L'horlogerie est une des industries qui a permis la rencontre Est-Ouest. La Suisse en particulier fait partie des premières nations à avoir produit des mécaniques destinées au Céleste Empire.
Il s'agit d'un des personnages les plus importants de l'Empire à la sortie des guerres de l'opium - le gouverneur en charge de la question occidentale dans le sud de la Chine. Un petit détail ne doit pas nous échapper, on remarque une pochette en soie brodée suspendue au côté de sa ceinture: un accessoire indispensable qui contenait une montre gousset de facture européenne, probablement une montre suisse... Du coup, il est possible d'en déduire que c'est justement sa montre que Ruilin tient ostensiblement dans sa main gauche, insigne de son pouvoir.
Voici la description qui figure au dos de la carte et retranscrite à l'identique: The Water Clock of the Kung Pak Tower, Canton - most ancient, authentic, celebrated and sacred relics of Kwong Tung Province, about 2100 years old.
This time keeper, erected on the top story of the North Worshipping Tower, in the Han dynasty (BC 206), was the invention of a well-known General, named Chin Tau, who was proclaimed "King of the South". It consists of four large brass pots, named after the Sun, the Moon, the Star and the Planet. At the bottom of each pot, there is a little whole, through which the water trickles in drops one after the other, and to a well said to be hidden underneath the Planet, from which the ooze ends. It was so designed that there need no supply of water by any human hand but by a natural source of another well leading to the Sun. - The reading gauge, which bears letters of the 12 hours, (each divided into 8 parts of quarters), begins to pop up from inside "The Planet"at the fourth hour of Mau (i.e. at dawn of day), according to the proportion of water that the latter receives, and it drops down again when the water has finished a days trickling. The North Worshipping Tower was built by Chin Tau, for the prupose of paying respect to the Emperor in the North every morning.
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