If I understand any of the basics about modern China, two highly prized life commodities are 1) greenery and 2) space.

I have both, in spades, at the place I am staying, the Beijing Conference Center.

Yes, I do appreciate it. (I so rarely admit to appreciating anything.) And it’s growing on me as we go along.

This is an official media hotel. Not the media village, where I normally stay. But a hotel. Well, in theory it’s a hotel.

But it isn’t really a hotel. Certainly not where I am.

What the Beijing Conference Center is … is about 25 buildings in a very large green space just south of No. 5 Ring Road and just north of the Olympic Green.

Imagine a golf course — lots of grass, but with more trees than most courses, and more flowers than just about anything that isn’t Augusta National — and you begin to get the picture.

A couple of the building are big and unremarkable. Building No. 9 (Communists everywhere like to number things, rather than name them) is about 15 stories and could be a Hilton in Cleveland.

Building No. 6 is maybe 10 stories, and nothing special, either.

However, I’m in a room that is not in one of the two big buildings. I’m about 200 yards east of No. 6 Building in something known as, in oddly translated Chinese, “Courtyard with Houses Around.”

It’s a square area, maybe 100 yards across, behind ivy-covered walls. It’s broken up into 10 courtyards, each accessed by a vaulted door in the brick wall.

Inside the courtyard is all sorts of greenery, including flowers growing more or less wild, and a legitimate sense of solitude and separation. Which is worth lots of money anywhere, but especially here.

The actual room is labeled No. 6 even though there are only five rooms in the building. (Curiously, there is no No. 4 in the building; 4 is considered an unlucky number in China, so there’s that.)

The room is fairly plain, but all you do in your rooms at Olympics is sleep and shower, so it’s fine.

It’s the surroundings that I appreciate.

When I get up and walk, it’s with trees of all sorts around, on brick-laid paths with grass peeping between the seams. During the steamy night, I can hear crickets whirring, and during the hazy days I might even see a jaybird. (Big cities and wild animals of any sort are generally mutually exclusive concepts; Paris was like this, too.)

Walking around the main road is maybe three miles, and if you take some detours, you can make it four miles, no problem.

The grounds also have several fountains, which always are visually appealing. And a series of linked ponds … the Chinese being fond of ponds, it seems, as well as little bridges to build over them. Only problem with the ponds is … the water is stagnant and scummy, here or there.

I found out the other day how they keep the insects under control. They spray insecticide fairly vigorously, which might account for some of the sweet smell of the place. I was about halfway through a walk today when I came across a group of four men spraying the upper reaches of what appeared to be a willow tree. The guy with the nozzle had a mask; the three guys on the truck did not.

I tried to hold my breath as I hurried past. If the stuff can kill insects …

But, insecticide and the scum on some parts of the pond aside … it’s really a wonderful place. I can see why companies would hold conferences there, because it allows you to feel detached from the hustle and bustle of life in a city of 13 million. And a country of 1.3 billion.

I can hear the freeway, but it’s more background noise than aural pollution. And the air is shaky; but where in this city is there more oxygen than this sprawling parcel?

I really had no idea what the place would look like. But I’m positive it’s far more pastoral, far greener than the media villages I normally stay in during these Olympics gigs. I’m certain the man in the street here would consider a stay in my Courtyard with Houses Around to be tantamount to a vacation.