鼓楼

This guide to the Drum Tower in Xi'an starts with a boom across the square that turns out to be newer than it sounds, and traces the tower back to 1380, when it was raised to answer the Bell Tower down the road and together they ran the whole city's clock. It follows what that timekeeping system meant for merchants and guards each evening, and what happened to the drums once the Qing dynasty fell in 1911 and Western clocks took over. You'll hear how craftsmen in the 1990s set out to bring the sound back after decades of silence. Time your visit for nine in the morning, when the tower's rhythm returns.