Ostentatious is an understatement. The sophisticated clockwork gadgets known in China as zimingzhong or ‘self-ringing bells’, and in Britain as ‘sing-songs’, are anything but subtle. Most visitors who encounter a top-quality zimingzhong for the first time will be immediately struck by two things: the impressive scale of many of these devices – with some standing a metre or so tall – and the detailed decoration gracing them. Zimingzhong can come in many guises, ranging from an elegant model pagoda to a pot of lotus flowers. Alternatives include serene countryside scenes and even a temple of Alexander the Great that bears more than a passing resemblance to a wedding cake. Others, though, closely mirror the devices that share the same practical purpose as zimingzhong: clocks. While familiar, European-style dials are prominently positioned on all of the zimingzhong, there could be much more to these curios than telling the time. Clockwork mechanisms also rang the bells that inspired their Chinese and British names. The finest examples would not merely chime to mark the passing of the hours, but instead incorporated portions of popular tunes, including an extract from Handel’s 1711 opera Rinaldo. As a final flourish, the most complex zimingzhong featured automata – mechanical beings who capered amid the luxuriant decoration.
In the 1700s, some of the finest clockmakers in Europe – such as James Cox, based in London – collaborated with the hundreds of individual craftsmen whose expertise was needed to produce a single ‘sing-song’. One reason why these devices attracted the very top talent of the day was that a lucrative market had opened up for them in China. The earliest zimingzhong had arrived there around a century earlier, with the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci using them as presents to ingratiate himself with the emperor in the early 1600s. Interest in these Western curiosities reached a new level under the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722), a Qing Dynasty ruler who came to the throne at the age of seven, after his father succumbed to smallpox. As a teenager, the Kangxi Emperor was renowned for his exacting work ethic, sometimes studying so hard that he vomited blood. His tutors included French missionaries, and the emperor developed a keen personal interest in European technology, resulting in him becoming an avid collector of zimingzhong.
The emperor’s fondness for these devices provided a valuable opportunity for European countries specialising in clockmaking – such as Britain, France, and Switzerland – to address a major trade imbalance with China at the time. While Western consumers had an insatiable appetite for porcelain, tea, and silk, China had previously proved rather less enthusiastic about European goods. As James Cox remarked, the zimingzhong offered a way ‘to retrieve to this country some part, at least, of those immense sums which the products and manufactures of Asia are incessantly draining from Europe’. The value of the zimingzhong was certainly considerable, with one produced by Cox in 1770 priced at £2,000, making it worth about £350,000 today. But not all of the zimingzhong would be sourced from Europe, as the Kangxi Emperor also wished to nurture the talents needed to make these devices rather closer to home. This ambition set the scene for an extraordinary meeting of skills, people, technology, and culture between Europe and China, as a fascinating exhibition at the Science Museum in London reveals (see ‘Further information’ box below).
