Xiaopeng Resort, Jinshanling

Overview

Xiaopeng Resort sits in the Aranya Jinshanling community in Luanping County, Chengde, Hebei, about 120 km from Beijing. The Jinshanling Great Wall winds deep into the Yanshan Mountains, and the community lies hidden in a valley embraced by them - a triple enclosure with the central town at its core, mid-slope buildings in the middle and layered ranges beyond. The hotel belongs to the Aranya Jinshanling hotel cluster, alongside the Naive Ideal Bookstore, Author's Room Hotel, the valley pool and a Tibetan-style courtyard. Architecture is by Signyan Design of Chongqing and landscape by WTD; the hotel opened in October 2025.

Spaces and Settings

The hotel cluster occupies the south-west of the site, where a 7 m north-south level change shapes a scissor-form open layout. Bold geometric lines and cantilevered structures echo the ancient silhouette of the beacon towers, stretching low along the mountain contours; the east street-facing elevation uses the Great Wall's dry-stone technique, a mixed wall of rough stone and horse-head stone with unpolished natural faces. Zigzag forest-stream paths inspired by the winding Great Wall link the interior and exterior spaces; at the entrance a stream ditch over 60 m long follows the slope and, with a retention pond, forms a rain garden that fills in the wet season and reads as a dry landscape in the dry season. Ginkgo forms the tree canopy, carpeting the ground gold in autumn, over prostrate junipers and wild groundcovers. Inside, a gravel-floored patio courtyard pairs shade-tolerant climbers and miscanthus with a single small-leaved red maple.

The Valley Pool

An extension of the hotel, the pool is embedded in the mountain and suspended in the valley at about 900 m; its cantilever makes the basin appear to float at the cliff edge, in visual dialogue with the Valley Concert Hall in the distance. A deep-blue finish mirrors clouds and layered ranges, and the paving uses concrete stone in the buildings' palette. Drained in winter, the stone texture of the pool floor joins the bare branches around it in another kind of wild scene.

Tibetan-style Courtyard

The Tibetan-style courtyard builds on the private core of an enclosed compound, with narrow alley-like paths at the scale of a Tibetan village and the tradition of gathering around a stove brought into a small courtyard as a social, restful space. The hotel as a whole is built around young, social mountain living with modern minimalist design, drawing on Aranya's community culture and short-break demand from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.