A house that doubt built

A dilapidated courtyard house demolished in central Beijing last year was not the first to fall victim to a developer's bulldozers.

But its destruction sparked a huge public outcry because it was the former home of a man who had dedicated his life to preserving the mainland's architectural heritage.

The brick-and-timber home at No 24 Beizongbu Hutong that was levelled by a state-owned developer still bore the scars of a botched demolition attempt two years ago and the ravages of the Cultural Revolution.

Conservationists had campaigned for years for the former home of Liang Sicheng and his wife, Lin Huiyin, to be given full heritage status to ensure its protection as a cultural symbol.

'We do not look to the former residence of a famed person for architectural mastery but for the legacy he or she left with us,' said He Shu zhong, the founder of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Centre, a conservation advocacy group. 'Those in favour of the demolition are either ignorant or shameless in their pursuit of interests other than cultural preservation.'

Lin and Liang, who died at the age of 70 in 1972, lived nearly seven years in the courtyard house in the 1930s after they returned from the United States, where Liang had studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Over the years, the couple and their colleagues surveyed 1,823 ancient architectural structures in 137 counties, including the famed Anji Bridge - the world's oldest single-span stone arch bridge - in Hebei's Zhao county.

Liang, recognised as the father of modern Chinese architecture, petitioned the central government from 1949, when the Communist Party took power, to preserve Beijing's characteristic grid of hutongs and its landmark city walls, dating back to the Yuan dynasty.