The bedrooms were furnished with lovely old Chinese furniture and some had a view to the roofs of the Forbidden City
The restaurants were good in the hotel and there was live piano and a string quartet playing delightfully in the atrium over dinner time .
Ti Chi (Sp?) could be watched and practised in the atrium about breakfast time.The staff were good.
The hotel is 10 minutes walk from the pedestrian shopping street, Wangfujing St and the same distance from Tian 'an man Square and the Forbidden City.

Fortunately we were not put off by some of your reviewers. Our travel
agent Audley Travel insisted they were wrong. What we found was a beautiful hotel with great restaurants (we tried three). So much space to relax in from secluded tea rooms to an enormous atrium. Discreet music every evening, great drinks and service matching the best. We even had a view of the Forbidden City.

This hotel is in a fantastic location. The room is well appointed, and on par with most other 5 star places. However, when I stayed in early April, they have no air-conditioning turned on! The room gets quite warm (despite it being quite chilly outside), and the best solution they have is to open the windows!!! This is pretty poor for a 5 star hotel, as the main thoroughfare to Tiananmen Square lies just outside (i.e. noisy and polluted). This is simply not good enough.

This is truly a very grand hotel, but unstuffy, and the location can't be beaten - right in the heart of Beijing, a few steps away from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. It was also incredibly good value (actually very cheap, for me coming from London).
Service was excellent throughout and everyone is clearly making a huge effort to prepare for the Olympics next year, all staff in the hotel speak some English, including the housekeepers, and everyone is very helpful.
The only downside for us that we were visiting at Chinese New Year, which meant there were very few people in the hotel (everyone goes home to be with family) and it sometimes got lonely when only two or three tables in one of the many excellent hotel restaurants were occupied. (Do try the Sichuan restaurant, it was very good.) Also everyone eats very early so they were clearing up by 8pm - if you want to eat a bit later it's better to go outside the hotel to one of the malls like Gourmet Street inside the Oriental Plaza.
There is great shopping nearby as well as the sightseeing, and the subway is a very short distance.
Ask for a view of the Forbidden City - it's extraordinary to be right in the heart of the city and an experience not to be missed.