The road less traveled

The brides are everywhere. If you are in Beijing for a weekend and want to see the two most-favored tourist sites - the Olympic Sports Complex and Forbidden City - you may well run into young models hitching up their satin bridal gowns and running down Gulouwai Dajie for a photo shoot. You may even find a real bride and groom in front of a restaurant on Di'anmen Dajie, releasing balloons in the air.

Hit the road if you don't want to miss these unexpected delights along the way. The distance is not as daunting as it might appear. From the south gate of the Olympic Forest Park to Forbidden City, the north-south axis cutting Beijing vertically down the middle is just about 11 km. But a hop across the bridge on the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) canal in Gulouwai Dajie, straddles at least seven centuries. The hutong-dominated area south of the canal, running like a watery ring around the old city, began evolving in the mid-1300s, while the Olympic Sports Complex neatly laid out around a 4.5-km stretch in the north of the axis is chronologically and temperamentally 21st century.

Start at the southern tip of the Olympic Forest Park, off the last subway station on Line 8. The greenery, lakes and the knoll, offering a stupendous view, look extremely inviting in pouring rain. But the park is 12.15 sq km, so it makes sense to take a rain check. Once you have stepped into the Olympic Sports Complex, walk between the indoor playing areas on either side, dotted with life-size sculptures on horseback, a level lower than the ground. Ferris wheels of the temporary Beijing carnival theme park appear on the left horizon.

Walk past the media tower, and the National Indoor Stadium, as the strains of 'One World, One Dream' waft in, riding the cool breeze. While the futuristic Bird's Nest stadium and the cool blue Water Cube with a beehive finish, strategically placed on either side of the north-south axis, are the obvious attractions around here, stop by to admire the quaint sculptures, marked by a happy rotundity, dotting the space in between. On your right, about a 100 m away, stands the anachronistic Goddess Beiding Temple, a typical, red-walled Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) structure, with blue tiled roof. Giant LCD screens flash images at you from the walls of the 66-floor Pangu 7-Star Hotel, a monstrously huge property whose top floors are designed to look like a dragon's head.

The sprawling concrete sheath beneath your feet rolls on. At the crossing of Beichen Lu and Minzuyuan Lu a quasi-Mexican totem pole appears on the right, like an aberration. Roller-skaters and people maneuvering kites the shape of a giant squid or bird, grow scarce. The road leads to a huge circular raised platform, flanked by two pillars in carmine red, a replication of the altar of solemn rites at the Temple of Heaven, a single round stone, wrapped by concentric layers of slabs, in multiples of nine.

Gulouwai Dajie begins on a low-key, with residential and office blocks on either side. The Beijing Media Center, with characters and numerals in different languages inked all over its facade, stands out, almost directly opposite the more staid and bare exteriors of the Workers' Daily.

Past the Yuan Dynasty canal, skyscrapers vanish and the gray walls of the hutong take over. A little further up the Drum and Bell Towers appear. Built during the reign of Kublai Khan in late 13th century, the eponymous towers were the timekeepers to the city. The instruments - bronze clepsydras, 24 ox hide drums - have fallen to decay but the massive cast-bronze bell survives. A steep, highly-slippery single flight of stairs, covering 33 m, takes you all the way up the bell tower for a vantage view of the old city.

On Di'anmen Dajie, the merchandise in the shops housed on either side of the road, in erstwhile hutong, tend to spill over on the pavements. The road seems to end against the massive wall and a closed gate. Skirt round it until you reach the east entrance. You are in Jingshan Park, developed around an artificial hill, built with the earth scooped to create the sprawling moat around the Forbidden City. The pavilion on its middle peak (Wanchunting) is precisely the middle point on the north-south axis. It's like a balcony on old Beijing, overlooking the intense concentration of the red-tiled roofs of the Forbidden City, the dazzling white Buddhist pagoba (stupa) amid the landscaped gardens in Beihai Park on your right, the dragon pillar on Tian'anmen Square, and the sculptures of revolutionaries ushering in the birth of a new Republic in front of Mao's mausoleum. From the tip of the media tower in the Olympic Sports Complex to the blue tiled conical roofs of the Temple of Heaven, and every tourist site in between, at Jingshan Park all of these are brought into a single line of vision.

A view from up here will remind you of how far you have come and how much more is still left to cover.