This hotel is run by the city government and is the venue for a lot of official conferences etc. This means that it is respectable and safe. Staff are friendly and remembered me from a visit 5 years earlier - they don't have a lot of Western tourists. The rooms looking out over 1st May Square are extremely noisy from the traffic, but if you can get a room in the 'guibinglou' at the back it is one of the quietest places to stay in Taiyuan. Breakfast is horrid, but that is true of all mid-range hotels in north China in my experience. more