Beijing's notoriously smog-choked environs are soon to be gifted an oasis of respite, courtesy of the Olympic Games. The largest public green space in the country, a 680-hectare Olympic Forest Park will soon open its oxygen-laden doors to the public.
The park is being billed by the authorities as a green lung for what is one of the world's most polluted cities. Built at the cost of 7.7 billion yuan ($1.12b) over a three-year period, the Forest Park is located at the northern end of the south-north axis around which the Olympic village is constructed.

Sandwiched between the towering Jade Dragon and Haba Snow Mountains in the northwestern part of China's Yunnan province, Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the world's deepest river gorges. Here about 1,500 kilometres upstream from the Three Gorges Dam, the Jinsha river (as the Yangtze is known in its upper reaches) thunders its way through the 18-km-long gorge with, as yet, untamed power.