Most cities have their ghosts. Peking (Beijing) is no exception. But as well as imperial concubines, strangled eunuchs and the reminders of more recent political struggles, Peking has ghostly buildings. They are everywhere. Behind a factory wall is a temple. A cadre school hides another, a kindergarten a third. A museum was once a noble's palace. The Academy of Social Sciences sits on the site of the imperial examination halls, while a ring road replaces the city walls. Old Peking sits amid modern starkness. Recent years have seen attempts to save or restore some of the character of bygone days. Some hutong will be preserved and temple fairs revived. Books of photographs of the old city find a ready market. In the middle of Peking, close to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, sits the largest ghost of all, the former Legation Quarter. Once the symbol of foreign dominance of China, it is now disappearing before the city's developers and the ravages of neglect. Sixty years ago, when to visit the Great Wall had not yet become the ambition of all travellers to China, the Legation Quarter often occupied more space in foreign guidebooks than the Temple of Heaven or the Lama Temple. Today, its existence is scarcely mentioned.

After 1949, the new government set out to reclaim the Legation Quarter for China. It was relatively easy. War and revolution had disrupted the arrangements of the past. Many of the former Legation buildings were empty since their former occupants had not established relations with the new China. Friendly nations like the Russians were willing to comply with Chinese demands. Others like the British were subjected to pressures which in the end forced them to move. By the early 1960s, the Legation Quarter was Chinese. Chinese organizations now sat where foreigners had once lorded it over them. If the Cultural Revolution had not swept upon the scene, some of the buildings might have been better preserved. But in the throes of a movement attacking both the old and the foreign, the Legation Quarter was lucky to escape destruction. Instead, it survived neglected for the most part. Today it is the demands of the developers which threaten the remainder, though perhaps China's rulers would not be unhappy to see the Quarter's final disappearance. Tianjin or Shanghai may be able to see merit or even part of China's history in old foreign-style buildings.