Talks venue leaves many visitors baffled
Xianghe, a resort location between Beijing and Tianjin, is a puzzle that baffles many people.
The walled city sitting in the middle of nowhere is the venue for the Third Sino-US Strategic Economic Dialogue.
This is not the first time Xianghe is hosting a high-level diplomatic conference. It also hosted the Group of 20 (G20) meetings in 2005.
Xianghe is an inconvenient place - being at least an hour's taxi ride from the Beijing city centre on a good traffic day. Journalists find it necessary to stay at the expensive hotels of Grand Epoch City, a resort boasting a 200-hectare replica of Beijing in the days of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The place was so vast that hotel staff were confused as to which restaurant was open to diners, and security guards had trouble naming the buildings they were watching over.
Journalists and US staff were also stumped as to whether they were in Beijing or Hebei , and whether they needed to dial area codes.
But the walled city is otherwise a favourite tourist destination, featuring an impressive collection of full-scale reproductions of all of Beijing's 22 city gates, including ones that have been torn down. Only the lengths of the walls have been shortened.
The resort also showcases a reconstruction of the razed Old Summer Palace, a golf course, sports facilities and spas, luxury hotels, restaurants and convention halls.
