China's Plum Blossom Luxury (2016)

 

Southeast of the renown Chinese city of Shanghai, accessible via the high speed ‘Bullet train’; close to the energetically emerging city of Hanhzhou, is the freshly opened, and extremely comfortable refuge of the Shui Mo Resort. The elegant Shui Mo Resort is set back within wooded mountains of the Chaoshan Plum Park, in Hangzhou’s Yuhang district, 35 kilometres, or half an hour, beyond the burgeoning Hangzhou city and just 5 kilometres from the local town of Tangqi. 

Now a very popular local tourist destination, the Chaoshan Plum Park area, also called "Ten Li of Plum Blossoms are as fragrant as snow flower sea”, is famous for its heavy carpeting of startling Spring plum blossom and its thousands of visitors every year. Within that park area ancient plum trees, many now exceeding 1,000 years of gnarled growth, still produce their fragrant flowers. Set back within the floral calmness of those plum trees, the peaceful and awe-inspiringly Shui Mo Resort itself boasts of over five thousand trees and bushes, and a serene lake for inner and outer reflection.

Overlooked by majestic mountains, the Shi Mo Resort styles itself as a ‘high end, scenic, boutique Bed and Breakfast arts resort’, covering 2,800 square meters within the Chaoshan Plum Park area. It is the brainchild of Chinese entrepreneur-chef Zhu Lian Zhong. The Resort is set beside a stunning 5,000 square meter lake. The architecture and interior designs encompass the best of Mediterranean, South East Asian and Chinese styles to bring a coterie of calming sensations to encourage rest and recuperation from the busy lives enveloping us all. 

Throughout what could only be termed a luxurious resort, Zhu Lian Zhong has spread his vast personal collection of Chinese antiques from dynasties as diverse as the Soong and Ching, as an open museum for his appreciative guests. Luckily I share a mutual friend with Zhu Lian Zhong - the Chinese Contemporary artist Luo Qi, who kindly arranged for me to stay in the Lakeview Gardens Chinese suite, Room 105, in the very lap of luxury for one night, just prior to my departure from China.

I had been traipsing around after artist Luo Qi for a week through Zhejiang Province, in Eastern China. He had led us all to museum after museum, gallery after gallery, summit after forum and fascinating town after intriguing town, until we were cultured out and ready to drop. The one night’s stay at the Shui Mo Resort was a pleasant surprise, and the very fine icing on what had been a carefully crafted cultural cake.

The evening I arrived, having just travelled from the ancient Chinese town of Xitang, we were ushered to our suite with barely time to appreciate the resort’s grandeur until, that is, after dinner and during the following sunny day. 

I took a quick shower in a resplendent wood, chrome, granite and concrete themed bathroom, actually containing a (Roca) bath. Then a nimble, disbelieving, gaze at the all-wooden Four-Poster Bed, and a not-too-leisurely walk to the dining hall. Therein lay one large, round, wooden table, bedecked with cold starters.

From a place-setting consisting of two elegant white plates with blue Chinese filigree designs, the larger at the bottom, a small bowl containing longans and melon cubes at the apex, we were to launch into the most sumptuous of Chinese meals. There were eight cold appetisers, including the softness of red and brown cold cubed beef and the sweet/sourness of chopped chicken with soy sauce dip. In time there came a sheer heavenly taste of a local lamb dish, on and off the bone, which surprised and delighted all. A braised pork, soft, succulent in the way only Chinese can make and a health embracing soup.  It was at that dining room, within the Shui Mo Resort, that I finally became acclimatised to the combination of bacon and fish, in one dish, having tasted variations of that throughout our stay within China’s Zhejiang Province. Previously, it would never have occurred to me to combine the two. Dessert was glutinous rice balls, swimming in a slightly sweetened broth, appearing in a small, white, bowl resembling a lotus.

The softness of the luxurious bed, the weariness of the day’s travel and the quiet of the surroundings lulled us to sleep. Morning broke with gentle Autumnal rays of sunshine shining through the resort trees, glinting off the lake and highlighting a bird perched just outside the suite window. It was time to shower with the provided French L’Occitane shower cream and shampoo. Then a quick nosy around on the way to breakfast.

A white marble statue of the Chinese Kwan Yin Goddess of Mercy, had been placed within a rockery resembling Chinese mountainscapes. As we stood watching, admiring, taking pictures, subtle white mist drifted from secreted pipes, making those mini-mountains romantically misty. It was a most beguiling effect, especially with the mid-pink bougainvillea in the background.

Inside and out, the Shui Mo Resort blended the natural and man made. Genuine Chinese antiques rubbed shoulders with innovative new designs to form a homogeneous whole. It was all so very delicately designed to make guests feel at ease, a place where Chinese calligraphy might be made, poems read and artists sit to philosophise with writers.

Our one night in the Lakeview Gardens Chinese suite of Zhu Lian Zhong's Shui Mo Resort, was a dream come true. And yet, while the resort was undoubtedly amazing at any time of year, I quickly realised that to gain the maximum from the amazing surroundings, it would be better to return at the beginning of Spring, January to February, when the plum trees are in blossom and the air resplendent with their blossomy fragrance.

The very luxurious rooms of the Shui Mo Resort, are priced between Yuan (¥) 1,380 (approximately RM 953) for the Mountain Southeast B room to Yuan (¥) 2,380 (approximately RM 1,643) for the Deluxe Continental B, depending on size and luxury required.