Media coverage of China's preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games has focused almost entirely on the host city of Beijing. It's understandable: That is where the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube are, where the huge crowds will show up in August, where decisions are being made now about what athletes will eat and how venues will be kept safe.

Kunming has been playing a major, if much quieter, role in China's preparation for the games. The elevation of 1,900 meters, year-round temperate climate and significantly cleaner air than Beijing make Kunming an ideal place for sports training - in fact, the city has been China's national high-elevation training base for more than 30 years.

Kunming's two major training complexes - Hongta Sports Center and Haigeng Training Base - have been a beehive of sports activity, and should only get busier as the Olympics draw near.

"We will be very busy between now and the Olympics," said Zhang Tianyou, general director at Haigeng National Training Center in Kunming.

We went out to Haigeng recently to have a look around. The trip gave us a glance at an important but little-known place in China's sports world, and resulted in a precious opportunity get on the pitch with the women's football team.

Haigeng National Training Center

Haigeng is the official national training center and with its boxy cement buildings and iron-barred windows, the 35-year-old complex looks the part of an old Communist sports factory. The sprawling campus includes eight hardwood basketball courts, weight rooms, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a dozen football pitches, two running tracks, a pool for swimming and one for diving. It also has a large snooker hall, a room for table tennis and a volleyball gym. Tucked away in one corner, Haigeng even has a pair of disused baseball diamonds, a rare sight in China.

Haigeng's setting on Dianchi Lake, past Kunming's award-winning Lakeview Golf Club and an abundance of spiffy new condominium developments, is quiet and clear-skied, and relatively isolated. As professional tennis player Yanina Wickmayer said after playing in a match at Haigeng in November, the location can be both good and bad for athletes.

"The facilities are nice, but it's out here in the middle of nowhere," Wickmayer said. "But that could be good if you're trying to really focus on your training for a little while."

Athletes, coaches and team managers stay onsite in the complex's many dormitories and hotel rooms.

Hongta Sports Center

If Haigeng calls to mind the China of 20 years ago, Hongta Sports Center is a gleaming US$58 million monument to China's future hopes. Just 10 minutes' drive from Haigeng, Hongta was built in 2000 by the Hongta cigarette company, a major economic driver for Yunnan province. While Haigeng is used almost exclusively by professional athletes, Hongta doubles as a sports club for the general public. The general public can use all of its extensive facilities and every weekend, it hosts amateur football matches.

Aside from about 10 football pitches, including one surrounded by a running track, Hongta also has a 50-meter swimming pool with a water slide (which seems to always be out of commission), a badminton gymnasium, tennis courts and a basketball court. It also has one of China's few ice hockey rinks, and a workout room with treadmills and weightlifting machines. Athletes can unwind between workouts in a large game room full of air hockey and pool tables, or in the basement bowling alley. Hongta also has a 101-room hotel and restaurant.

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Several months ago, GoKunming was happy to bring you a review of the swimming facilities at Tuodong Stadium, the site of the upcoming China-Australia soccer (football) match. But when the pool recently doubled the price of admission for foreigners, raising it to 30 yuan, we went off in search of　alternatives, and quite liked what we found.

Both of the pools we visited are located at the eastern end of Dianchi Lu, near where the road meets Huancheng Nan Lu. While they are less convenient for many downtown residents to reach than Tuodong Stadium, which is directly across the street from the Camellia Hotel, they are still an easy 20-minute bike ride from the city center and both have bus stops right outside their doors. Both also offer a significantly better environment than the Tuodong pool. Huge windows on the ceiling and along the walls afford abundant natural light, and the ventilation systems seem better than the one at Tuodong, where evaporated water from the pool drips back down from the ceiling.

Swimming Hall at the Kunming Youth and Children's Centre

Due to renovation of the locker rooms, this pool is closed until January 20. It's an eight-lane, 50-meter pool, inside a big glass bubble. It opens at 6:30 am and closes at 9 pm The price of admission is 15 yuan. The pool does not currently post any closings for swim lessons, but it is frequently used by classes.

Getting there: Take one of the following buses: 44, 73, 91, 120, 106, 152. (the 73 and 44 have stops at Jinbi Lu, and the 120 has stops near the intersection of Renmin Zhong Lu and Wuyi Lu). Get off at Jinniu Xiaoqu (金牛小区), and you will see the campus of the school to your right. The pool is to the left of the parking lot and art gallery.

Just Hotel Pool

Compared to what one might expect of hotel pools, Just Hotel (佳特酒店)　has a remarkable facility. The pool is well-lit and clean, and the locker rooms are also pretty nice. The nine-lane, 50-meter pool isn't very crowded; during two recent trips there, the headcount peaked at 11. Admission is 20 yuan, plus a 10-yuan deposit for a locker key. There is also a kids' pool, with a reduced price of 10 yuan, but that is currently drained. The pool is open from 6:30 am until 9 pm.

Getting there: Follow the above directions, but get off at the next stop, Yanjia Di　（严家地）. Enter the Just Hotel (on your right) and walk straight through the lobby until you see the pool, also on your right.

Kunming native Guo Caizhu placed second in the under-21 age group at last weekend's Faldo Series Asia Final at Mission Hills in Shenzhen. It was the conclusion of an amateur series that began in the fall. Fifty-nine golfers from 10 Asian countries, as well as five European golfers, competed in Shenzhen.

After winning the Kunming leg of the Faldo Series, Guo finished 19 strokes behind Taiwanese golfer Lin Tzu Chi over three rounds at Mission Hills. Lin was the competition's top female golfer, which means she secured an invite to the European final of the Faldo Series 2008 and an event on the European Ladies Tour 2008.

The tournament's overall winner was Rashid Khan, a 16-year-old from Delhi, India. In addition to an invite to the European event, Khan played his way into the Volvo Masters Asia 2008 and won a scholarship to Asian Tour Qualifying School.

Guo said her performance could have been better, but that her opponent had a great tournament.

"She played extremely well," Guo said of Lin. "I'm a little disappointed because of course I would have liked to play in Europe. But hopefully next year I can do better." Guo is now back in Kunming, practicing and teaching at Lakeview Golf Club.

Over the weekend Haigeng National Training Center in Kunming hosted an International Tennis Federation Women's Circuit tournament, with 32 players from 15 different countries playing for US$50,000 in prize money. It was the first time that the circuit has included a Spring City stop.

Yanina Wickmayer defeated her doubles teammate Ursula Radwanska in straight sets (7-5, 6-4), to win the Kunming tournament. The 18-year-old Belgian seemed to have a mental edge over her opponent, with seven out of eight deuces going her way. Wickmayer and Radwanska took the doubles crown together on Saturday.

Wickmayer has been on a bit of a roll over the past five weeks. During the circuit's five-tournament Asia swing, she reached the finals four times and took the title three times. She improved her world ranking from 350 to 150 and played her way into January's Australian Open.

Kunming received mixed reviews from the two finalists. Competing and lodging near Haigeng, they were close to Dianchi Lake and had a great view of the Western Hills, but didn't get to enjoy the city. "The facilities are nice, but it's out here in the middle of nowhere," Wickmayer said. "But that could be good if you're trying to really focus on your training for a little while."

Both players agreed that they could feel some effects from Kunming's 1,900-meter altitude. In addition to a little difficulty breathing, Radwanska added that the balls are flatter in a low-pressure environment. "It takes a few days to get used to the difference," she said.

While out watching the tournament this weekend, GoKunming noticed that Haigeng, which serves as a training ground for Chinese and foreign athletes, is keeping pretty busy. On Saturday, we saw a few basketball teams strolling the grounds and on Sunday we ran into the Malaysian national men's soccer team. Zhang Tian You, a manager at Haigeng, said that he also expects to host teams in various sports from Japan, Korea and Singapore in the near future.

Travel marketers from all over the world descended on Kunming last week for the annual China International Travel Mart, looking to make connections with travel agents and better understand what is generally considered the world's fastest-growing outgoing travel market.

Travel industry suppliers from all over the globe sent representatives to CITM, China's biggest travel expo, which alternates between host cities Shanghai and Kunming. In the evenings, foreign and domestic exhibitors held press conferences and feted the tour operators, travel agents and travel media who attended.

GoKunming didn't find the same complaints that some exhibitors had in 2005 about the city's ability to host the event, but there seemed to be consensus that the show is smaller when it comes to Kunming than when it goes to Shanghai.

"The show is bigger in Shanghai - the crowd is bigger and there are more exhibitors. But maybe you get more visibility here when the show is smaller," said Michael Rudolph, who was representing Air Berlin, a new airline that will have direct flights to Dusseldorf from Beijing and Shanghai. Rudolph also was surprised by the scale of Kunming as a city: "You expect a provincial town but it isn't."

Though the Kunming show may be smaller, it's still important to people like Caroline Zhang, marketing director for the Donghu Hotel in Shanghai. "Every year, the travel agents change. We have to meet the new ones," said Zhang, who brought representatives from her marketing, sales and public relations department. "We have to tell everybody we're still here."

For foreign tourist boards, the vast majority of which do not have satellite offices in China as they do in other major markets, CITM is a chance to learn more about Chinese travelers and make decisions about how to spend their marketing dollars.

The California Travel and Tourism Commission dispatched its international marketing director for the Asia-Pacific region, Matthew Boone, to look into how it could better market California as a destination in China. Boone says the state recently approved US$250,000 in marketing spend in China between now and next June. He says that most of that money will be spent on China's east coast, the origin of 70 percent of travel from China to California.

"That's a lot less than the US$6 million we're spending in Japan, but I expect the amount to increase," Boone said.

One of the biggest and most impressive booths at the event was that of India, a country that became more accessible from China with the launch last week of two new China Eastern routes, Kunming-Calcutta and Guangzhou-New Delhi. Though the routes will largely carry business travelers, they also increase opportunities for tour operators like Amit Prasad, vice president of India Journeys.

"We're getting more tourism interest from China and India is increasing its China marketing efforts," Prasad said. "And our Ministry of Tourism is opening a marketing office in Beijing." He also expects growth in China-bound travel from India. "Kunming has a lot of potential for Indian tourists," he says.

The expo lasted from last Thursday through Sunday, but was only open to the public on the weekend. Most of the international exhibitors' marketing directors and vice presidents of Asia marketing packed up Friday afternoon, leaving Chinese partners or hired help to staff the booths on the weekend.

Though most foreign exhibitors didn't seem to have plans to stick around Yunnan after the event, at least one Chinese exhibitor was planning to take advantage of the opportunity. "I like it when the expo is here because I can do a little traveling in Yunnan," said Leng Jie, business department manager for the Shanghai Zhu Jia Jiao Ancient Town Tourism Development Co. "I'm going to Zhongdian the day after tomorrow."

If you want to pretend it's summer again, what better way than taking a dip in an outdoor pool? And if you want to see some of the craziest people in Kunming, what better way than checking out the crowd that swims in an unheated pool in late October? The Jin Xing swimming pool, near the Beijing Lu Carrefour, is open daily from 6:30 am until 7:00 pm.

When we visited yesterday afternoon, several swimmers did laps while others lounged on the sunny deck. A fellow swimmer told us the water temperature was 14 degrees Celsius (57 Fahrenheit). The water is more than a little chilly; it'll take your breath away when you first jump in, and you will still feel a chill after swimming several hundred meters. Most heated pools maintain a temperature between 22 and 26 degrees Celsius.

If you think better of it after testing the icy water, you can still get a workout. A small poolside gym features a handful of weightlifting machines. And if all else fails, it's a good place to sunbathe when the weather allows.

The Jin Xing Swimming Pool (金星游泳池) is off of Beijing Lu, just north of Carrefour. Walking north, take a right turn immediately after the bridge, and then take the first left onto Jinxing Lu. You will see a red and blue sign that says 金星游泳池 with an arrow pointing to the right. Admission is 12 yuan.

Ever wonder where Kunming's flower vendors get their orchids and dahlias? They come from the aptly named nearby village of Juhua Cun (菊花村, or 'Chrysanthemum Village'), where the farmland is full of acres of houseplants. Unfortunately, they grow under silvery-white hothouse coverings, so you won't be treated to a view of fields of blooming flowers; but the village's wholesale flower market is worth visiting if you want to add a little life and color to your apartment.

The market is busiest in the early morning hours, when flowers are trucked out to Kunming and beyond, but it stays open to the public until around seven in the evening. Dozens of individual greenhouses line the muddy street. Inside, you'll find orchids, jasmine, bamboo, bonsai trees, and lots of other flowers and greenery. We even found good-sized rosemary and lavender plants.

Vases, pots and other gardening accessories can also be found - all for dirt cheap. We bought an orchid plant, ten stems of cut orchid and a rosemary bush for less than 30 yuan. At the back of the flower market is a large area where cut flowers are sold.

Getting There:

It takes about 90 minutes to get to Juhua Cun from downtown Kunming by bus. Take the number 5 from Xiaoximen or the number 11 from Jianshe Lu, to Dong Zhan, which is the last stop on both lines. From there, catch the number 12 bus for 2 yuan. Ju Hua Cun is the last stop on the 12. When you get off the bus, walk back in the direction that the bus came from for a few hundred meters. The entrance to the flower market will be on your left, marked by a banner hanging above the street.

The rain has stopped and the sunny weather is forecasted to last at least through the weekend, making now the perfect time to get out and enjoy Kunming's parks. Here is a guide to some green spaces around Kunming.

Cuihu Park 翠湖公园

Cuihu Park is Kunming's most magical place. Located in one of the busiest parts of the city, it does just what an urban park should do: offer a break from crowded streets and honking cars, and give people a place to meet and talk, sing, dance, drink tea or just watch the ducks swim by.

Right now the musical ensembles are especially plentiful and elaborate, in celebration of the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. It is a good time to see some traditional Chinese music.

World Horticultural Expo Gardens 世博园

Located in the northeast corner of Kunming, the Expo Gardens ('Shiboyuan') are one of the city's most popular tourist sites. It's Kunming's most expensive park to visit, but is worth the 100-yuan entrance fee (Note: From tomorrow until October 7 tickets will be available at a special price of 30 yuan). Strolling the expansive gardens can easily fill the better part of a day. You'll see Chinese-style gardens and greenhouses, ponds and temples. Climb up to the top of Golden Temple for a great view of Kunming.

Heilongtan 黑龙潭

Heilongtan or 'Black Dragon Pool' is pretty far north of Kunming's city center, but if you make it a day and also visit the Kunming Botanical Gardens, it is worth the trip. As you enter the park, you pass through an impressive corridor of bamboo stalks. Pretty quickly, you arrive at a goldfish-packed pond surrounded by beautiful old buildings. If you continue to follow the path toward the "tower," you'll pass more gardens and eventually arrive at the top of a ridge in back of the park, with a great view of Kunming.

Kunming Botanical Gardens 植物园

Not to be confused with the Horticultural Expo Garden, the botanical gardens are a lesser-known Kunming gem, located very close to Heilongtan. From the gate of Heilongtan, take the street that dead-ends into the street where Heilongtan sits. Walk about 200 meters and the entrance to the gardens will be on the corner to your left. The gardens charge an admission fee of 3 yuan.

The botanical gardens are not too extensive—you could easily walk through them in 30 minutes. But on a sunny day, you'll probably want to relax with a book on the grass by the big flower-lined pond in the back of the gardens.

The botanical gardens and Heilongtan can easily be done together in one day.

Daguan Park 大观公园

Located to the southwest of the city center, where a slim finger of Dianchi Lake pokes into the city, Da Guan is about the same size as Cuihu, but with a more linear layout. There is an entrance fee of 10 yuan. For 15 yuan, you can hire a long boat (with a captain) for a few friends to get a closer look at Dianchi. Or you can rent two-seat bicycle (10 yuan) or even a three-seater (15 yuan). The park also has a bunch of carnival games, including something that resembles a cross between a cannon-shooting range and a batting cage. And there are several hokey, creaky, colorful rollercoasters that are just as much fun to look at as we think they'd be to ride. In the back of the park, you'll also find a quiet sculpture garden with a few interesting pieces, and some old locals flying kites.

Wenmiao Tea Garden 文庙茶园

On Renmin Zhong Lu, just past the Wuhua district government building (the tall blue pagoda-shaped building), Wenmiao Tea Garden is tucked into the city so neatly it can easily be missed. For a 1.5-yuan admission fee, you also get a hot water bottle with green tea leaves. The small tree-filled park is composed of a walkway, a bridge, a large pagoda and several restaurant-style booths around the edges. Dozens of old locals play mah-jong and Chinese chess, but somehow there seems to always be an open seat.