Dali mark color theme hotel

The Jise Theme Hotel occupies two freestanding villas in the Haidong enclave of Dali, Yunnan, with a total built area of 1,257 square metres. The design, by Changkong Creative under lead designer Zhang Baohua, is organised around the personal story of the owner, an engineer who spent years working on infrastructure projects across Africa and, drawn by the raw wilderness of the savannah, began collecting folk art and objects. Each piece has a story, and the owner wanted a guesthouse where that collection could be displayed and narrated, rather than another Dali property dressed up in Moroccan, Santorini or glass-boat clichés. The name Jise combines trace, trajectory, and mark with the myriad things of the world, meaning the act of recording the traces of all things and telling them as stories. Because pure African decor would feel rootless in Dali, the design instead pursues a cultural fusion around five keywords: wild, literary, free, romantic and rustic. Every room faces Erhai Lake, so that guests watch waves, listen to wind and merge with the Cangshan-Erhai landscape. Each room contains a copy of the book Collecting Africa alongside art objects, turning the stay into a chapter of the owner's travels. A stargazing room lets guests lie in bed and count the stars at night, and a large gift-box sculptural object in the landscape garden seems to hold another story waiting to be opened. In the public lounge, a doughnut-shaped sofa is ringed with purple flowers, moving fluidly between freedom, wildness and romance. The project sells itself as a place to breathe Dali's clean air, look at the grandeur of Cangshan and Erhai, hear an African story, and feel like a free traveller, letting space tell stories and stories complete the space.