A Beijing couple's courtyard home has been chosen as one of the nearly 600 "homestays" for overseas visitors during the Games. The couple have fascinating memories to share with their guests, giving an insight into the life in China during the past five decades.

The couple Jing Jichang and Wang Zhixi's traditional courtyard house is an attractive homestay for overseas visitors. [China Daily]

The quiet Dajinsi Hutong is a few minutes' walk from the stylish bars at Houhai Lake in central Beijing. The elegant screen wall, delicate brick carvings and lush trees tempt travelers to reach for the bell.

Thin and of average height, Jing Jichang opens the door with a warm smile. Rather than guiding guests straight into the house, the 53-year-old starts by discussing the origins of the front wall, while his wife Wang Zhixi leads a Japanese tourist into the yard, all the while speaking fluent Japanese.

Their courtyard home has been chosen as one of nearly 600 homestays in Beijing for overseas visitors during the Olympics, and three of the four rooms have been booked out from August 5 to 15. Unlike many hotels, which have doubled their rents, Jing and Wang have kept their original prices - 400 yuan ($58.8) per night per guest, including breakfast.

Having a meal in a hutong house is very attractive to many tourists and Wang is happy to put her cooking skills to good use. But she is worried about which jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) to make, since her diners might be different each day and she cooks them for every dinner.

Jing and Wang have eaten more than enough dumplings over the years and so has their dog, which runs away as soon as it sees them.

"Apart from that, it's great fun having foreign guests staying with us," says Wang.

Jing recalls one humorous episode. He was once drinking beer and eating melon seeds. The hospitable host offered some seeds to an American guest named Michael Donald. But Donald declined, saying that back home, melon seeds were for birds, not humans. Next time he visited, however, he was carrying a 1kg bag of melon seeds brought all the way from the States.

Such stories are abundant in the couple's five visitors' books. They treat them as a family bible and never get bored reading them over and over.

The books are filled with hundreds of comments in various languages. Business cards, photos and even bank notes are stuck to the pages, making the book more colorful and memorable. "It is not a book about our visitors, it's about our friends," Wang says.

The couple also has fascinating memories to share with their foreign guests, giving an insight into life in China over the last half-century. "It's the fruit of our family's painstaking work," says Wang.

Built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the courtyard house was bought by Jing's family in 1949. Jing and Wang were engaged by their families in their childhood and were best playmates in the 300-sq-m traditional quadrangle dwelling.