Beijing can be a health hazard because of its dreadful pollution, and horrible traffic.
On the other hand, living near Sanlitun offers us easy access to the many vibrant aspects of a very much modern and diverse world city. So many things to see and do. So many restaurants to try out, basically whatever food you want you can find in Beijing.
Here I show pictures taken during the period April to August 2014, to give some idea. Part 2 is September to December 2014. It is not supposed to give a full overview, just some snapshots. Up to you to explore yourself. I will post more in the future.
The Village, now named Tai Koo Li (dreadful name; also known in Chinese as Taiguli) is probably the epicenter with many shops like Apple, Godiva, Adidas, UNIQLO, Hollister, Swarovski, etc. Plus a long list of restaurants, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Union Bar and Grill, supermarket, shops and more shops on all levels. And the big Movie house, Megabox. The South Area is very animated, the North Area is much more quiet and also sits next to The Opposite House, a boutique hotel with well-known restaurants and exhibitions. Also in the same area is Nali Patio (full of restaurants and a disco too, Migas).
On the square close to the Apple shop there is life throughout the year. In summer the water fountain attracts kids and adults to play around. Or there is a variety of promotional exhibitions with Jaguar, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus, plus indoor exhibitions around the FIFA World Cup, art, consumer goods, …
The shopping and restaurant mall 3.3 also features regular activities, see here vintage cars coming to Beijing.

With the name of the picture you find the date it was taken.
Of course along 3.3 and The Village we have the Sanlitun Bar Street, with the local bars; most have live bands, cheap drinks, heavy smoking and fake booze.
Winter is also special when the whole area is adorned with lights to make it feel like Christmas. It always attracts masses of people to shoot pictures and the unavoidable selfies.
Close also is the small street where some pretty well-known restaurants and bars are located, like Luga’s, Taps, First Floor, Biteapita, and many more in Tongli Studio. Also home to the food stalls and some creative vendors selling whatever, cute postcards, cigars, DVD, … A good place to sit outside and watch the crowd pass by. Most places have waterpipes (hookah).
Next door is Yashow Clothing Market, now closed for renovation (see previous post).
South is SOHO Sanlitun, another huge area that I have not explored well. It has not yet attracted the huge crowds of The Village.

Lama Temple is the largest and best-preserved lamasery in Beijing. The “Yonghe Temple” is located in Beijing’s Dongcheng District, near the northeastern corner of the Second Ring Road. Lines 2 and 5 of the Beijing Subway both stop at Yonghegong Lama Temple Station.
It was built in 1694 during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) as the residence of the Emperor Yongzheng. It originally served as an official residence for court eunuchs. It was then converted into the court of the Prince Yong (Yin Zhen), a son of the Kangxi Emperor and himself the future Yongzheng Emperor. After Yongzheng’s ascension to the throne in 1722, half of the building was converted into a lamasery, a monastery for monks of Tibetan Buddhism. The other half remained an imperial palace.
The temple is said to have survived the Cultural Revolution due to the intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai. It was reopened to the public in 1981.
The resplendent architectural complex is endowed with the style of an imperial palace, making it distinctive from others. It occupies an area of 66,400 sqm and can be described as a mini-palace with yellow glazed tiles on the roof and red walls circling the group of buildings.
Every element of the temple is entirely symmetrical, with main halls on a north-south axis and wing halls on both sides.
The Temple is arranged along a north-south central axis, which has a length of 480m. The main gate is at the southern end of this axis. Along the axis, there are five main halls which are separated by courtyards: the Hall of the Heavenly Kings (Tian Wang Dian or Devaraja Hall), the Hall of Harmony and Peace (Yonghegong), the Hall of Everlasting Protection (Yongyoudian), the Hall of the Wheel of the Law (Falundian), and the Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses (Wanfuge).
The temple combines various architectural styles of the Han, the Manchu, the Mongolian and the Tibetan.
The Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses the last main hall, is the highest hall of this temple. It is a three-storey building  and contains an 26 m tall (18 m above the ground and 8 m underneath) statue of the Maitreya Buddha carved from a single piece of White Sandalwood. The seventh Dalai presented it to the Emperor Qianlong, the son of Emperor Yongzheng. The statue is one of three artworks in the Temple which were included in the Guinness Book of Records in 1993.

Pics taken in Spring 2014.
The temple is intensively used by Chinese people to pray and ask for favors. Incense is now strictly controlled to reduce pollution and one gets a standard package when going inside. Normally one uses three incense sticks each time at each altar, sometimes the tips are first put into a fire, sometimes just used like that. After kneeling and then bowing three times, the sticks are left in a container. Mostly people have to stand in line for their turn to kneel down.
The admission ticket also comes with a mini disk with a VCD introducing the temple.

More details:
http://www.beijingtrip.com/attractions/lamatemple.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonghe_Temple

The park in Beijing has the longest and best preserved section of the city’s Ming Dynasty city wall. The park is located 3 km from the city center and extends west from Chongwenmen to Dongbianmen and then north to near the Beijing Railway Station. The park features a 1.5 km section of the Ming city wall and the Southeast Corner Tower, which are over 550 years old and surrounded by green park space to the south and east.

Pictures taken on 6 April 2014.
Beijing’s inner city wall was built during the Ming Dynasty in 1419. The Ming city walls stood for nearly 550 years until the construction of the early 1960s when most of the gates and walls were torn down to construct the Beijing Subway, which runs underneath where the walls stood. The subway’s inner loop line turned into the old city at Chongwenmen to stop at the Beijing Railway Station, and did not need to run beneath a section of the wall at the southeast corner of the inner city. Of the 40 km of the original wall, only this 1.5 km section was spared. Inside this section of the wall (north of the wall) are railway yards of Beijing Station. Outside the wall (south of the wall) stood residential homes and small businesses.
In the late 1990s, the city government decided convert the remnants of the wall into a park and relocate the small businesses and homes between the foot of the southern city wall and Chongwenmen East Avenue. Construction began in November 2001 and the park was completed in September 2003.
More details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_City_Wall_Relics_Park