Your marathon guide to Beijing

Published on March 2, 2008

Beijing boasts a slew of new hotels and restaurants, with the possibility of advance online bookings. And visitors are now guaranteed easier mobility with more flights, trains, taxis and buses to and from China's capital. Such positive changes are sure to provide a stimulus to exploring the breadth and depth of Beijing, "an elusive city, where the dreamlike is constantly clashing with the everyday".

In "Beijing Walks", Don Cohn - who has visited the city more than 200 times since the 1980s - introduces six walking routes: the Forbidden City; the former Legation Quarter and Tiananmen Square; Beihai Park; the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of Sky;

the Confucius Temple; and the Imperial Academy, the Lama Temple and the Summer Palace.

These tours provide clues to the riches of Old Peking, more and more of which is fast vanishing.

Told through foreign travellers' accounts, lavish illustrations and quotes from notable figures in history, the guide comes complete with maps, detailed instructions of where to go and other practical facts and figures.

Yet it's not a conventional guidebook because it also offers a curious peek into the lesser-known facets of Beijing life, from the private lives of emperors and the pomposity of the foreign legation quarter to labour-intensive architectural marvels and the ubiquitous, centuries-old trees.

Check the emperor's safety standards, for instance. He never took two bites of any dish, lest his culinary preferences provide a clue for a potential assassin.

When in Beijing, the author warns, be prepared for the oceans of tourists flooding the key attractions, which is understandable because Beijing remains "the Greatest Show on Earth".