Zotafo Spa hotel - Hezhou City, China

The average mainland Chinese consumer belongs to a practical demographic that opts, where possible, for multi-functional venues. Case in point is the Zotafo Spa in Hezhou City, a striking-looking recreational spa club which combines a Chinese dining/buffet zone, entertainment zone featuring table tennis, billiards, chess and cards, and cinema, spa, two outdoor swimming pools and, just in case you’re exhausted by all that activity, 20 guest rooms. 

Guangdong-based Zheng Xiang Design has riffed off traditional black ink paintings for the interior design, scoring the spaces with familiar motifs. The foyer, for instance, features a corona of faux rocky surface, the eye led inexorably towards a trompe l’oeil backdrop of shadowy mountains lit by cloud chandeliers, while moon-doors, lined in a coppery finish, are cut into walls of white marble to evoke the courtyards found in local architecture. 

The sense of locality continues to the bedrooms – some of which are capacious, their multiple bed configurations designed to comfortably sleep a mini-clan – which are dressed in soft shades of brown, dark woods, wispy curtains and frosted glass. 

The spa, meanwhile, is outsized, featuring no less than 46 rooms for body and foot massages where the treatments are sourced, in the main, from the region’s Yao ethnic group.