Living in a traditional courtyard house and becoming a part of a Chinese family were not exactly what Odette Reich had planned when she and her husband Thimo van Riet decided to come to Beijing for the Olympic Games.

Little did they know that the hostel they booked on the Internet would not be able to provide them the promised accommodation and recommend they try an Olympic homestay family instead.

A family, at Nanguanfang Hutong near Shichahai Lake, have their dinner August 15, 2008. The family is one of about 600 homestay families chosen for foreign visitors during the Beijing Olympic Games. [Xinhua]

Little did they know that they would get this lucky in a faraway land.

The house where they stayed for a week is a traditional Beijing courtyard house with more than 150 years of history, located in Qianmachang Hutong, not far from Houhai Lake.

Li Xiushi, the 80-year-old owner who inherited it from her mother's family, had the house refurbished in March, and kept aside six rooms for guests, becoming one of the nearly 600 homes to have opened its doors to Olympic guests.

Wang Zhixi, hostess of an Olympic homestay for foreign visitors, talks to two American guests about the traditional Chinese architecture in Beijing August 15, 2008. Wang's home, at Dajinsi Hutong near Shichahai Lake, a tourist attraction in downtown Beijing, is one of about 600 homestay families chosen for foreign visitors during the Beijing Olympic Games. [Xinhua]

"I hired an artist who spent two months at my house painting birds, flowers and other traditional patterns on the beams," she said.

She also bought an old rickshaw and a bridal sedan chair and placed them in the courtyard, which has made it a hit with tourists as it offers a perfect backdrop for photos.

The retired doctor prepares tea all day for visitors who drop in at her courtyard. They can either sit around a porcelain table sipping tea in the soothing shade of a grape trellis, or, like US tourists Teresa Quigley and Anne Dalton, sit on an old-style Chinese bed and drink the tea served by Quigley's son in the traditional Chinese way.