Changping history rabbit holes
Over the last nine years living here, I have occasionally fallen into an Internet rabbit hole looking for anything I can find about Changping history. There have been many dead ends for me, searching in English.
For history pertaining to Beijing City, there are already a lot of people publishing and presenting fascinating information in English. Among my favorites is Beijing Postcards. We attend their events at the Bookworm as often as we can, even if it means not getting home until late. But for history in my own backyard (that isn't about the Great Wall or the Ming Tombs, that is), I have looked to Chinese sources online.
One trail I followed, for instance, is what had been a mystery to me, the fate of the Changping Drum Tower. I knew it surely had to exist, because most Chinese cities had one and today a few blocks from my apartment are four crossing streets that reference this tower in their names. We do have a fake Drum/Bell Tower in our park that provides a Hey-we're-in-China backdrop to my winter ice skating pictures, but this isn't quite the same thing.
How lucky I was when my Chinese-language searches uncovered much more information about the history and fate of the Changping Drum Tower. And it wasn't just my own ineptitude that hampered my search. Even dedicated history buffs and professionals had difficulty documenting the Changping Drum Tower.
I was surprised that a Google image search turned up very few pictures of the Changping Drum Tower, using Chinese or English search terms. This one particular photo appeared several times in local blogs, and it eventually led me to this news item from 2008.
According to the Xinhua story I link to above, until relatively recently, there were no known photographs of the Changping Drum Tower. The Changping District Archives was able to determine that the structure, which functioned as a Drum and Bell Tower, had been built more than 500 years ago during the Ming Dynasty when the town was called 永安 Yǒng'ān and the county was 昌平县 Chāngpíng xiàn. The historians also knew that that the structure had been restored in 1931, by which time the town was using the name Changping. The historians also knew that in 1971 the tower had to be brought down because of damage suffered in "traffic accidents." But still, no photographic evidence of any of this seemed to exist.
The District Archivists made a general plea on the radio and television in 2005, hoping a photo could surface. Eventually, one was found, but from a Japanese source. The picture dated to the Japanese occupation in World War II. It even came with a note, in Japanese, describing the small city at that time.
There was, however, another source of images of the Drum Tower, though not as clear as the Japanese photo. I found it through other Chinese sites. There had been a patriotic movie, 平原游击队 (Píngyuán yóují duì, translated as Plains Guerillas) filmed in Changping in the 1950s. In a few scenes, the Drum Tower can be seen in the background. I streamed this movie one night on a Chinese website, and took a couple of screen captures.
This is the same angle as the Japanese picture.
This is from the side.
There were other scenes in the movie that sparked my curiosity, like this one. Could this have been shot around the old Changping walls? Or the ruins of a Changping yámen? Or some other town? This could be another rabbit hole.
One of the blogs I found mentioned that the plaque clearly visible in the Japanese picture bears the characters "樓譙." These today would be written left-to-right as the simplified "谯楼 qiàolóu", another word for drum tower or watch tower, though, interestingly, Gǔlóu is the name that is commemorated on today's Changping streets, not Qiàolóu.
This plaque survived the 1971 demolition and is now on display in the Changping Park Stone Garden. I haven't been back to the Stone Garden since I read that, though I walk past it a few times a week. From outside the gate I cannot distinguish which one it might be, but it is in there somewhere, possibly in that white-stucco wall.
The bell, too, survived, and is housed at 大钟寺 (Dà zhōng sì), the Big Bell Temple in Beijing. We have yet to go there to see it, but we will.
While I was poking around the various blogs and websites to learn about the Changping Drum Tower (Yong'An Watch Tower?), I kept seeing mentions of a Changping Museum. I am absolutely embarrassed that I had never heard it, not in these nine years, but I apparently never posed the right questions to the right people. It is housed on the second floor of the Changping Library (which I KNOW I asked about when we moved here and several people told me there wasn't one).
One afternoon, Myles and Brigid and I went to find the Changping Library and the Changping Museum.
It was small, but fascinating. And will be my next post.
For history pertaining to Beijing City, there are already a lot of people publishing and presenting fascinating information in English. Among my favorites is Beijing Postcards. We attend their events at the Bookworm as often as we can, even if it means not getting home until late. But for history in my own backyard (that isn't about the Great Wall or the Ming Tombs, that is), I have looked to Chinese sources online.
One trail I followed, for instance, is what had been a mystery to me, the fate of the Changping Drum Tower. I knew it surely had to exist, because most Chinese cities had one and today a few blocks from my apartment are four crossing streets that reference this tower in their names. We do have a fake Drum/Bell Tower in our park that provides a Hey-we're-in-China backdrop to my winter ice skating pictures, but this isn't quite the same thing.
How lucky I was when my Chinese-language searches uncovered much more information about the history and fate of the Changping Drum Tower. And it wasn't just my own ineptitude that hampered my search. Even dedicated history buffs and professionals had difficulty documenting the Changping Drum Tower.
According to the Xinhua story I link to above, until relatively recently, there were no known photographs of the Changping Drum Tower. The Changping District Archives was able to determine that the structure, which functioned as a Drum and Bell Tower, had been built more than 500 years ago during the Ming Dynasty when the town was called 永安 Yǒng'ān and the county was 昌平县 Chāngpíng xiàn. The historians also knew that that the structure had been restored in 1931, by which time the town was using the name Changping. The historians also knew that in 1971 the tower had to be brought down because of damage suffered in "traffic accidents." But still, no photographic evidence of any of this seemed to exist.
The District Archivists made a general plea on the radio and television in 2005, hoping a photo could surface. Eventually, one was found, but from a Japanese source. The picture dated to the Japanese occupation in World War II. It even came with a note, in Japanese, describing the small city at that time.
There was, however, another source of images of the Drum Tower, though not as clear as the Japanese photo. I found it through other Chinese sites. There had been a patriotic movie, 平原游击队 (Píngyuán yóují duì, translated as Plains Guerillas) filmed in Changping in the 1950s. In a few scenes, the Drum Tower can be seen in the background. I streamed this movie one night on a Chinese website, and took a couple of screen captures.
This is the same angle as the Japanese picture.
This is from the side.
There were other scenes in the movie that sparked my curiosity, like this one. Could this have been shot around the old Changping walls? Or the ruins of a Changping yámen? Or some other town? This could be another rabbit hole.
One of the blogs I found mentioned that the plaque clearly visible in the Japanese picture bears the characters "樓譙." These today would be written left-to-right as the simplified "谯楼 qiàolóu", another word for drum tower or watch tower, though, interestingly, Gǔlóu is the name that is commemorated on today's Changping streets, not Qiàolóu.
This plaque survived the 1971 demolition and is now on display in the Changping Park Stone Garden. I haven't been back to the Stone Garden since I read that, though I walk past it a few times a week. From outside the gate I cannot distinguish which one it might be, but it is in there somewhere, possibly in that white-stucco wall.
The bell, too, survived, and is housed at 大钟寺 (Dà zhōng sì), the Big Bell Temple in Beijing. We have yet to go there to see it, but we will.
While I was poking around the various blogs and websites to learn about the Changping Drum Tower (Yong'An Watch Tower?), I kept seeing mentions of a Changping Museum. I am absolutely embarrassed that I had never heard it, not in these nine years, but I apparently never posed the right questions to the right people. It is housed on the second floor of the Changping Library (which I KNOW I asked about when we moved here and several people told me there wasn't one).
One afternoon, Myles and Brigid and I went to find the Changping Library and the Changping Museum.
It was small, but fascinating. And will be my next post.
Comments