In Beijing's Building Frenzy, Even an 'Immovable Cultural Relic' Is Not Safe.

BEIJING -- Even in its prime, the house at 24 Beizongbu Hutong was no architectural jewel, just one of countless brick-and-timber courtyard homes that clogged the labyrinthine heart of this ancient imperial capital. But for seven years in the 1930s, it sheltered one of modern China's most fabled couples, Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, Ivy League-educated architects who had returned home to champion the notion that a great nation should hold dear its historic patrimony. It was Mr. Liang, the debonair son from an illustrious family of intellectuals, who urged the victorious Communists to preserve Beijing's Yuan dynasty grid and its hulking city walls. Mao, the country's unsentimental leader, thought otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]