Yang Sing Oriental

The Yang Sing restaurant has been an instution on the Manchester dining scene for over thirty years. Founded in 1977 by Hong Kong emigrées the Yeung family, it has survived a change of location (from George Street to Princess Street), a devastating fire (which led to 6,000 Christmas bookings having to be honoured at the nearby GMEX exhibition hall) and the changing tides of fashion, to remain one of the city’s most perenially popular restaurants.

It is perhaps this longevity that has given its owners the patience and confidence to stick with their five-year long plan to open a hotel in a Grade II listed building adjacent to the restaurant.

Built in the late 19th century, this was one of the hundreds of cotton warehouses which once served Manchester’s burgeoning textile and fabric trade. It has since been reincarnated as a shopping mall, a bank, offices and a nightclub before the Yang Sing’s owners acquired the building with a view to transforming it into a 48-guestroom luxury hotel. Designer Roberta Fulford has a long-standing relationship with brothers Gerry and Harry Yeung, the current stewards of the family business, having completed interiors for a refurbishment of the original restaurant, and the ill-fated Lotus Dim Sum on King Street. The Yeungs approached her in Spring 2003 to being work on their hotel project. She has acted not just as interior designer but effectively as project manager and architect, seeing it through complex planning applications, then the complete gutting and internal reconstruction of the building before overseeing the procurement and fit-out of the interiors.

“My client’s brief was to create a modern take on luxury with stylish Oriental design, as opposed to a Chinese themed hotel,” explains Fulford. “The scheme combines references to colonial-era Shanghai New York warehouse urban chic. The combined result is an eclectic mix of historical grandeur and fresh and luxurious finishes with an Oriental touch, appropriate to the location.”

The public areas of the hotel are mostly located on a lower ground floor. The first sight to greet guests as they enter is a striking reception desk, carved from reclaimed timber beams by chainsaw sculptor Mick Burns, working to Fulford’s instructions to ensure it met strict Part M disabled ergonomic stipulations. 

Unsurprisingly, given the proximity of their existing restaurant, the Yeung family have opted for a bar rather than a restaurant, althought guests can choose from a selection of light dishes created by chef-consultant Robert Kisby. The Oku champagne bar is named after the Japanese word for the inner palace where the shogun traditionally kept his harem.

A curvaceous white acrylic stone bar features a carved backlit abstract image of Oriental reeds and grasses, with fresh green banquette seating, ivory chenille chairs, and low level lightbox tables sitting alongside exposed brick walls.

 “I was keen to retain some of the urban warehouse feel and used areas of exposed brick, columns and beams to do so,” Fulford explains. To allow the beams to remain exposed, services have been hidden under the floor rather than in the usual ceilling voids.

Many of the unique pieces in the hotel were sourced by Gerry Yeung, his wife Joanne and Roberta Fulford on a trip to Guangzhou – the Chinese city where the Yeung family originally hailed from before moving to Hong Kong. Guangzhou has a host of antique emporia, selling everything from porcelain vases to Chinese pens to exotic opium pipes.

A 300-year old Ming Dynasty pine bed, original carved screens, and an ancient Chinese string instrument are amongst the items which found a new home in Sutra,  the hotel’s private residents’ lounge, alongside large white ostrich leather sofas and a series of drapes and antique screens. A traditional Chinese moon window breaks up the space between the Sutra Lounge and the adjacent leisure areas. 

Moving onto the upper floors, Eastern influences of an altogether more contemporary nature are on display in the bedroom corridors. Fulford has taken elements from traditional Oriental paintings but employed new design technologies to create laminated gloss vignettes positioned in the centre panels of the heavy wooden doors to the bedrooms. These images are lit from above and contrast with matt laminate charcoal grey side panels to the doors, charcoal grey matt walls and burnt orange carpets.

Beyond these doors lies a selection of individually designed bedrooms. Each has clearly defined sleeping and living spaces separated by traditional Chinese screens, and a combination of wooden flooring and carpets. The bespoke lacquer furniture, combining clean contemporary lines with traditional Oriental flourishes, offers vivid accent colours to each room. 

“My colour schemes took inspiration from the rich and bright colours evident throughout Oriental history,” says Fulford. These include pearl and off black with touches of cerise, bitter chocolate and white with highlights of contemporary yellow, and fresh greens, pinks and yellows. Bespoke four-poster beds grace many of the rooms while others have low-lying leather beds, again designed by Fulford, as their focal point. Silk duvets, velvet soft furnishings, timber colonial blinds, enormous original sash windows and high gloss furniture complete the look.
This is effectively an all-suite hotel, with even the smallest of the six room types – ‘Mandarin’ – weighing in at a respectable minimum of 29m2.

At the other end of the scale is the 89m2 Grand Emporer penthouse suite, with two double bedrooms, lounge, dining area, washroom, bathroom, butler service and its own meditation space. Given the opportunity to restructure such a building, most hotel owners would have opted for a higher number of guestrooms, a more standardised design scheme, and a quicker return on their investment. But the Yeungs are not ‘most hotel owners’. Evidently they expect this hotel to have as much longevity as its sister restaurant.

YANG SING ORIENTAL HOTEL
36 Princess St,
Manchester, M1 4JY
Tel: +44 (0)161 8800188
www.yangsingoriental.com

Rooms: 48 guestrooms and suites
Food:    Oku Champagne Bar
Drink: Sutra Residents Lounge
Leisure: Spa
Facilities: Piano Lounge, Gym