In 2003, the Chinese Xinhua News Agency journalist Wang Jun published the bestseller ""Beijing Record"", the result of ten years of research on the urban transformation of Beijing in the last fifty years. Home to more than 15 million people, this ancient capital city - not surprisingly - has a controversial, complicated history of planning and politics, development and demolition. The publication raises a number of unsettling questions: Why has a valuable historical architecture such as city ramparts, gateways, old temples, memorial archways and the urban fabric of hutongs (traditional alleywa