Beijing’s Zhuzhong Hutong: A Giant Bell, a Legend and a Scholar’s Story

North of Beijing’s Gulou West Street lies an unassuming little lane named Zhuzhong Hutong. Its name sounds distinctive for a reason—it was once the imperial bell-casting site of the Ming Dynasty.

This short alley harbors a colossal bell, a touching legend, and the story of a great scholar’s later years.

 Where is Zhuzhong Hutong, and Why the Name?

Zhuzhong Hutong is easy to locate: it leads east to Old Gulou Street and south to Gulou West Street. Taking initial shape in the Yuan Dynasty, it was officially named “Bell-Casting Factory” in the Ming Dynasty, the imperial workshop where giant bronze bells were forged. For hundreds of years, the destiny of this hutong has been closely intertwined with bells.

Two National Treasures Cast Here

In its heyday, two giant bronze bells worthy of the title “national treasures” were cast here:

• The Yongle Bell (also known as the Huayan Bell): Weighing 46.5 tons and standing 6.75 meters tall—about the height of a two-story building! What’s more remarkable is that its inner and outer surfaces are neatly inscribed with 227,000 characters of Buddhist scriptures. Today, it is housed in Beijing’s Big Bell Temple Museum and is the bronze bell with the most inscribed characters in the world.
• The Time-Telling Bronze Bell of Beijing’s Bell Tower: Even heavier, this bell weighs 63 tons and stands 7.02 meters tall, making it the largest existing ancient time-telling bell in China. To this day, it still hangs in Beijing’s Bell Tower.

How Were Bells Used to Tell Time in Ancient Times?

In ancient China, people relied on bell strikes to tell the time, and there were strict rules for the strikes: Eighteen rapid tolls, eighteen slow tolls, and another eighteen moderate tolls. One full round of strikes added up to 54 tolls, and repeating the round made a total of 108 tolls. Why 108? As explained in Seven Notes on Miscellaneous Studies, a book from the Ming Dynasty, a year consists of 12 months, 24 solar terms, and 72 pentads (a pentad equals five days in ancient China), which add up to exactly 108
—This number symbolizes the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one.

A Poignant Legend: The Bell-Casting Goddess

A moving folk legend about bell-casting has been passed down in the hutong for centuries. It is said that during the Ming Dynasty bell-casting project, all attempts repeatedly ended in failure, and the master craftsman in charge faced severe punishment. The craftsman had a daughter named Huaxian, who, in a bid to save her father, leapt into the blazing hot melting furnace. Only then was the giant bell successfully cast. To honor her sacrifice, later generations hailed her as the Bell-Casting Goddess and built the Temple of the Golden Furnace Goddess of Bell-Casting in the neighboring Xiaohei Hu Hutong to offer sacrifices to her. Today, the temple is no more, and its original site has become an ordinary residential compound, but the legend lives on.

 A Scholar’s Perseverance in the Hutong

In modern times, Zhuzhong Hutong welcomed a special resident—the renowned thinker and scholar Liang Shuming, who resided in Courtyard No.41 for about seven years.

It was the 1960s and 1970s, and Mr. Liang lived in a simple, shabby, small house that was bitterly cold in winter and swelteringly hot in summer. Despite such harsh living conditions, he made a desk out of a worn wooden crate, and at this makeshift “desk”, he persisted in his scholarly work and completed On the Similarities and Differences Between Confucianism and Buddhism, as well as the entire manuscript of Man’s Mind and Human Life. This spirit of upholding academic research in adversity endows this ordinary hutong with a profound scholarly integrity. Today, many small structures have been built in Courtyard No.41, making it barely recognizable from its former days.

 Zhuzhong Hutong Today

Today’s Zhuzhong Hutong is rather narrow and shaped like the Chinese character “厂” (factory). Though some courtyards have been renovated, most of the lane is lined with low, simple bungalows with weathered gray bricks and tiles, still retaining the plain architectural style of a Ming Dynasty industrial zone from hundreds of years ago.

Standing in this hutong, as you gaze at the blooming Chinese rose flowers on the wall tops and the weathered old walls, you can almost imagine the scenes of the past: the thunderous roar of forging the world’s largest ancient bell once echoed here, the tragic and touching legend of a girl saving her father has been told for generations, and the lane also witnessed a great scholar’s unwavering perseverance through trying times. This short little hutong has thus layered and imprinted the industrial glory of the Ming Dynasty, the warm folk legend of ordinary people, and the moral integrity of a modern scholar onto one another, whispering silently of Beijing’s 600 years of vicissitudes and enduring vitality.