In 1936, the skyline of Wuzhou shifted. Amidst the low-slung brick shophouses and wooden boats crowding the riverbanks, a seven-story giant of steel and concrete rose on Xijiang Road. This was the Xining Hotel, later rechristened the New West Hotel (Xinxi Hotel), a structure that declared the city’s ambition to rival Guangzhou and Hong Kong as a master of river trade. At a time when most local architecture clung to the ground, this building claimed the sky, serving as a physical marker of Wuzhou's "Little Hong Kong" era.

The hotel was an exercise in architectural importation. Its façade displays the distinct tripartite composition of European classical design, featuring heavy vertical columns and geometric precision that stood in sharp contrast to the chaotic, organic growth of the surrounding markets. This choice of style was deliberate. It signaled to the British, American, and Cantonese merchants disembarking at the nearby piers that Wuzhou was a modern metropolis, fluent in the international language of commerce and luxury. Inside, the hotel offered amenities that were scarce in the hinterlands, becoming the preferred accommodation for visiting dignitaries, celebrities, and the wealthy brokers who controlled the flow of goods along the Pearl River system.

Constructed following the devastating 1924 fire that razed much of the city, the hotel utilized reinforced concrete to withstand the region's two perennial threats: conflagration and flood. While the neighboring Qilou buildings adapted to the rising Xijiang River with water gates and second-floor retreats, the New West Hotel stood as an immovable fortress against the current. It survived the aerial bombardments of the Japanese invasion, closing its doors during the occupation only to reemerge in 1946. Today, the hotel remains a vertical anchor on the riverbank, a silent narrator of a time when this inland port controlled the economic pulse of Guangxi.