As a historical scenic spot focusing on the Ming Great Wall, Simatai Great Wall is located in the Gubeikou Town to the northeast of Miyun County, and one can arrive there by going along the 101 National Road or Jingcheng Expressway. The Simatai Great Wall was first built in 1368, re-built in the period from Longqing to Wanli in the Ming Dynasty when Qi Jiguang was the general guarding the Ji Town. It is under the jurisdiction of the Ji Town. In 1987, Beijing government conducted maintenance work on the Simatai Great Wall. In 1990, it was formally opened to the public.

Simatai Great Wall starts from Wangjing Building in the east and ends at Houchuankou in the west. Stretching for 5.7 kilometers and containing 35 watch towers (including the tower in the water which has been damaged), it is one section of the Great Wall with concentrated watch towers. The distance between the nearest two towers is shorter than 20 meters. Simatai Great Wall has an imposing manner and strategically important situation. The whole section is carefully designed with various types of walls and watch towers. Most of them are well preserved, which shows the wisdom of laborers in ancient times, and has high values in military, art and architecture. Professor Luo Zhewen, the famous expert in Great Wall, points out that “China's Great Wall is number one in the world, and Simatai Great Wall is number one in China's Great Wall”.

Going through more than 400 years of weathering, Simatai Great Wall maintains the original looks of the Ming Great Wall, a large quantity of bricks engraved with words, exquisite embossment, perfect construction technology, so it preserves the historical information to the maximum degree. Simatai Great Wall stretches both eastwards and westwards. The east part is built on the sharp mountain ridges, rising from 295 meters to 986 meters within only 2.7 kilometers, so it looks like a huge dragon flying out from the lake towards the clouds. One may overlook the Great Wall from air, and appreciate various types of watch towers, obstacle walls, and marvelous Tian Pools, and huge tortoise stones. There are 15 watch towers on the summits. The “General Tower” is original in its type; The elegant “Fairy Tower” is the 15th watch tower on the east line of Simatai Great Wall, with coupled lotus embossment engraved on the white marble archway. It stands erectly like a fairy on the top of the summits. There is still the beautiful legend of the love story between the fairy and the shepherd. The next sight is the “Heaven Bridge” hanging on the steep summits and cliffs. Closely connecting to it is the “Wangjing Tower”, which the 16th watch tower on the east line of Simatai Great Wall, at a height of 986 meters. Standing on top of the Tiger Mount, it is the highest point of the Great Wall from Simatai to Gubeikou, enjoying the fame of “commanding point of cultural heritages in Beijing”. Standing on the tower, one can see the outline of Beijing in daytime and the lights of Beijing at night. There are two springs hidden in the valley, which converge into a lake. The lake is warm in one half and cold in another half. The smooth west part of Simatai Great Wall is quite attractive, with its original buttressed walls, parapet, crenel, doors and windows, top of buildings, holes for shooting, drain, water faucet, etc. On the thirteenth watch tower of the west section of the Simatai Great Wall, there is a kylin wall. The wall is on the southwest part of the upper layer crenel, with tiles on top of it. There is a vivid kylin composed of 15 square bricks in the middle part of the wall. Since the Simatai Great Wall was opened to the tourists, many sightseeing facilities including ropeway, rope-bridge, yacht, rapido for climbing the Great Wall, and strop have been built. Since 2002, the activities of crossing the Great Wall were held every year, which attracted a great deal of tourists.

As a national geological park and the geological vestige reserve of Beijing, Silicified Wood National Geological Park is located on both banks of White River to the northeast of Yanqing County, about 100 away from the downtown. It is the only geological park with typical, rare, and precious groups of silicified wood.

Also called “Stone Tree”, silicified wood is the produce in the late period of mid Jurrasic. About 140 million years ago, it was warm here, and the arbors grew tall and exuberant. Due to the outbreak of volcanoes and sudden rupture of stratum, the plants were buried underground. In the environment of no oxygen and high temperature, after long period of petrifaction, the organic matters in the timber were replaced by the silicoide in the underground water. Through the shell movements of stratum risings, these wood fossils were pushed out of the ground, forming the silicified wood we see today. Shenkuo, the scientist in the Northern Song Dynasty had the record of “1,000 kilometers away from the Bo Sea, pine trees were transformed into stones”.

The geological park stretches for 26 kilometers from the Yan Mountains in the west to Dishuihu in the east, with the total acreage of 226 square kilometers. It is a national geological park with unique geological sight and natural sight, integrating scientific investigation, sightseeing and folk custom travel. It includes the Small Kunlun Geological Popular Science District, Central District of Geological Park, Wulong Gorge Tourist Site, Yan Mount Tianchi Recreational District, and Datan Ecological Model District. In the Central District of Geological Park, there have been found 57 wood fossils, which were distributed on the marine deposit sand sale on the slopes of the White River. The wood fossils are in different sizes and shapes, with the surfaces in filemot or offwhite. The texture and annual rings of wood can be seen clearly. These pieces of wood have the diameter from 0.5 meters to 2.5 meters, and the longest wood is 15 meters. Some fossils still have branches or scars. Some are cracked. Some still have complete barks. These wood fossils are important evidences to study ancient geography and the evolution of ancient climates in Mesozoic era in North China. The wood fossils are mainly scattered in the area about 2,000 meters long and 400 meters wide to the north of Toudaoliang. They are also scarcely distributed in other areas. In addition, there is a wood fossil exhibition hall with an acreage of 110 square meters, which exhibits the board of geological changes and various kinds of wood fossils. Mountain Yan Tianchi in the scenic spot is the Baihebao Reservoir. Located in the volcano fulgurite basin in Baihebao formed in Mesozoic era, it is about 560 meters, covering five million square meters. It is the highest water in Beijing, thus called “Lake above high gorge”.

Located in Shidu and Zhangfang Town in Fangshan District, Beijing, Shidu Scenic Area is 96 kilometers away from the city.

It has the largest and most typical Karst valleys in north China and is the closest scenic spot of its kind to Beijing. Renowned as Green Mountains and River, Hundred Li Art Gallery, it has twelve geological landscapes such as the Flying Rock, Chinese character Buddha in Mountain Dragon, Rock in a Rock and more. The Juma River winds its way across the mountains like a jade belt, and sets off the peaks. The landscape here combines the majesty of north and the grace of south China. Shhidu Scenic Area was designated as one of the Sixteen New Scenic Spots in Beijing in 1986, one of the first batch of Scenic Areas in Beijing Municipality, National AAA Tourist Attraction in 1999, and approved as National Geological Park in 2004. There are such scenic spots as Juma Garden, Mountain Gushan Village, Mountain Pudu Villa, Cemetery of Martyrs in Ping Xi Anti-Japanese War,FairyDwelling Cave, Donghu Valley, Xihu Valley and more in this area. Tourists may also enjoy the recreational programs such as Bungee Jump, Cliff Parachute, Ropeway, Rock Climbing, Glider, Drift, Paddle Boat, Kayak, Surfing, Motor Boat, Sand Beach Bathing, Horse Riding and more.

The Shijinglong Skiing Resort is located in Yanqing, a county famous for tourism in the Beijing area. The resort is located 8 kilometers away from the county town of Yanqing, 80 kilometers from the downtown area of Beijing and 3 kilometers from Longqing Gorge, which has long enjoyed the reputation of being the “Small Lijiang River north of the Great Wall”. It was the first ski resort in Beijing open to the public in 1999.

Under the guidance of the idea of “building up an Alps in China”, the Shijinglong Skiing Resort, as a pioneer in the Beijing ski industry, has continually enlarged its scale and improved the construction of its facilities in recent years so as to provide skiers with a good, comfortable and friendly ski slopes. Today the skiing area covers more than 600 mu (mu is a Chinese unit of area equal to 1/15 a hectare) of land, and contains 8 ski slopes of different grades (expert, medium and amateur). The slopes are over 5,000 meters long and cover 180,000 square meters. The expert slope is more than 1,000 meters long at an average width of 50-odd meters has earned itself the title of “the top ski slope in Beijing”. The resort is equipped with one double-chair cable car, one four-chair cable car, six T dragging cableways, two snow rolling cars made in Germany and fifteen advanced snow-making machines. In the skiing resort, there is a large parking lot covering an area of 36,000 square meters. The resort also provides more than 5,000 skiing facilities of various types and it has the capacity to allow 5,000 people to enjoy snow entertainment activities simultaneously. In order to keep itself at the international level, the Shijinglong Skiing Resort started a program called “snow hot-spring” in 2002 and thus established its leading position as one of the skiing areas in China that compares favorably to those abroad. The skiing field also employs 100 instructors who provide snowboard and ski fans with teaching services at different levels of difficulty so as to meet their various needs. The Shijinglong Skiing Resort is really an excellent winter resort with convenient room and boarding services that lets you enjoy the fun of skiing.

Shichahai is a scenic area of history and culture in Beijing and one of its historical and cultural protection zones. It lies in Xicheng District, the center of Beijing city, and is close to its central axis. With a 336,000-square-meter water-covered area connected with Zhongnanhai, it is the only open scenic area with a wide expanse of water in Beijing city.

It is an important witness of the history of Beijing's planning and construction, having the largest and best preserved age-old block in the city. In the Yuan Dynasty it was the capital's center for commerce and grain transport. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was home to manyhigh officials and men of letters. After the Manchu takeover, the emperor-led Pure Yellow Banner troops were stationed here. In 1992, the Standing Conference of the Beijing Government named it a scenic area of history and culture (hereafter referred to as Shichahai). In 2002, Shichahai and its environs, which cover 1,467,000 square meters altogether, was designated as one of the 25 historical and cultural protection zones of the Old City.

Shichahai has beautiful and unique scenery. A famous essay written in ancient times says that in spring it is like the West Lake in Hangzhou; in summer, Qinghuai River in Nanjing; in autumn, Dongting Lake in Hu'nan. Shichahai and its environs have the densest collection of cultural tourism recourses, having altogether 40 historic sites under protection, with 3 of them are under national protection. The best known ones of them are 1) Prince Gong's Mansion (refer to “Prince Gong's Mansion”), which used to be the residence of He Shen, the most avaricious minister in the Qing Dynasty; 2) Yinding Bridge, known as the best place to view mountains from above water.

Shichahai has rich historical legacies in a number of well preserved Hutongs, Quadrangle Dwellings, mansions and gardens; it has dense cultural heritages in temples, halls, and distinguished persons' former residences. These are harmoniously blended with natural scenery by distinctive folk customs. In recent years, bars, and homely restaurants and hotels inQuadrangle Dwellings have sprouted in its neighborhood, making this place more fashionable. The coexistence of tradition and fashion attracts about 5 million tourists from home and abroad each year. In 2005, it was listed by Chinese National Geography among the five best city blocks in China for “being fashionable next door to Zhongnanhai”.

Each year, the cultural tourism festival is held in Shichahai. “Hutong Tour by rickshaw” and its updated version “Shichahai——in-depth tour of old Beijing” have become well-known tourism brands of Beijing. Tourists may experience genuine Beijing culture by joining tours of princes' mansions, old streets, ancient temples, former residences, city gate towers, Hutongs, homely feasts, boating, bars, and accommodation in Quadrangle Dwellings. As a window to “humanistic Olympics” of Beijing, Shichahai is playing an important role in welcoming the 2008 Olympic Games.

Address: opposite the north gate of Beihai Park, Di'anmen West Street, Xicheng District, Beijing