The antique that Mao destroyed

FIFTY years ago, when China's newly triumphant revolutionaries proposed demolishing Beijing's ancient city wall, Lin Huiyin was appalled. “It will be an irreversible mistake,” the architect told the Communist authorities. “One day you will regret it, and you'll end up building a fake antique in its place.” Miss Lin scores points for her prescience, but not her persuasiveness. By the time she died in 1955, destruction of Beijing's 500-year-old wall was already under way. It was probably the largest and most complete city wall left in the world, but by the late 1960s there was little left save the elegant gate buildings strung out along the ring road built in its place.