There are not many historical accounts which could hope to fly from bookshelves with the speed of "An Evolutionary Record of Beijing City". This book, written by Wang Jun over ten years, and published by San Lian Press last October, has already sold out several times over at China's major online bookstores.

   And a browser who picked it up at a more conventional bookstore might be further swayed into buying by its appearance: a cover seemingly yellowed by age, a title written in faded ink, and a picture of a digitally-reproduced city wall above a genuine ruin. This art work faithfully depicts that which the text contains; a guide to a historical period about which many are curious but few are knowledgeable.

    "An Evolutionary Record of Beijing City" is concerned with the infrastructure and reconstruction of this ancient capital during the past century, a time of great changes for the nation as a whole.

    Its special angle has helped to push it into the top ten books of the last 12 months for many critics. Li Hui, a critic from the People's Daily says, "This is a book of great historical value. There were a lot of disputes about the resettlement of Beijing, but it is the first book that described the changes Beijing undertook with detailed and comprehensive historical data."

    After 850 years of service as the capital, Beijing has the best-preserved imperial city in the world, with a huge palace complex still intact as well as a residential area which includes courtyards and hutongs. But the old city was faced with numerous questions after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. For example, where should the administrative center be placed, and should the ancient but historical city walls give way to practical but unpleasant ring roads? A heated debated began between architects and city planners as to what should be done.

    This book represents a decade of work for Wang Jun, a journalist with the Xinhua News Agency, including numerous interviews, historical documents, archaeological visits and reams of notes. Yet his initiative was nothing more than simple curiosity.

    "I'd been studying at university in the city for four years when I suddenly realized that I knew very little about the ancient capital: I didn't know that the city wall had been standing there for several hundreds of years, I only knew it was a serious problem when they demolished it. I wanted to understand what had happened but it took me ten years to bring an end to this simple curiosity. "

    Liang Sicheng, a celebrated architect who died in the 1970s, is a key figure throughout the book. The architect brought up the concept of New town and Old town in city planning. Together with another famous architect, Chen Zhanxiang, the two made a draft during the 1950s outlining how Beijing could be constructed. Their input came at a time when Beijing's first modern blueprint for development was being worked out.

    The two architects suggested building a new city center in the Western suburbs of Beijing, in order to give room for new city development whilst at the same time preserving the old imperial city. It is a great pity that their suggestion was rejected.

    The book gives broad coverage of the conception but ultimate rejection of this draft plan, interweaving it with the struggles and lives of the architects. Many reviewers feel that this book reads like a biography of Liang Sicheng, something which was actually the author's original idea.

    "I've long been thinking of writing a biography of Liang Sicheng. That has been my dream for many years, as I've been deeply impressed by his persistence in attempting to preserve the old city. At the same time, I wanted to introduce him against the background of the founding of new China, but during the writing process, I realized that one book could only achieve one major goal. So I changed my focus."

    Although the writer insists that he is just trying to recreate the period for us and is objective in his accounts, one can read between his lines deep regret for the city's past and concern for its future.
    Here's an excerpt from the chapter "The Movement of Demolishing City Walls"

    In the 1950s, the outer city walls were completely pulled down. In 1965 the inner city walls began to be eradicated for the sake of building the city subway.

    At that time, a young man, taking with him his beloved painting folder, started a lonely project---- He wanted to draw the portraits of the dying old city walls which he loved so passionately.

    During the years when the city walls were pulled down one after another, the young man worked out a large amount of watercolor paintings of them, which have become precious historical materials for the research of the old city walls in Beijing. 23 of the striking paintings were included in the 1994 edition of Beijing Atlas.

    The young man who drew the old city walls is in his seventies today. He is Zhang Xiande, the adviser of Beijing Cultural Relics Research Institute, and First-Class Artist with the Beijing Film Studio.

    Yongdingmen Gate is undoubtedly the most important of the outer city walls, because it is southern tip of Beijing's central axis. In 1956, when Zhang Xiande hurried to the Yongdingmen Gate, he found the gate standing like an old man awaiting his end, lonely and bare-handed, whilst the surrounding walls had already been destroyed. This era marked the end for the outer city walls of Beijing. Channeling sadness from heart to brush, Zhang Xiande painted the gate's lonely and dilapidated body.

    Wang Jun says, "As a journalist, I have had close and frequent contact with the city, and witnessed many of the problems which face a city undertaking radical changes, some of which are dangerous and painful. These questions have pushed me into reflection and effectively cornered me into writing history. With these questions in mind, my academic research may therefore be different to other researchers. Problems which may be of no concern to them may be important to me."

    Another thing that makes the book distinctive is the abundance of pictures. There are about 300 pictures found throughout the account, many of which have never before been seen by the public. Accompanying these various historical works are pictures of a more manufactured kind. The author has used digital technology to reproduce the demolished ancient city fortifications in the places where they were originally located. Transparent sketches of ancient buildings stands against wide modern boulevards with their constant stream of cars, giving readers a strong visual impression of not only what has been gained but also what has been lost.

    As traffic problems become evermore serious and even become a major obstacle to Beijing's development, many people are beginning to reconsider the value of Liang Sicheng's propositions. And while watching yet another hutong be replaced by yet another skyscraper, Wang Jun must be hoping he's not the only one who is asking whether the sky really should be the limit when it comes to city construction.