Haikou Clock Tower – a wonderful landmark location in Haikou

The beauty of Haikou Clock Tower in causeway road overlooking the sea, in the south Zhongshan of Haikou. A beautiful location indeed! The clock has a history dating back to 1686 during the time of Kang Xi, who ruled 24 years in the island who has full control over the sea port.



History of the clock tower

During the rule of Xian Feng in 1858 the Haikou coastal and port activities increased tremendously. By 1923 the trade activities through Haikou port increased crossing all expectations, meantime lack of coordinated timing information created lots of practical problems in managing the movement of materials and vessels. Everybody felt the importance of unified standard timing facilities for an effective management of the entire operations and activities. In 1928 an overseas Chinese business trade man Mr. Zhou Cheng Mei initiated a fund drive to construct a tower clock and later a detailed plan and design for a tower clock was finalized. The clock completed its construction by 1929 with a unified time feature on the causeway wharf road of Haikou.

Character

The clock tower area spread in area of 16 square meters built in five layers. Red brick is used to construct the structure. The clock is fitted on the 5th floor. The round clock is installed in 7 pieces of thick two centimeter marble which is designed in 2 meter diameter dial face. The hour needle is 0.96 meters and minute needle is 1.6 meter in length. The bell chimes in every thirty minutes.



New clock

The bell was demolished in 1987 and a new European Roma bell was installed. It has again undergone major overhauling in 2008. Since the original manufacturers no long produce the watches of these types, the staff managed to configure the parts as per the requirement of the original clock. They had spent about US$ 100,000 in year to maintain the clock.



The all new Europeans Romanesque clock

Now we can see a complete new composition of tower clock with this Europeans Romanesque bell in two diameters with white dial, black border and digital black Roman numbers. The middle of the clock is further embellished with a flower pattern plated in gold color. When comparing to the original bell piece, this new outlook much better in appearance.

The new bell clock was manufactured and installed by Shanghai bell plant city, Antalya. The new clock is automatically synchronized through the GPS satellite positioning system and hence doesn’t have to do manual debugging. It has a tremendous accuracy and accuracy error in a year is recorded as 0.03 seconds. During blackouts, the watch automatically track the correct time as it is synchronized with the GPS. This makes the system perfectly and delivers accurate timing. Four loud speakers are provided to have effective hearing of the chime.

The new clock is designed to give 30 years uninterrupted service. Its needles are specially treated to resist the salt mixture sea wind. During night the clock will be illuminated with the LED light facilities fitted in the clock interior. This is one of the landmark locations one should not miss to watch while at Haikou.