The clock that measured Chongqing

The first structure on this ground was not stone. In 1940 the National Government began the Spiritual Bastion in the middle of Duyou Street square: a timber tower like a blockhouse, 7 zhang 7 chi tall, about 26 metres, with a spiral stair to the top, a clock, a compass and a wind vane. The height stood for the incident of 7 July 1937, and the name was meant to hold the country to the war. It was finished on 31 December 1941 and pulled down in October 1946, when the ground was cleared for something heavier.

The stone monument was begun on 31 October 1946, when mayor Zhang Dulun laid the foundation, and completed on 10 October 1947. Its shaft is 24 metres high, octagonal outside and round within, with a cantilevered spiral stair of 140 steps to a lookout 4.5 metres across. The base is a bluestone platform 10 metres in radius, with eight steps and eight steles of Beibei stone carrying five inscriptions. The work used 25 tonnes of steel and more than 900 barrels of cement, 150 of them white cement from Italy. In 1950 Liu Bocheng wrote the new inscription.

The monument used to be the highest building in the district; the shops came later and now stand over it. Jiefangbei pedestrian street was the country's first commercial pedestrian street, built in 1997 on 2.24 hectares and enlarged in 2004 to 4.17 hectares, with 27 large department stores inside it. The district around the square holds 90 per cent of Chongqing's domestic financial institutions, two-thirds of its foreign banks and insurance agencies, and three-quarters of the top 500 firms with offices in the city. It stands immediately uphill from Chaotianmen port, at the meeting of the two rivers.