I awoke at my normal time of 7 am, but lazed in bed for another half-hour, then showered and ventured out to purchase oranges, water, a bar of soap and styling gel for Heather. And to get money from the ATM. We have hardly used our visa card here – it’s cash for everything.
When Heather was ready we set out to hear the drumming performance in the Drum Tower, but soon discovered hat her camera wasn’t working. I returned to the hotel to swap memory cards with my camera, checked that her card had, in fact, died. Since my camera is not, for the moment, operational, there is no loss. But the delay meant that we got to the Drum Tower shortly before the 11.30 performance. By the time we bought tickets, negotiated the security check, the ticket check, and climbed the 70 steep stairs to the drum room the performances was just ending. 
We could of course hear it as we climbed the stairs, but missed the visual presentation. Heather took quite a while t get her breath back after the climb. Each riser is close to one foot, and the angle of climb is steep. Besides the drums which are now used almost exclusively for tourist performances, there are a number of replicas of historical drums, including one that had no information attached to it. It is very large, 2-3 metres in diameter, but no more than half a metre deep. Unlike the performance drums, which have plain cowhide for the drumming surface, this monster drum has very ornate decorations in red. And, at the back of the drummng room, covered in dust, is the remains of the old watchman drum, its skin surface half gone, and, as the plaque asserts, still showing knife cuts from the Eight Allied Forces who ravaged the city in 1900. This was not the first reminder of the bad behaviour of the Allied forces during the Boxer rebellion; in the summer park yesterday, plaques also made note of items “ravaged away” or “robbed away” by those same troops. Even if young Chinese do not know their history, there are reminders of at least one event in the relatively recent past.
The tower also conatins two methods for keeping time, one based on the rate of water fall through four vessels, each named, the other based on the fall of brass balls through a series of tubes. The water-based one had a number of carefully marked thin planks that were held upright in the lowest container, each corresponding to a Chinese lunar month. By inserting the correct plank for the month, the watchman could read off the time of day and the day of the week, and strike the drum with the appropriate number of strokes. The brass ball-based one struck a cymbal at the right time, again prompting the watchman to do his work.
I don’t think we will get to the Bell Tower. Its climb is even higher!
We had lunch in a little arts café called Sculpting in Time, in the square between the two towers. Very pleasant, although they had run out of croissants and waffles. We also bought a replacement memory card for Heather’s camera, Ithink at a good price of Y180 (initial offering Y260). With 4gig of memory it will give a little more flexibility than my 2gig card.
We had a rest in the afternoon, and got downstairs in time to meet Gordon. Since we still did not feel up to a long hike, Gordon chose a French/Vietnamese restaurant just 100 yards down the road. Gordon was in fine form and we had a great evening, full of laughter. We then finished off the evening at the dessert shop next door. If we had not had an early start on Sunday, I think we would have prolonged the evening even further.
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