Remembering the Hotel du Nord, Peking
Posted: April 1st, 2020 | 2 Comments »When talking about the famous hotels of Peking in the first half of the twentieth century we often forget the Hotel du Nord – not the Grand Hotel de Pekin (today’s nice Hotel Nuo bit of the Beijing Hotel) or the Wagons-Lit (which used to be near Chienmen (Qianmen) but was bulldozed long ago, but the Hotel du Nord. It’s rather curiously slipped off the map – though the original buiolding may still be there some think – near to the Chongwenmen subway station. The Nord was the slightly cheaper choice – mostly foreigners and used by visiting salesmen etc….it was apparently the best beer in town…
Hotel last owners were Austrian Rudolf Heiss and German A. Marschall. Hotel was confiscated after WW2.
Hotel du nord Peking was the gathering place for the “Peking Circle”; foreign scientists and explorers who along with Chinese students and researchers were exploring and helping to develop China’s potential for scientific and industrial development. This circle included: Sven Hedin, Johann Gunnar Anderssson, Davidson Black, Walter Granger, Roy Chapman Andrews, V. K. Ting, J. S. Lee, W. H. Long, S. G. King, Amadeus Grabau, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and George B. Barbour. See: A Romance in Natural History. The lives and works of Amadeus Grabau and Mary Antin. By Allan Mazur. 2004