You don’t need to own a yacht to stay at the White Sail Hotel in Shenzhen, but some of the more affluent guests belong to the Seven-Star Bay Yacht Club next door, and use the hotel as a base when they are not out on the ocean. Qin Yue-Ming, a leading local designer, was tapped to create a complex of guestrooms and public spaces hugging the shoreline, creating a place where people can escape the bustle of the city.  

Shenzhen embodies China’s meteoric growth, having exploded from a cluster of fishing villages into an industrial metropolis of nearly 20 million in just 30 years. The White Sail Hotel is a symbol of its growing sophistication, for the understated elegance of the facades and interiors is a match for the best of the West. For his part, Qin studied architecture, added interior design to his repertoire, and opened his namesake design and consulting office in 1999. “The hotel was constructed on a tight budget so we had to concentrate on essentials,” says Qin, who explains that the firm designed most of the furniture, which was then fabricated locally. “That is all about spatial relationships and creating pleasing rhythms as guests move around.”

The exterior is broken up into a succession of white cubes to reduce its mass, and the interiors have a Zen character that is enhanced by the white palette, bamboo joinery, minimal sculptures, and ceramic vases. Guestrooms—which open up to sweeping views of the water or mountains behind—are clean-lined and functional, deriving their beauty from their simplicity and an absence of surface ornament. Far removed from the traditional Chinatown décor of gilded dragons, red walls, and fringed lanterns, for Qin White Sail was an exercise in restraint. “Bamboo is a renewable wood, and it embodies the theme of the hotel: Sport and health,” he notes.