单项选择题

Cities across the country have not learned a thing from tearing down too many historic houses in a massive urban renovation in the last two decades. Sadly, big metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai are setting bad examples.
The recent decision to dismantle a former residence of Lu Xun in Beijing, one of China’s greatest writers and thinkers, has sparked huge public outcry. This is an emergency that calls for immediate government intervention.
In his downtown Beijing courtyard house, known as siheyuan in Chinese, Lu Xun wrote several well-known novelettes, such as Madman’s Diaries and The True Story of Ah Q. These short stories, which are still included in high school textbooks, have influenced more than a generation of Chinese.
The fact that few Chinese writers have had the same impact on the nation as Lu Xun in the last 80 years would make any of his former residences worthy of government protection. This was the very place where his popular stories were authored. This is the place where people could visit and be inspired. New constructions, no matter how tall and grand, are never going to produce the kind of mysticism (神秘) among the Chinese as this old courtyard house.
The tragedy facing historic buildings is also happening in Shanghai, a city boasting a short yet prominent modern history.
The Shanghai Rowing Club, a 1903 eclectic structure with Victorian and Baroque styles along the Suzhou Creek, is also being knocked down. Although officials later revised the plan and promised partial protection after appeals from conservationists such as Ruan Yisan, visitors to the club were appalled to find that the structure, including its landmark swimming pool, had mostly been destroyed. Although the developer may build a replica on the same site, it will no longer be considered a historic house.
These are just two of the numerous stories about ruthless demolition of historic architecture happening across this country. After incessant (连续不断的) bulldozing, many cities have wiped out much of its history. In fact, fewer and fewer Chinese cities can still claim to be historic.
In Beijing, 80 percent of the courtyard houses vanished in just half a century. The same is true for longtang, or alleys, which is characteristic of Shanghai’s lifestyle in the past century.
It is deeply disturbing that the profits of property developers or government revenues from selling downtown plots mean much more than those valuable historic and cultural legacies. It is deeply puzzling that while the rest of the world is doing whatever it can to preserve their history, our cities are obsessed with anything new.
The myopia of city planners and the lack of laws for protecting our history is a cause for great concern.
We have condemned those who destroyed temples and much of the nation ’s history during the 10 years of the "cultural revolution" (1966～1976) as our children seem to have every reason to denounce us for the very same crime.
The author of this article mainly intends to ______.