Next door to the Xiaonanmen Watchtower 小南门警钟楼 (1909) stands the old fire station, and while the watchtower is a protected heritage structure, the fire station is not, so it might get demolished.

Here it is, photographed more than a hundred years apart, c. 1910 and in 2020:

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When I tried to map one of the few existing photos of the Watchtower 警钟楼 at the Little East Gate 小南门, I could not make it feel right. Then I flipped the photo and it worked perfectly. Every time this image is reproduced it is flipped incorrectly.

Wrong:

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These two wonderful woodblock prints at the Princeton University Digital Library depict the events of the 1911 revolution as it reached Shanghai ( Read more... )

For many years I longed to climb on top of the Xiaonanmen belltower, but was always stopped by its keepers. But this intrepid French girl, apparently, managed to do it and saw this:

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Found this image on the longdang.com forum.


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