Back to the future

Intricate and delicate craftsmanship recaptures the sounds and chimes of yesteryear, Wang Qian reports.

After a year of complex restoration, specialists from the Palace Museum in Beijing have given a pair of antique pagoda clock automata a new lease on life.

In the form of a nine-tiered pagoda, the clocks, housed in the Summer Palace in Beijing, not only tell the time, but also put on an automated spectacle every three hours and play four different tunes, including Chinese folk song Jasmine Flower, which was composed during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

"At the 3 and 9 o'clock positions, the pagoda will raise with the melody from about 1.28 meters to 1.58 meters, and at 6 and 12, it will lower," watchmaker Qi Haonan explains.