For the 100th anniversary of the Longines Spirit Zulu Time and the commemorative launch of its Spirit Zulu Time 1925, the Swiss luxury watch brand brought an exhibition to Beijing. Between 21 June and 6 July, you can visit the immersive exhibition at The Guàn, a museum dedicated to the Central Axis of Beijing in a historical Taoist Temple.
Called “What Time is It There?”, the exhibition was created with the theme of “navigating through time and space” with 9 different scenes from London, New York, Istanbul and Saint-Imier, Switzerland, the home of Longines watches. Visitors gaze from a lounge modelled after airport departure lounges, where you can see the 4 cities’ time zones. Vintage specimens such as the 1908 Longines dual time-zone pocket watch, the 1937 dual time zone dashboard dial and a 1990 watch Longines made for Swissair are on display.
Zulu Time is the name used by aviators and the US Military for UTC or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Longines’s Zulu Time was thus named for being the brand’s first-ever dual time zone wristwatch designed for aviation and travel. In keeping with the longitudinal theme, the site of the exhibition is held at the Central Axis of Beijing, symbolising the Zulu +8.00 time zone, inscribed as a UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2024.
Longines also brought in its brand ambassador Taiwanese actor Eddie Peng and Chinese actor Li Yunrui, to preview the exhibition. On Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, the topic “Exhibition on the Central Axis of Beijing” (#北京中轴线上的展览#) gained 9.58 million views, ranking number 16 on the Hot Search list. The exhibition not only showcased Longines’ history and tradition in innovation, but also embraced Chinese cultural elements by hosting it in a 700-year-old Taoist temple. The exhibition seems to succeed in articulating its concept of aligning the prime meridian and the Central Axis of Beijing.