Designed by the Dutch firm, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Beijing's CCTV Tower nears completion. This building, the recently completed National Theatre, the Olympic Bird's Nest and others have a lot of people buzzing about the spectacular development of Chinese architecture. NYT architectural writer, Nicolai Ouroussoff - no stranger to hyperbole - tells us that entering the city from the airport, one has "the inescapable feeling that you’re passing through a portal to another world, one whose fierce embrace of change has left Western nations in the dust." He neglects to mention that virtually all of Beijing's state of the art designs are being created by Western, Japanese, and overseas Chinese architects. Nor does he care to talk about the many ugly, poorly built monstrosities going up next to the "masterpieces" (and there are those, myself included, who would dispute the use of this word to describe the above). Elsewhere, I have read people (non-Chinese) referring to Beijing as a "blank page" for architecture or likening the city to a rapidly growing teen ager approaching maturity. The magnificent Chinese designed imperial city of the Ming and Qing dynasties, most of which has been razed to make way for modern glass and concrete towers, does not even rate a mention in the fantasies of these ignorant, arrogant people. In a rather more perfect world, one has to think Beijing could have had the Western inspired and designed CCTV Tower (for what it's worth) and preserved more of its own priceless architectural heritage.