The Commune

Commune by the Great Wall, otherwise known as The Commune amongst all the Beijing hipsters who can actually afford to stay there (ok, actually everyone calls it The Commune), is an über-posh, extremely swank collection of hotel-houses run by Kempinski Hotels and located an hour north of Beijing near a touristy section of the Great Wall. They go for a pretty penny, but many of the houses can be rented by the room rather than the entire house, and I've heard they have some good off-season specials, so maybe one day even my poor arse will be able to take my sweetheart there for a weekend away from Beijing. Fortunately I got a sneak preview of what to expect when my German friend Tu-Nhu asked me to join her on a drive out to the complex on a sunny winter Beijing day in her company's BMW X1 (she works for BMW, which means she's able to borrow anything from the X1 all the way up to the X13 or however high the series goes now!). We had a late lunch and got a late start, so our original plans to climb up on the great wall next to The Commune after checking it out didn't materialize, but we did enjoy a nice sunset nestled up amongst the posh accommodations of one of Beijing's (and probably all of China for that matter) nicest "hotels". And Tu-Nhu was a very cooperative model for me even though it got pretty nippy up there in the mountains as the sun dipped behind the mountains and we froze our butts off.

If you'd like to learn more about The Commune, check out there website (which has much more interesting photos than the handful I snapped while I was out there): www.communebythegreatwall.com/en/