The Olympic Forest Park (Chinese: 奥林匹克森林公园; pinyin: Àolínpǐkè Sēnlín Gōngyuán) is a large, man-made forest park situated at the north end of the Olympic Green in Beijing. Built for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the park has two parts: the southern part is oval in shape and features Aohai lake in the center, and the northern side has a mountain that gives an excellent view of this part of the city. The northern part is outside of the 5th Ring Road. The park was designed by Sasaki and implemented by the Tsinghua Landscape Design Institute. The park features many walking paths and a jogging path. Several small islands in the lake are linked by bridges. The south-east end of the lake has a handful of carnival rides for children.
Layout The Beijing Olympic Forest Park is located on the northern end of the city's north–south central meridian, where the Forbidden City palace is also situated and is divided by the North Fifth Ring Road. The park is composed of a Northern Garden and a Southern Garden which is connected by an ecological bridge that extends over the Beijing's expressway. Within these two garden sections are various features such as the Yangshan Mountain, Aohai Sea, large-scale flower fields, and artificial wetland. The park also contains large sports fields like the National Tennis Center, football field, and hockey field.
Southern Garden The Southern Garden is an area of around 1.5 square miles (3.9 square kilometers) and is well known for the Yangshan Mountain and Aohai Sea. In addition to these two sites, there is a man-made wetland in the northwest area of the Southern Gardens which has a transparent underwater corridor; to the west of the corridor is a small waterfall that cascades down in tiers. Also, during the 2008 Olympic Games, tennis, shooting, and hockey competitions were held in the west of the Southern Garden in three large stadiums adjacent to each other. As of today, only the National Tennis Center remains for its original purpose; there is a large-scale green field in place of the shooting range while the hockey field was reconstructed for football. There are other fields for various sports in the northwest corner of the Southern Garden such as football, basketball, and badminton.
Aohai Sea From the entry in the southern gate, visitors can see a large patch of water which is the Aohai Sea. The Grand Music Fountain performance is also able to be seen from bleachers of the wide open-air square at the south bank. The fountain's highest spout can reach 262 feet (80 meters) in height and is able to change the water into different shapes that correspond to the music's' rhythm.
Yangshan Mountain The Yangshan Mountain is an artificial landscape on the north bank of the Aohai Sea. At the top of the man-made mountain is a viewing platform called Tianjing with two vantage points, Zhaohua (朝花) and Xishi (夕拾), at the west and east sides.
National Tennis Center The National Tennis Center is an area of 200,000 square yards (167,225 square meters) and holds 10 competition courts and six practice courts with a total of 17,400 guests' seats. The stadium is constructed from reinforced concrete with no decoration and pale-grey concrete walls; there is a central court and two main courts that are designed in a dodecagon formation with 12 bleachers on each edge. During the China Open, the top tennis players gather from all over the world to compete at the tennis center.
Northern Garden The Northern Garden is a space dedicated to plants and animals as well as a place for people to be able to immerse themselves in nature. In the center of the Northern Garden, there is a lake, while to the southwest, there are large flower fields that showcases sunflowers, marigolds, and maidenhairs.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
