After spending 25 days in Spain in June/July, 2026, our next stop was Shanghai, where we flew on China Eastern Airlines (review forthcoming).
We were seeking a unilateral visa exemption, which is a nice way to visit China if you don’t have time to do the formal visa application process.
The immigration officer asked if we had a visa. We didn’t, not the normal kind. We showed our passports and confirmation we were staying at the Amanyangyun and they stamped us through without much trouble. We were in China.
Amanyangyun holds one Michelin Key, which is the Michelin Guide’s new rating system for hotels rather than restaurants. It is also one of the more ambitious hotels ever built, and I mean that literally: somebody moved a forest and fifty houses seven hundred kilometers to build it.
We would go back in a heartbeat. Here is everything.
The story of the place, because it explains everything else
In Fuzhou, in Jiangxi province, a reservoir project was about to flood a valley. In that valley were thousands of camphor trees, some of them centuries old, and dozens of houses dating to the Ming and Qing dynasties.
An entrepreneur named Ma Dadong, who is from Jiangxi, decided to move all of it. Over roughly fifteen years, more than ten thousand camphor trees were dug up and replanted, and about fifty antique houses were taken apart stone by stone and rebuilt about seven hundred kilometers away, on the outskirts of Shanghai. That relocated village is the hotel. Kerry Hill Architects, who have designed a lot of Aman properties, did everything that the Ming and Qing craftsmen didn’t.
I couldn’t always tell what had been moved and what had been built. There are authentic looking buildings all over the property. It was beautiful!
The property is about twenty five acres in Minhang District, out on the southwest side, roughly a half hour from central Shanghai depending on traffic. There are 37 rooms across thirteen restored Antique Villas and twenty four Ming Courtyard Suites.
Getting there
Our driver picked us up at the airport.
The drive is a good introduction to the scale of Shanghai. You go from the outskirts, past downtown, back out to the other outskirts. Every neighborhood is like twenty of the exact same building, and they just keep going and going and going. That’s how you house this many people, I guess.
We got to Amanyangyun around six in the morning. Cool towels at the greeting, checked in, and shown to our room.
The room
We were in suite 202, building 2, room 2. It’s one of the restored antique villas rather than the newer Ming Courtyard suites out in the bamboo grove, and it is one of the best hard products of any hotel we’ve ever stayed at.
Our flight landed early and got to the property around six in the morning, and the room was ready. If you’ve flown long haul with a kid, you know that isn’t a small thing either.
They offered to give us the full tour on the way, or to just take us straight to the room. We took the room and went to sleep. (More on why that was the wrong call further down.)
The layout is what makes it work with a kid. There’s a bedroom, and then a completely separate room with a couch and a desk. Real privacy for the parents and real privacy for the kid, which is rarer than it should be.
They had set up a bunch of kids’ stuff for him before we arrived. A teepee, a book, drawing supplies.
The teepee was way too small. That teepee is for, like, infants. So they made up his bed on the couch instead, which worked perfectly.
The bathroom
The minibar
The grounds
This is a big property, but it never felt too big or too small. We explored every little part of it.
The Lounge
High tea, and the token system I wish every hotel would copy
High tea is at 2 p.m. I had been coordinating with the staff over WeChat the whole stay, which was genuinely nice. I could just tell them I’m going to this place at that time, and it was handled.
Here is the part I want other hotels to steal. They give you tokens. Each token is good for a beer for the parents or an ice cream for the kids. That’s it. No signing, no charging, no deciding whether it’s worth it. The ice cream thing was really cool.
The ice cream cart
The tokens lead to the main event, an ice cream cart.
The kids’ club, and why this matters
A lot of these Asian luxury places don’t really do kids. Amanyangyun does, and the way they do it is age appropriate rather than token. The Jacksetter did the 10 a.m. class and met another kid to play with, which bought Mrs. Jeffsetter and me an actual morning. He went back for the 3 o’clock class, which was a sandwich class. He made me a sandwich and brought it up to the room.
Then the kids’ club sent a VR headset to the room. That is not a thing I expected.
The pools
The main pool is a long lap-pool kind of thing, and it’s not very deep, so we mostly played games in it. There’s an indoor pool as well, and a playground right by the outdoor one.
The gym and the spa
I got up on the second morning, went for a walk, and then worked out. The gym is well equipped and looks out over the pool.
Lazhu, the first night
The Jacksetter wanted to eat in the room, so he got room service. Mrs. Jeffsetter and I went to Lazhu, the Chinese restaurant, because we wanted some good Asian food. Lazhu cooks Jiangxi food, which ties back to where the whole village came from.
We ordered a few share plates. Really spicy beef, not-as-spicy vegetables, some wagyu, scallion pancakes. Very good.
Room service, and the turndown
Room service for the Jacksetter was two orders of popcorn chicken, some fries, some truffle fries, and sauce. Pretty epic, as the picture shows.
Turndown is where you notice how much attention is going on. They left cookies, chocolates, a handwritten card, and a hand-drawn pig for Jacksetter (his Zodiac sign, which Mrs. Jeffsetter was sure to tell them about).
The property at night
Walking around after dinner, the whole place lit up. It’s beautiful at night, man.
Breakfast at Arva
Breakfast is at Arva, the Italian restaurant, and it’s very, very good. There’s a buffet plus à la carte. The Jacksetter got sweet sauce noodles and loved them. Mrs. Jeffsetter loves this type of breakfast spread, and was not disappointed. Not a ton of items, but all of them well done and elegant.
Yin Lu, and the best meal of the trip
Lunch on the second day was hot pot at Yin Lu, which does it Cantonese style. It was amazing. A bunch of wagyu beef and a bunch of vegetables. Exactly how we like to eat.
The Jacksetter’s review: “Can I get hot pot every day back in the States?”
Yeah. Maybe we can.
Arva for dinner
Arva is the same room you have breakfast in, and at dinner it’s totally elevated. It’s listed in the Michelin Guide, and I can see why.
There is a movie theater, and we watched Coco in it
After dinner we went straight to the hotel cinema for the 8 o’clock showing of Coco. We’d seen it before. It’s actually really good on a screen that size.
The suits
This is the thing that had nothing to do with the Aman, but was a highlight of the trip, so I want to share the story here.
I had my Claude find a tailor who would come to the hotel. We were going to a wedding in Taipei, and needed something to wear.
Jacksetter and I got fitted the first morning. Then, partway through Coco on the second night, the tailor came back with the finished suits. We tried them on in the theater. Everything fit perfectly.
The tailor is Wuyue Bespoke Tailoring, 五岳洋服, who have been in the South Bund Fabric Market since 2004 and will come to your hotel for fittings. I wrote them up on Tripadvisor separately. They’re really good, and I’d recommend them to anyone spending a few days in Shanghai.
Some other things worth showing
Service
The service set the bar high and then exceeded it.
The thing that made it work was WeChat. I was coordinating with the staff over WeChat the entire stay, and it removed every bit of friction from the day. I could just tell them I’m going to this place at that time, and it was handled. No calling down. No standing at a desk. No repeating yourself to three different people.
What that looks like in practice, over two days: we arrived at six in the morning and were taken straight to the room. The teepee didn’t fit, so they made up a bed on the couch. The kids’ club sent a VR headset up to the room. The tailor was coordinated to come to us, twice, and the second time he found us in the movie theater. Turndown happened every time we left the room, and it was never once in progress while we were in it.
None of that required asking twice.
For the record, and because it says more about the trip than about this hotel: this wasn’t even the best service we had over those two weeks. The two hotels we stayed at after this one were somehow better still. The Aman set a very high bar and cleared it, and then Taipei raised it.
The last morning
Breakfast, and then pretty much straight into the car. We left around 8:30 or 9 for the transfer back to the airport, flying to Taipei around noon.
A few things that could be better
I’m not going to pretend this was flawless, and the honest complaints are worth more to you than another paragraph about how nice the trees are.
The door into our villa section only worked one way. You could get in. You could not get out. There was no keypad on the inside, and it just locked behind you. To leave, I had to reach around to the outside of the door and tap my keycard against the external reader. That isn’t a quirk, that’s a door that doesn’t work, and it was annoying every single time.
We should have taken the tour, and you should too. When we checked in at six in the morning, they gave us a choice. They could walk us straight to the room, or they could give us the full tour and show us where everything was on the way. We had been flying all night. We took the room.
That was a mistake. This property is big and it is genuinely hard to get around. Mrs. Jeffsetter and the Jacksetter got lost repeatedly over the next two days. If you stay here, take the tour, even if you’re exhausted. Or book it for later that same day, which is what we should have done. We never rescheduled it, and we paid for that in wrong turns.
I’ll say this in their defense: I liked that you have to walk to the main buildings. It makes the place feel like a village instead of a hotel hallway. But you need to know where you’re walking.
The bike trail is not really a bike trail. They tell you there’s a trail you can use. I went to walk on it and there was basically nothing there.
You need WeChat, and maybe even Alipay. I had never signed up for WeChat in my life. Getting verified on Alipay to pay for the suit was a pain in the butt. Neither of those is the hotel’s fault, and once you’re set up, you’re set up for the rest of your time in China. But if you’re a westerner arriving cold, budget time for it, because the WeChat coordination is the single best part of the service here and you can’t use any of it until you’re on the app.
And it was 100 degrees. They can’t do anything about that. But if you’re coming in July, understand that the walk between buildings is a real walk, in real heat.
The verdict
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
It was incredible. The hard product was great, and all the food, everything, was excellent. It’s a big property, but it didn’t feel too big and didn’t feel too small.
There’s nothing like an Aman. This hotel was a perfect stopover and introduction to the Asia leg of our trip. Really well done. And it’s good for kids, which is rare.
Two nights was not enough. I would go back in a heartbeat.
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