with farming families, where rural cooking can be enjoyed at its most authentic. Those who require a little more comfort do not have to forgo the charm of rustic simplicity, however: this hotel occupies nine old rammed-earth houses in a scenic Guilin village, with the addition of a sensitively designed modern restaurant building. The hotel’s perimeter is open to the village, and so the new blends into the old.
Yun house section
