http://www.boston.com/dailynews/364/world/Once_the_people_s_clock_Beijin:.shtml

Once the `people's clock,' Beijing's drum-beating ritual revived amid rapid modernization

By Joe Mcdonald, Associated Press, 12/30/2001 13:08

BEIJING (AP) For more than 650 years, they were the ''common people's clock.''

Drums and bells atop towers near the imperial palace sounded across the tiled rooftops of sleeping Beijing to mark the hours through the night. They outlasted three Chinese dynasties before falling silent in 1924.

The tradition is set to resume. On Monday, teen-age martial arts students were to climb the steep stone stairs of the Drum Tower and beat a set of drums that are up to five feet across as the bell in a nearby tower rings.

It's part of scattered efforts to save at least a hint of antique Beijing in an aggressively modernizing Chinese capital that is tearing down imperial-era buildings to make way for shopping malls, apartments and wide avenues.

''We're doing this because it is a central part of the city's history. This was the common people's clock,'' said Zhu Yingli, a manager of the city agency that looks after the 155-foot-high Drum Tower and, 200 yards away, its companion Bell Tower.

The drumming is to become a daily event, repeated twice each morning and afternoon for tourists, Zhu said in an interview in her tiny, book-filled office at the base of the Drum Tower.

Earlier this month, Beijing officials announced plans to rebuild part of the old city wall and preserve a handful of historic sites.

The wall to be restored was built in 1531-48 during the Ming dynasty but dismantled by schoolchildren after the 1949 revolution.

The government appealed for families to return bricks they kept. City officials say they have collected about 200,000 but need 2 million.

The city said it would issue a relic-protection plan early next year for a nine-square-mile area of its old city. It includes two palaces once used by princes.

But such plans will shield only a tiny portion of the city, where a new surge of demolition is due as Beijing sets about building facilities for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The Drum Tower has long been one the city's most prominent buildings, its ornately painted wooden upper story and gray stone base looming above maze-like lanes of one-story brick houses.

It was first used in 1272, a year after the Mongols conquered China. Drums and bells were sounded at 7 p.m. and then every two hours through the night, each time in a pattern of exactly 108 beats.

The tower is set due north of the palace in the grid of streets that defined imperial Beijing. Its timekeeping added a dimension to rulers' efforts to impose similar rigid order on daily life.

Twice the tower burned and was rebuilt the last time in 1420. Drumming carried on through the Ming and Qing dynasties and survived the 1911 revolution that ended imperial rule. The tradition finally ended after 652 when Puyi, the deposed last emperor, was finally evicted from the palace in 1924 and left Beijing.

Even after the 1949 revolution, the Drum Tower was regarded as special. The communist government declared it a national treasure while temples and other ancient buildings were bulldozed or turned into workshops.

The Bell Tower is already in limited use, its bronze bell ringing out the start of the Chinese new year.

In preparation for Monday, the red-columned room at the top of the Drum Tower was renovated and new drums made. The head for the biggest required the entire skin of a bull.

But there is a limit to how much history officials want to revive. Zhu said they drew the line at having the drums beaten at night.

''If we did it then, ordinary people couldn't sleep,'' she said.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 2001