High Road To China.(description and travel)

Byline: editor: Valerie Steiker

Just in time for the Summer Olympics, Richard Alleman scouts out the top spots from Beijing to the Great Wall.

CAPITAL IDEAS

In Beijing, on a quiet street across from the Imperial Palace, lies the smart new Emperor. With interiors by Graft Labs, the 55-room hotel--all curved walls and lacquered floors--has the feel of a glamorous yacht. Rates: from $167, including breakfast; designhotels.com/the emperor. The first hotel by acclaimed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, The Opposite House has 99 minimalist rooms sporting ryokan -style bathrooms with oak soaking tubs. Three restaurants and two bars, conceived by Shanghai-based restaurateur David Laris, promise to light up the already vibrant Sanlitun district. Rates: from $527; www.theoppositehouse.com.

Summer brings the debuts of several international brands. Taking over 21 floors of the new 66-story John Portman--designed Park Tower, the 237-room Park Hyatt Beijing will feature sleek interiors by hotel-design gurus Remedios Siembieda of California--and the city's highest restaurant; park.hyatt.com. The town's other new stunner is the 241-room Mandarin Oriental, housed within the smaller of architect Rem Koolhaas's landmark structures for China Central Television and featuring a megaspa and a dramatic champagne bar suspended between the hotel's two top-floor restaurants. Rates: from $675; mandarinoriental.com. And Amanresorts is rumored to be creating a guesthouse on the lush grounds of Beijing's eighteenth-century Summer Palace, with interiors by New York's George Wong; amanresorts.com.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Red Capital Ranch at the Great Wall is a rustic-chic compound of ten stone cottages that were once part of a Manchurian hunting lodge. A project of Beijing's Red Capital Club group, which also operates a courtyard hotel in the capital as well as a lodge in Tibet, the Ranch--with a section of the Great Wall adjacent to its property--offers treks and tours to secret temples, palaces, and archaeological sites. Rates: from $190, with breakfast, plus 15 percent service; redcapitalclub.com.cn. Near one of the most beautiful stretches of the Great Wall in the Shuiguan Mountains is the extraordinary Commune by the Great Wall, originally a collection of eleven villas, each a showcase of one of Asia's star architects. Since taking over management of the property ...