Quotes of the Day

Do not trifle lightly with the Harbin mattress," warned travel writer Putnam Weale after a trip to China's frozen, northern metropolis. "It is capable not only of assuming a defensive attitude, but one of absolute offense." A century after Weale's Harbin sojourn, accommodations there are more, well, accommodating. Among the classier places to stay is the Lungmen Hotel, tel: (86-451) 8679 1888. Once a station hotel along the Trans-Siberian railroad, the Lungmen is a portal to Harbin's colonial past, when the city was ruled by Russians and vied with Shanghai for the sobriquet "Paris of the East."

Built by Muscovites in 1901, the Lungmen has changed hands as often as Harbin itself. Not only was it a hotel during the Japanese occupation, it was also once a hospital, a Czarist embassy, and a hostel for Soviet advisers. Renovations last year uncovered original marble floors and restored the wainscoting. With chandeliers, brass fittings and just two floors of rooms, the Lungmen rates an adjective rarely applied to a Chinese hotel: intimate. My room's floor-to-ceiling windows framed locust trees and pistachio-color Russian buildings; lying on white sheets in a fluffy bed, China felt very far away. That's likely the atmosphere the original colonial owners intended to create.

• Mike Meyer
• Get a warm welcome in China's frozen north at Harbin's Lungmen Hotel