When the Hacks on the Winter Olympics Beat Get Bored They Can Always Look for the Pioneers’ Inn

As journalists start to wonder about Zhangjiakou (where a chunk of the 2022 Winter Olympics will be held) they may want to know that in the old days the only place in town to get a drink and a room was the then legendary Pioneers’ Inn. The Pioneers’ Inn, the only European-style hotel in Kalgan, features in just about every memoir of every gunrunner, smuggler, ne’erdowell, spy and foreign adventurer ever to head into northern China. Every foreigner of a slightly suspicious bent pitched up at the Pioneers’ and ordered a chota peg (whisky and soda, the house drink). Others of interest also stopped there – Walter Granger, the great paleontologist stopped there in 1928 while the American reporter, spy, film maker, and translator Maguerite Harrison stopped there overnight in the early 1930s describing the rooms as “fairly clean”. Perhaps most famously the French cross-China expedition La Croisière Jaune, organised by Citroen, stopped there in 1932 for a while.

If anyone could track it down it would be the single thing about the Winter Olympics 2022 that would remotely interest me….

As to location that’s a bit tricky –

it was on the western edge of Kalgan

it was a brick built building

outside was rattan chairs and tables for a drink on a warm day

it was owned by some Swedes

It also had warehouses close by where people embarking on expeditions could store their gear

By 1935 it appears to have closed and been deserted

bon chance!