You’ve been to the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall. But that doesn’t mean you’ve seen everything Beijing has to offer—far from it. The capital is a treasure trove of weird, cool, interesting places. We scouted them out and here are our top picks--just in time for the witching season.

Dongyue's Daoist Hell

We bet you’ve driven by Dongyue Temple on Chaoyangmen Wai hundreds of times without ever actually going in. This is a mistake. This Daoist temple houses some of the weirdest, coolest stuff we’ve ever seen in Beijing. The main courtyard is surrounded by dozens of displays, each representing a different office of the Daoist afterlife. And each office includes about 10 statues. Some look like normal people, but most do not. There are frog- and snail-faced water gods, forest spirits with trees growing out of their heads, zombies and all sorts of torture scenes. Chinese religion never seemed so fun, and it’s a great place to get in the Halloween mood. At the back of the temple is the Museum of Chinese Folk Culture. It sounds boring, but there are actually some interesting displays on traditional holidays. For example, did you know there’s a Chinese holiday to celebrate insects? Neither did we.

Details: 141 Chaowai Dajie, 朝阳门外大街141号, Tuesday-Sunday, 8:30am-4:30pm, ¥10.

Wonders of the World

Missing home? Just head to World Park in southwest Fengtai and find yourself surrounded by familiar sites. Okay, it’s not quite like home—the Golden Gate Bridge here crosses the Grand Canyon, and you’ll see the Eiffel Tower peaking up through the Manhattan skyline. Oddly, this is the premier destination for wedding photography in Beijing, which makes it extra fun. If you’re feeling jealous of the blushing brides posing in front of the White House and the pyramids, you can rent costumes from ¥10 for your own photos. It’s hard to choose our favorite World Park site—the huge wooden “Trojan Horse” is out of place and hilarious, and we couldn’t stop laughing over the miniature recreation of Lenin’s tomb in Red Square. But we'd recommend skipping the ¥10 exhibit on “life in modern Africa" unless you like to be shocked and offended.

Details: 158 Fengbao Lu, Huaxiang, 花乡丰葆路158号 Tel: 8361-3344. 9am-9pm (summer), 9am-5pm (winter). ¥65.

Glorious Watermelons

We can’t honestly recommend a visit to the Watermelon Museum unless you’re already in Da-xing, but it is certainly the weirdest place we’ve been in the Beijing area. The immense building houses two exhibition rooms, which will tell you absolutely everything about watermelons. There are glass slides displaying seeds from just about every kind of watermelon in the world, hundreds of models of watermelons, framed calligraphy waxing eloquent about the humble watermelon, a wall of photos of China’s watermelon experts, and a display on a now-discontinued watermelon-flavored toothpaste from Guangzhou. There must have been a power outage here at some point, as some of the wax melons have melted a little and are now slumped over in their display cases, and much of the museum is just random photos that look like the curators Google image searched “watermelon” and printed out whatever came up. The outdoor sculpture garden is also home to a number of truly bizarre, watermelon-related gems.

Details: South side of Panggezhuang government building, Daxing, 大兴区庞各庄镇政府, Tel: 8928-1181 Tuesday-Sunday, 9am-4:30pm (last admission 4pm). ¥20.

Secret Lives of Eunuchs

We had nightmares about the Eunuch Museum for weeks before going, and with good reason. The main attraction here is the Tomb of Eunuch Tian Yi, to which the small museum has been added on. The grounds of the tombs are actually very pretty. Walk through them to the cemetery at the back, and you’ll find that you can go down into several of the tombs. There’s not much down there, but we were still too scared to go by ourselves. The “museum” is really just four rooms with information about China’s imperial eunuchs. There’s a mummified corpse in one room, ancient dildos in another and an extremely disturbing statue illustrating the castration process in a third. Shock value aside, there’s some fascinating information on the daily lives and social status of imperial eunuchs, but unfortunately the information is only in Chinese and the dim lighting makes it hard to read even for native speakers. If you do get through it, though, it’s a very interesting window into an important piece of Chinese history that is rarely paid enough attention.

Details: Tomb of Eunuch Tian Yi, 80 Moshikou Street 石景山区模式口大街80号田义幕, Tel: 8872-4148. 9am-4pm. ¥8.

Museum of Unnatural History

The Beijing Museum of Natural History has dinosaurs, mastadons, some of the saddest taxidermy of all time, and human fetuses in jars. For real. There are some decent dinosaur skeletons, but the “dinosaur park,” a multi-room exhibit of dinosaur models, is more fun. It's a great spot for photos, although some dinos have seen better days—we spotted foam sticking out of at least one dinosaur, and a tail falling off another. The taxidermy isn’t quite so dilapidated, but some of it is so unnatural that it's hilarious, and we’re pretty sure that the chameleon is one of the plastic ones you can buy at the gift store. One highlight here is the human body exhibit. It's hard to find, but you’ll know you’ve arrived once you see big orange spermatazoids on the floor leading the way. The exhibit includes a truly disgusting collection of human fetuses in glass containers (we almost threw up when we saw the last one, which is fully formed and looks like its skin is peeling off), and a pink plastic cave dubbed “the womb experience.”

Details: 126 Tianqiao Nanjie, 天桥南大街126号 Tel: 6702-4431. Tuesday-Sunday, 8:30am-4pm. Tickets are ¥10, but you can call ahead (6702-0733) two days in advance to reserve a free ticket.

Go Postal

Philately sounds super boring to most people, but the collection of stamps at the Post and Postage Museum is anything but. Modern Chinese history buffs and lovers of socialist realist art will have a field day with the current exhibit, which was commissioned to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. You’ll see a lot of Mao, but there’s much more, from stamp series illustrating China’s achievements in building highways to those celebrating the Chinese presence in Antarctica. Other favorites include an amazing 56-stamp series featuring all of China’s ethnicities, and an anti-SARS stamp series. Exhibits on the other floors show the development of the Chinese postal service over history, though you may want to skip the extensive collection of scales used to weigh packages. Yawn. But the museum is free, and definitely worth a look around. The only drawback? No gift shop!

Details: 6 Gongyuan Xijie, Jianguomen Nei, 建国门内贡院西街6号, Tel: 6521-3894. Tuesday-Sunday, 9am-4pm (last admission 3pm). Free.

Fake Disneyland

via Japan Probe

Better known as “Fake Disneyland,” the Shijingshan Amusement Park has gotten a lot of international media exposure for claims that it copied trademarked characters like Donald Duck and Hello Kitty. But the owners maintain that the park is based on Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Despite the fact that “King Kong” here looks an awful lot like Shrek, Shijingshan offers an experience that's far weirder than anything at any Disneyland we've been to. There’s a preponderance of produce-themed rides and sculptures, including one dubbed “fruit and vegetable tribes," where you ride around in little cars that look like cabbages, bell peppers and pineapples. You’ll also find ferris wheels, roller coasters and even a children's ride that centers around a burning hotel.

Details: 25 Shijingshan Lu, 石景山路25号, Tel: 6887-4060. 8:30am-5:30pm (April 1-October 31), 9am-4:30pm (November 1-March 31). ¥10.

Road Rage

The massive Beijing Auto Museum was years in the making, and it only officially opened in late September this year. The collection of Soviet and Mao-era Chinese cars is impressive, and there’s even a Red Flag model that former Chairman of the PRC Liu Shaoqi once rode in. The rest of the collection includes one of the original cars from Benz, which dates back to the 19th century, and ancient Chinese vehicles which measured distances and acted as compasses. Some stranger exhibits show Spiderman with his banana-yellow car, and a life-size model of Batman posing next to the Batmobile. There's also a weird interactive exhibit where you can listen to various car radios. The museum, with all of its realistic driving games, is extremely popular with the 8-12 set. We hate to think what impact the place will make on Beijing traffic, but it’s certainly historically interesting.

Details: 126 South Fourth Ring West Road, 南四环西路126号, Tel: 6375-6666. Tuesday-Sunday, 9am-5pm (last ticket sales 3:30pm). ¥30 (adults).

Maid to Order

via Global Times

Yaneura Café Kitchen Japanese restaurant is known for having waitresses who dress up in French maid uniforms. But recently, Yaneura has diversified, and now you’ll find half the waitstaff in Japanese schoolgirl outfits. The kawaii factor is intensified by an impressive collection of anime posters and a wonderful J-pop soundtrack. But despite all the fun weirdness, this place is neither seedy, nor is it style over substance—the service is attentive and friendly, and the food is delicious. Do not leave without trying the agedashi dofu (¥18), which is insanely good. Everything else we’ve eaten here, from the salads to the grilled eel to the sushi, is decent as well, and prices are reasonable.

Details: 2/F, 8 Xinyuan Xili Zhongjie, 新源西里中街8号2层

Bomb Shelter Bar

via TripAdvisor

Many have heard of the bar carved out of a bomb shelter at the Red Capital Residence, but few have actually been. This is probably because it closes at 10pm, and drinks are expensive. Don’t let that put you off—it’s well worth a visit, and you’re probably guaranteed the place to yourself. You enter through a door disguised as an ornamental rock in the courtyard, and descend down a terrifyingly narrow stairway. The bomb shelter is small and low-ceilinged, so it’s a little claustrophobic, but still pleasant. It’s decked out in communist kitsch with old school military gear, and the drinks are Red China-themed, too. “The Long March” (¥88) is tasty, but “Lin Biao’s Crash” (¥88) will have you feeling tipsy by the third sip.

Details: 9 Dongsi Liutiao, 东四六条9号, Tel: 8403-5308