In Guiyang, you must experience the Kempinski Hotel Guiyang and enjoy the amazing views

## Cloud Cage: A Kempinski Hotel Guiyang Check-in Experience The elevator ascended at an ear-popping speed, reaching the 42nd floor in an instant. As the doors slid open silently, I felt as if I had been pushed into another dimension by some invisible force—everything here was coated in a pale golden halo, and even the air seemed to have its oxygen content carefully adjusted. The front desk receptionist at the Kempinski Hotel Guiyang flashed an eight-toothed smile, a smile that seemed to have been cast from the same mold as the one I saw at the Ritz-Carlton in Beijing's Financial Street last week. The door lock to the guest room emitted a "beep," like a spell unlocking some kind of seal. The moment I pushed open the door, the misty Guiyang cityscape outside the floor-to-ceiling windows rushed towards me, giving me the illusion of floating in the clouds. I counted at least seven pillows stacked in some mysterious geometric arrangement on the two-meter-wide bed—probably some mysterious ritual invented by the modern hotel industry. The Evian mineral water in the mini-bar was priced at CNY 38, while the absence of Guizhou Moutai next to it was expected; after all, this level of "local specialty" requires a more grand appearance. In the bathroom, the Hansgrohe showerhead, a German sanitary ware brand, was as big as a spacecraft thruster, and it took me five minutes to figure out the arrangement of the buttons. The bath salts were packed in small glass bottles printed with the hotel logo, and when poured out, they had an unnatural pink color, reminiscent of a petri dish in a laboratory. The most interesting thing was the scale, which considerately defaulted to displaying the unit in "pounds"—probably a benevolent lie designed to take care of the self-esteem of international travelers. The lounge staff remembered each guest's room number, an impressive feat of memory. When I asked for an Americano, the corner of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly, as if pitying my mediocre choice. The Wall Street investment banking elite in the next seat was talking on the phone in three languages alternately, with the tiramisu in front of him untouched—at this altitude, the existence of dessert seemed only to prove the owner's indifference to calories. At 11pm, the "Do Not Disturb" button on the bedside control panel suddenly malfunctioned. Every half hour, a mysterious phone would ring, but when answered, only the rustling of electricity could be heard. I lifted the Egyptian cotton sheets, said to be 600-thread-count, and found a strange hypoallergenic mattress pad underneath—its plastic friction perfectly simulated the sound effects in a horror movie. At 3am, the air-conditioning vent began to play improvised jazz, and in the fluctuating hum, I spent the second half of the night counting the seams in the ceiling. The next day at breakfast, the Prada-clad she-devils were elegantly dissecting Eggs Benedict with knives and forks, while their male companions were checking the Dow Jones Index on their phones. The fresh juice area displayed five kinds of tropical fruits I had never seen before, all labeled with Latin scientific names. The most popular dish was surprisingly Guizhou's signature Changwang noodles, with chefs in Armani suits performing the art of noodle-making in the open kitchen, a scene with a surreal humor. At check-out, the front desk completed the settlement process with robotic efficiency, even calculating the intonation of "We look forward to your next visit" perfectly. Outside the revolving door, the early summer sun in Guiyang suddenly became real. I touched the room card in my pocket, folded into a triangle—this pass that could open the world of the 42nd floor cloud, had now become an ordinary plastic card. Looking back at this towering glass tower, I suddenly realized the ultimate paradox of high-end hotels: they create extraordinary feelings with extreme standardization, and manufacture spontaneity with precise calculations. What we pay a high price for may be this carefully designed "coincidence"—like those laundry bags deliberately "forgotten" in the pockets of bathrobes, or the macarons that are "accidentally" given as extras. In this man-made paradise, even flaws are luxury goods with marked prices.