Fifty kilometres south of Beijing is ZHOUKOUDIAN village, terminus of bus #914, which leaves from a station on Beiwei Lu, just south of the Beiwei Hotel. The main attraction is an excavation site (daily 9am-4pm; ¥20) in the limestone hills to the south of town (¥10 by meterless taxi from the bus station). This is where the first relic - a single tooth - of Peking Man who lived here between 500,000 and 230,000 years ago, was uncovered in 1921. Excavations began in earnest after archeologists realized they had found a new genus, a link between Neanderthal and modern man, and they christened it homo erectus Pekinensis. Excavations gradually revealed the remains of more than forty individuals, as well as tools and ornaments and parts of animals too. The top of a skull was found in 1929 but lost again during the chaos of the Anti-Japanese War. As well as wandering around the site - a nice walk but not exactly revealing - you can visit the museum , which displays just enough to ignite the imagination. The first room contains the archeologists' digging tools, contrasting with Peking Man's flint tools, shown later on together with his bone needles and ornaments. No weapons were found - it seems Peking Man lived on nuts and tubers and only occasionally hunted. He was pretty short, with three quarters of the brain capacity of modern man. Copious explanations in English, diagrams and paintings, make up for the fragmentary nature of the objects shown - tools and fragments of bone. Much more dramatic are the remains of animals, fearsome beasts now extinct, found at the site, which are accompanied by models or paintings of what they would have looked like. As well as the teeth of a sabre-toothed tiger, there's the whole skeleton of a huge panther-like creature, and the skull of a deer-like animal with bony plates on its head and thick antlers with a two- metre spread. The last bus back to the city is around dusk.

 

The Luguo Qiao , Reed Moat Bridge (daily 8am-6pm; ¥4), is on the route of bus #339 from the Liuli flyover in the city; ask the conductor to tell you when to get off. It's not really worth a special visit, but it can be combined with a trip to Zhoukoudian if you are in a taxi. Built in 1192, with 250 grey marble balustrades emblazoned with carved lions, each of which wears a different expression, this bridge was described in the writings of Marco Polo, earning it its alternative name, Marco Polo Bridge. Today, substantially preserved, including the elephants holding it up at either end, it's still remarkable, although the area around is pretty shabby and the river has dried up, leaving a dusty expanse used as a practice ground by the capital's driving schools.

WANPING , on the river bank by the bridge, is a small country village, and the site of the first shot fired in the war between China and Japan in 1937, prompted by the illegal Japanese occupation of a rail junction nearby. After that it was only a short step to a full-scale assault on Beijing. The Anti-Japanese War is commemorated by a museum (Tues-Sun 8am-5pm; ¥5) in the village, whose declared message of international friendship seems at odds with its gruesome dioramas of executions and medical experiments, and photos of dead babies.