You can use the computers for free to research your favorite animal before visiting. After enjoying the animals, you can watch a breathtaking dynamic film or dine in the western restaurant. With flicking candlelight, pleasant music and delicious food, this restaurant is the first one in China underwater.

Paying a visit to the Taipingyang Underwater World gives visitors a totally new feeling after seeing many historical sites of interest in Beijing.

Admission Fee:
CNY 85 for adults; CNY 55 for kids
Opening Hours:
09:00-17:30 (Monday to Thursday)
08:30-23:00 (Friday to Sunday)
Bus Route:
40, 323, 368, 374, 394, 437, 624, 631, 704, 711, 733, 811, 836, 944, 968 to Hangtian Qiaonan (航天桥南), then you could walk to the Taipingyang Underwater World (太平洋海底世界).

In the performance area, you can watch wonderful performances played by two cute seals. They play with balls and rings; even kiss their trainer! Visitors can also watch the trainer feed the ferocious sharks. Divers show how to use diving equipment underwater and guide interested visitors to turtles and sharks in the deep water.

Facilities like an undersea western restaurant, a computer center and a dynamic movie theater perfect this underwater world. You can use the computers for free to research your favorite animal before visiting. After enjoying the animals, you can watch a breathtaking dynamic film or dine in the western restaurant. With flicking candlelight, pleasant music and delicious food, this restaurant is the first one in China underwater.

Beneath the Central Radio and TV Tower in Haidian District, is the mysterious Taipingyang Underwater World. Hundreds of rare freshwater fishes and marine life forms are bred in the aquarium. An 80-meter long transparent tunnel is the principal aspect of the underwater world. Standing on the automatic walkway gives visitors a perfect view of the aquarium. The rich-colored coral reef and swimming shoal around make visitors feel they are at the bottom of the sea.

In the Penguin House, adorable Humboldt Penguins from Peru live happily with their family. Humboldt Penguins are endangered, but with the professionals' care, the family is gradually growing. The small pond area is alive with precious tropical freshwater fish and colorful coral fish. In the touching area, visitors brave enough can even touch the sharks or other selected halobios.

The vast grasslands here offer a wide range of activities: horse riding, camel riding, boating, fishing, skating, and some more. Horse riding is the most attractive. The grasslands have the biggest racecourse in China and a standard racetrack as well. Large quantities of sturdy horses, wild or gentle, are kept here for riding. The staff of horsemanship club can help in choosing a horse and professional riding trainers offer training for tourists. Boating and fishing offer tourists a picturesque view of the lake and the hills. In winter, the nearby Wild Duck Lake is frozen, providing a natural place for skating.

Covering an area of about 5,270 acres, Kangxi Grassland is Beijing's biggest grassland. Situated to the west of Badaling Great Wall, Yanqing County, it is sandwiched between Haituo Mountain and Guanting Reservoir. In the summer it is a good place for an outing, due to the cooler temperature found here.

The Kangxi Grassland is celebrated for superb scenery and large number of sheep and cattle. From late spring to summer, the grass begins to revives, like a cushion stretching out as far as one can see; innumerable flowers bloom, as if they are competing with each other for beauty. With the rising and falling sound of songs, horses dash in the scattering of Mongolian style yurts, sheep and cattle sport leisurely over the land. Owing to its geographical position, the grassland has a distinctive flavor with a perfect harmony of mountain, water, grass and animals.

Permanent exhibitions in the garden make the literary masterpiece, A Dream of Red Mansions, familiar to the visitor. Many distinctive activities are held, like temple fairs and celebrations on the Mid-autumn Day. Grand performances, Yuan Concubine's Visit, are really a sparkle. The actors and actress in the ancient costumes give an excellent narration of specific plots from the novel. A scenic location in the northeast of the garden named Great Void Dreamland shows a movie which highlights scenes from the novel. Water-scene movies and performances are also given in the evening.

Admission Fee:
CNY 40; CNY 70 for night activities
Opening Hours:
08:30-17:30
Bus Route:
53, 59, 63, 122, 458, 474, 717, 744, 819, 939 to Daguanyuan (Grand View Garden, 大观园)

The real-life garden occupies an area of 13 hectares (32 acres), a truthful representation of the fictitious extraordinary garden. Charming pavilions, twisting cloisters, thriving trees and flowers and lakes with clear ripples make up this dream-like place. The Yihong Courtyard where Jian Baoyu lives, is magnificent; the Bamboo Lodge where Lin Daiyu lives is quite serene; and the house for Jia Yuanchun's temporary stay is quite imperial, elegant and radiant.

Tips: English and Japanese guides are available in the garden.

The Grand View Garden is located at Xuanwu District, in southeast Beijing. It was built in 1984 and construction lasted five years. Unlike other such gardens, it was not built as a private or imperial garden, but as a site for the making of the TV series, A Dream of Red Mansions.

A Dream of Red Mansions is one of four famous Chinese novels, the others being Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin and Journey to the West. This important literary work, written by Cao Xueqin, follows the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, and depicts the entanglement and conflicts between the father and the son, the brothers, wives and concubines, masters and servants. The saga depicts actual circumstances of the nature of a feudal society. In the novel, Jia Yuanchun, eldest daughter of the Jia family, is conferred as Yuan imperial concubine, and an extremely luxurious garden is built for her to live during her visit, hence the garden becomes the site where the tragic stories unfold.

The lake is like a valuable sapphire embedded in the area. When the lake is calm and weather is fine, the blue sky, white clouds, trees and hills are reflected in the large mirror, forming a stunning picture. When a breeze blows, the waves ripple as if a naughty girl winks. The lake sparks in the brilliant sunlight and the distant hill looks like an overlapping landscape.

Admission Fee:
CNY 10
Bus Route:
616, 646, 917, 917 Zhuan (917专), 917 Zhi 3 (917支3), 952, 971 to Liangxiang Ximen (良乡西门), then transfer to small bus No.6 to the Qinglong Lake Water Amusement Park (青龙湖水上乐园).