Make no mistake - we at China Expat are 100 percent committed to a glorious, harmonious Beijing Olympics. We are also realists. Hence, we must consider the microscopic chance that, somewhere between the shooting preliminaries and the flyweight boxing finals, a few visitors may crave entertainments entirely unrelated to competitive sports. Glance around at the roasted fans watching the eighth scoreless inning of the Venezuela-Japan softball match. You'll notice that some of them are flushed and listless-looking, but not from Olympic fever.

In fact, we suspect that even the athletes could benefit from some contingency activities. So when the resounding "doink" of a swatted shuttlecock ceases to thrill, consider some of these alternative outings, completely free of Great Walls and other obligatory cultural wonders.

Dusk at Longtanhu Park

OK, virtually any of Beijing's better parks will do nicely. But Dragon Lake Park charms with a special mojo. You can walk on the grass, for one thing. And virtually the whole place is within spitting distance of the eponymous lake. A rock-climbing wall, rides for the kids, a gutted MIG fighter plane, all nice bonuses for PR purposes, but not really the essence of early evening in the park.

The atmosphere draws its soothing energy from the babbling stream of people who circle the placid waters. White collar workers freed from another day's drudgery, seniors on their social hour, low-income families getting the best entertainment value in the city for an entrance fee of 2RMB, it all adds up to Chinese humanity at its most casual and unguarded.

Of course, the sylvan oasis in a concrete jungle has everything to do with it. Concrete towers of all shape and price range peep through the soft twilight haze of pollution, emphasizing the relief of a little manicured nature. Bats wheel by in drunken patterns impossible to follow. Peace reigns, enough to let go and revel in the silliness of fifty-year olds flying kites. Find one of the raised pebble mosaics dotting the lakeside paths. Off with the shoes, and on with some ginger stepping. Two minutes' sole-pressure is the equivalent of a one-hour foot massage, and costs only a bit of intestinal fortitude. However you divert yourself on the shores of Dragon Lake, you'll leave feeling positively rebooted.

Address: 8 Longtanhu Lu, Chongwen District (Off of You An Men Street])

Entry ticket: 2 yuan;

Traffic: Bus No.s 6, 60, 807, 812 and 116.

Tel: 86-10-67144336.

Lightly Caffeinated Refuge

Any time's a good time for tea, but no time's better than when visiting a city with tea leaves flavoring every aspect of its culture. Bringing your Lipton's tea bags to Beijing is a cross-cultural sin tantamount to patronizing a Pizza Hut in Naples. A leisurely visit to one of the thousands of teahouses around this city is an experience of Chinese culture in action.

Whether you sit in the common area or a private room, count on plenty of carved wood and objets d'art, soothing music, and the pervasive aroma of freshly-brewed tea. No teahouse owner designs her establishment with any other purpose than to create an oasis of refinement and tranquility.

Heaven forbid you've made it all the way to this exotic city and let a little fear of looking foolish prevent you from the full experience. The staff are trained to enlighten as well as prepare your tea with consummate grace, and most of the houses mentioned below will have at least one or two proficient enough in English to get the salient points across. But you should at least know lùchá(green tea) which is unfermented, wūlóng, lightly fermented, hóngchá (red tea) well-fermented, and pǔěr , which is practically rotten, but in a good way, like single-malt scotch. Every variety of real tea falls into one of these categories, and every category is chock full of quality varieties that will set you back far less money than equivalent time in a decent bar.

An important distinction between the teahouse and the teashop: the former involves a fee and time to yourself. The latter, although you may sup several varieties free of charge, will entail subtle sales tactics, and will not encourage you to stay longer than a half-hour or so, unless somebody wants to practice her English.

Check out this site for more info on types of tea, this one for a list of teahouses in Beijing, and this one if you'd like to spend half a day drinking enough free tea to float a battleship. Most importantly, don't accept any invitations to drink tea from comely young females you've never met before.

Tour de Beijing

Seeing Beijing by bicycle is smart, sustainable, and saves tons in taxi fares. You'll earn the roast duck dinners and cheap beer, and avoid the fetid sardine-can action of public transport. And while the summer heat may make it sweaty business, biking a city as flat as a pancake should only deter the aged and infirm.

It all depends on where you bike. Avoid Nanluguoxiang unless you're the type that dons an "I Heart NY" shirt as soon as you arrive in Manhattan. Arranged hutong bike tours are cute, but preclude the kind of taster's menu to be had in a more random excursion. So start out on Beijing's main artery, Chang'an, and pick a direction, east or west. You could do worse than to pedal from Dawang Lu to Gongzhufen and never veer. Chang'an boasts wide, frequently-shaded bicycle paths (as most of the big roads here do) adjacent to an architectural record of China's recent glory. As you get further west, the buildings and neighborhoods turn more leafy and sedate. See a likely thoroughfare? Turn off and explore, knowing that you're never far away from a convenience store or the central axis.

You can buy a serviceable bicycle at Carrefour or Walmart for around 300 RMB, the same price you'd pay for a few days' aggressive taxiing. Here's a reliable site for bike rentals, although you'll see plenty of rent-a-bike stands around the city, including one behind the LG Towers.

Down by the River

Still a bicycle tour, but one you wouldn't discover on your own until your fourth or fifth visit. While a far cry from Amsterdam, Beijing boasts a plethora of canals, most of them flanked by paved footpaths. Perhaps the most bike-worthy consists of the semicircle abutting the southern half of the second ring road. If you were to find yourself at the east gate of Longtanhu Park, you'd find several ramps at hand leading down to the canal. Otherwise, it's a matter of pedaling and looking for an opening.

There's something marvelously escapist about being a few meters below street level, beneath the notice of all the busy bees droning about. The normal honking congestion of Beijing's hurly burly seems miles away, filtered through willow trees, softened by the placid sweep of curiously green water before you. As with the park, dusk and early evening are the best times to be touring the canals. Elders advance resolutely, singing patriotic songs. Chuppies give their pampered lap dogs a taste of waterside adventure. Semi-employed looking men cast lines and eye you with disapprobation for bringing bad laowai luck to their fishing grounds. Other knots of loafers are passive-aggressively friendly, calling out a high-pitched "Halooooooo! Hehehehe" as you pedal by.

Never fear. You're in the world's safest metropolis, at least in terms of violence (the havoc played on your lungs and the death wishes of most taxi drivers are another matter).

Resurfacing to street level is as easy as the next ramp or set of steps.

Cleansed of All Worries

Your Beijing Bath House experience will be somewhere between the two.

Time in Beijing and disposable income will turn you into a spa-maven of the most decadent status. If you're new here, start off with the bath house. And don't try to fit it into a corner of the afternoon; think more along the lines of the shank of an evening.

Even if you can only stand five minutes in a sauna, and three in a steam room, there are plenty of reasons to dally for hours at an up-market bathhouse (at down-market ones too, but this isn't that kind of site). Plunge pools and Jacuzzis from freezing to scalding await your naked form, always in an impressively Greco-Roman or faux-rainforest setting. The penitent can opt for an inexpensive scrub-down, wherein a thick-wristed attendant will remove three layers of skin with rough dispatch, leaving you pink and tearful as a newborn. The hedonist can choose from an extensive list of other massages, and expect to pay from 150 to 800 RMB for an hour's worth of such entertainment, depending on what's involved. The Mandarin-challenged will find ascertaining these services the most awkward pantomime of their stay.

But less intimate pleasures await. Any bathhouse of repute has a buffet dining hall, where the freshly soaked and stroked of both genders congregate in flimsy dressing gowns, complacently picking at candied prawns and middle-of-the-road dim sum.

Then it's on to the darkened lounge rooms. Mani-pedis, facials, even earwax removal await the pamper-prone. The less Metro can order something from the bar and kick back in their easy chairs, enjoying a movie or some music. When you're finally ready to leave, your freshly shined shoes will be the proverbial icing on the cake. For what it's worth, many an enterprising foreigner has capitalized on the bathhouse policy of 24 hours for your money, and used one as a place of residence instead of a hotel.

Here are a few of Beijing's more reputable (and therefore more expensive) bath houses.

No. 8 Hot Springs Club8

Chaoyang Gongyuan Xilu,
Chaoyang Park
near Chaoyang park's west gate
朝阳公园西路8号

6591-8888

www.cnmlsh.com/8

Langtaosha 浪淘沙水疗会馆

6 Xueyuan Lu,
Haidian
学院路6号

8239-6388

www.langtaos.com

R&F Club 富力会

1/F, bldg A, Twin Tower, Fuli House, 59 Dongsanhuan Zhonglu,
CBD/Guomao
东三环中路59号楼富力双子座A座1层

5862-3139; 5862-2277