Jianguomen Dajie , the strip beyond the second ring road, is Beijing's rich quarter, a ritzy area given much of its international flavour and distinctive atmosphere of casual wealth by a large contingent of foreigners, upmarket tourists and staff from the weird Jianguomen embassy compound. Eating and staying around here will soon sap most travellers' budgets (first-time tourists can be heard here expressing disappointment that China is as expensive as New York), but the wide variety of shopping offered - good clothes markets, the best Friendship Store in China, and plazas that wouldn't look out of place in Hong Kong - will suit all pockets. The main street is about as far away from traditional China as you can get, but the Ancient Observatory and quiet little Ritan Park nearby offer less packaged experiences.

At the next junction, the Beijing Telecommunications Centre rears above you - like the buildings around Tian'anmen Square, it's another of the "ten years of liberation" construction projects, and suitably grand. Just west, the Aviation Office , the place to buy tickets and catch the airport bus, stands on the site of Democracy Wall, and over the road looms the Beijing Concert Hall , recessed a little from the street, another uninspiring construction.

Xidan , the street heading north from the next junction, is worth exploring, at least along its initial few blocks, though not at weekends, when it's heaving with people. This is where the locals shop, and the area is a dense concentration of department stores . The choice is less esoteric, and the shopping experience less earthy, than in Qianmen. Some of the stores are underground, in basements that were once part of the city's extensive civil defence network.

Within walking distance of the Xidan junction, the Cultural Palace of National Minorities (Mon-Sat 9am-4.30pm, though it's often closed for trade fairs; ¥5) is an exhibition centre for the crafts and costumes of the nation's non Han Chinese. Reduced to statistics, these minorities account for only six percent of the Chinese population, but inhabit some sixty percent of the country's territory, establishing a political significance well above their numbers. The slant of the museum is, naturally enough, one of integration, with all the minority regions presented as moving from a divided feudal past to a common future. It could all be a little more imaginatively and less dogmatically displayed, though the exhibits (including brilliant-coloured ethnic clothing, jewellery and artefacts) make a strong impression, and the cases contrasting peasant and noble wear make their point. Next door, the Minxu Hotel has a good though pricey first-floor restaurant.

It takes persistence to continue much beyond this point, though you might be spurred on by the sight of the trio of distant skyscrapers , bizarre buildings which look like erect, ornamented hypodermics. The first one is the pink Beijing Radio and TV Building , looking like a parody of the original, Soviet-style construction, over which it towers like a protective big sister. The others are foreign office buildings. On the way, you'll pass the Parkson Building on the north side of the next junction, a shopping centre for seriously rich Chinese. On the fifth floor of the south building is an exhibition hall (daily 9.30am-4.30pm; ¥15, students ¥4) with the air of an exclusive private collection, showing masterpieces from the craftwork factories across China - similar to the stuff you'll see in the Friendship Store but of much better quality. Though some items are a little sickly - a Red Army meeting in ivory, for example - the craftsmanship in evidence is astonishing. In case you're peckish, there's a KFC on the ground floor and a giant food court on the sixth.

Two kilometres west of here, another stern Soviet-style building on Fuxing Lu suits its purpose as the Military Museum (daily 8am-4.30pm; ¥5). It's more exciting than its name suggests and worth the trip out here - catch bus #1, which terminates close by, or the subway to Junshi Bowuguan. On entering you are confronted with giant paintings of Marx and fellow luminaries, and of a nuclear explosion, while an enormous rocket stands proud at the centre of the high main hall. With none of the problems that dog other museums of contemporary history in China - the need to tweak the displays with every shift of Party line - the museum does its job of impressing you with China's military might and achievements very well. The exhibits stake out the history of the People's Liberation Army, with heavy emphasis, inevitably, on the war against the Nationalists and the Japanese. Curiosities include, in the rear courtyard, a somewhat miscellaneous group of old aircraft - among them the shells of two American spy planes (with Nationalist markings) shot down in the 1950s.

There's little reason to continue west from here - you can visit the four-hundred-metre-high TV Tower on Nansanhuan Lu (daily 8am-5pm), which offers a spectacular view over the city, but it costs a steep ¥50. It's more worthwhile to head a little south to the Baiyunguan Si , White Cloud Temple (daily 8am-5.30pm; ¥10), just off Baiyuan Lu and signposted in English. You can get here on bus #212 from Qianmen, or bus #40 from Nansanhuan Lu, one kilometre east of the Jinghua Hotel. Once the most influential Taoist centre in the country, the temple has been extensively renovated after a long spell as a military barracks and is now the location for the China Taoism Association. There are thirty resident monks, and it's become a popular place for pilgrims, with a busy, thriving feel to it, in many ways preferable to the more touristy Lamaist temple, the Yonghe Gong. There are three monkeys depicted in relief sculptures around the temple, and it is believed to be lucky to find all three: the first is on the gate, easy to spot as it's been rubbed black, and the other two are in the first courtyard. Though laid out in a similar way to a Buddhist temple, it has a few unusual features, such as the three gateways at the entrance, symbolizing the three worlds of Taoism - Desire, Substance and Emptiness. Each hall is dedicated to a different deity, whose area of speciality is explained in English outside, with the thickest plumes of incense emerging from the hall to the gods of wealth. The eastern and western halls hold a great collection of Taoist relics, including some horrific paintings of hell with people being sawn in half and the like. An attached bookshop has only one text in English, the Book of Changes, but plenty of tapes and lucky charms. The place is at its most colourful during the New Year temple fair. If you're on a bike or are a very committed temple tourist, you could continue south about a kilometre from Baiyunguan to see the Tianning Si Ta , Heavenly Repose Pagoda, a beautiful building stranded to great effect amid heavy industrial plant, though the factories prevent you actually getting close to it.