Just back from a long weekend away at a rather eccentric little setup called the Golden Grove Hotel, four hours away on the outskirts of Huzhou in Zhejiang province.

Setting aside the several innacuracies in the description on the website, my travelling companion and I had rather an entertaining time. There are indeed only 17 rooms, so the word “boutique” would be apt – if they’d used it. The hotel is located about the same distance from Huzhou as my property is from Carterton (not that I’d compare those two places) and is therefore more in ‘outer suburb/lifestyle block’ territory than real rural, but is part of a little farm producing food for the restaurant and, I guess, other outlets. Veges, fruit trees, ducks, chooks, pigs and horses (yes, ‘fraid so) are all in abundance. There’s a wind turbine on top of the hill, a treatment plant at the bottom, a lake stocked with fish and nice clean air. You can even see stars at night! And the building in the village is definitely a notch or two up from standard farmer housing.

As always when you venture a few metres off the tourist trail in this country, language was an issue. Most of the time we had no idea what was going on, but for some reason the desk guy ‘Jack’ and the bloke who turned out to be the owner but who we thought was the driver, Mr Li, had us marked as a special project. Nothing was too much trouble, including an all-day personal tour of the city and surrounds during which Mr Li recruited an English speaking guide by literally parking up at the local university and tracking down an English major. (‘Loyal’ was a delight and had better English than most of the teachers here at school, but she needs to change her English name). Food was pretty standard local fare at reasonable hotel prices – menu totally in Chinese of course – and the beer warm and wine overpriced, as ever.

In the very little information about the Golden Grove available on the web, mention is made of “Australian investment” which might lead you to believe that there’d be more ‘western’ to the place than an English name, house-branded Aussie shiraz, and dining rooms called ‘Adelaide’ and ‘Darwin’. Nope – Mr Li’s brother has emigrated to Perth. But hell, for 30 bucks kiwi per room per night including all transfers and room service breakfast, who’s complaining?