38 C O N T E X T 1 4 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 7 The DrumTower in Hangzhou was originally built in the 7th century AD, and rebuilt several times following wars or fires. From the 7th century to the early 20th century it served as the city’s main time-telling facility. During the cultural revolution (1966–1976) the Drum Tower was subjected to iconoclastic attacks and suffered severe damage, being reduced essentially to a ruined stump. In 2001 the municipal government decided to reconstruct it. The project was finished in 2003, and the new-old Drum Tower opened to the public in the same year. The rebuilt Drum Tower perpetuates the Chinese traditional style of the Qing Dynasty.The building covers 1,046 square metres and is 19.8 metres high. Its base was constructed of grey brickwork, and the tower above has a rectangular, tiered shape, with external eaves decorated with series of timber arches.The DrumTower features a double-eaved roof, evoking the traditional ‘Xieshan’ roof-pattern (a mixture of gabled and hipped roofs). Its plan is oblong, five bays long and three wide. The reconstructed structure has two floors.There are two arched openings on the ground floor, the bigger one being a pend archway giving access to the rear of the tower. The smaller archway is the door of the groundfloor hall, where a display collection of cultural relics of the historic tower is housed. From here a staircase leads up to the first floor, whose main hall houses one huge bell and nine drums of assorted sizes.Visitors can strike the bell and drums, and experience other folk customs, such as dragon and lion dances, and view exhibitions of folk artefacts. To the north of the rebuilt Drum Tower stands a famous Christian Gulou Church, known popularly as the DrumTower Church.This was an even more radical case of ‘renewal’, involving semi-facsimile-rebuilding on a different but contiguous site. Originally constructed in 1885 on Buyi Lane by a North American Presbyterian congregation, the church was reconstructed in 1931 in a Chinese architectural style by an American missionary. The finished church had the appearance of a grandiose Chinese palace, with green pantile roofs, grey brick walls and painted ceilings. Like all other churches in China, the Gulou Church was taken over and secularised by the communist government in the 1950s. In the cultural revolution it was converted into a warehouse. In 1979, the church was returned to its congregation and services were resumed, but two decades later, in 1998, the site was requisitioned for construction of the new Zhonghe Highway, and the church was demolished. Four years later, a partial facsimile, incorporating many of the original materials, was rebuilt in Datong Lane, close to its original location. The new DrumTower Church, rising to five storeys, covers 1,500 square metres. The gross area, including private open space, is 4,100 square metres.The shell of the church is constructed of exposed grey brickwork within a concrete frame. The architectural style is an idiosyncratic amalgam of modernist and western classical elements. A large cross crowns the five-storey structure, which is prominently visible from the highway nearby. The first floor of the church contains a lobby area and a small chapel. When building the new church, the architects tried to preserve some elements of the old one.This small chapel retained the form of the original church.The banners on both sides feature calligraphy by a Chinese general who was a devout Christian. Worshippers proceed through a hallway to the second floor, where the main chapel is located.The main chapel, accommodating about 1,200 people, is lit by a combination of skylights and side windows. Its ceiling is plainly vaulted, with few features other than the skylights. In addition to the rebuilt Drum Tower Church and the McDonald’s restaurant, Hangzhou features several other western-style classical buildings, including the Hongyu Textile Store, the Zhejiang Xingye Bank and other structures.A somewhat greater number of earlier20th-century modernist buildings also survive, adding further to the rich diversity of heritage structures in the city’s historic district. Further reading Tan Li (2004) Pavilions, Shandong Pictorial Press Ma Shiyong (2004) Ancient Architecture in Hangzhou, Hangzhou Press ZhuYongchun (2012) Chinese Architecture Essence, China Architecture and Building Press Sun Peifang, a lecturer in the school of civil engineering and architecture at the Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China, has been awarded a scholarship by the China Scholarship Council to pursue study as an academic visitor in the UK. The Drum Tower seen prior to the Cultural Revolution (Photo:Tan Li, 2004, Pavilions, Shandong Pictorial Press) Far right: Present-day view of the Drum-Tower Church (Photo: Ma Shiyong, 2004, Ancient Architecture in Hangzhou, Hangzhou Press) Present-day view of the Drum Tower and the Drum-Tower Church (Photo: Sun Peifang)
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