Bridges in China Old and New Illustrated with 50 photographs, presents facets of developing China - Mao Yi-sheng - 1978 - Hardcover - Foreign Language Press Peking

Bridges in China Old and New
From the Ancient Chaochow Bridge to the Modern Nanking Bridge over the Yangtze

China is renowned throughout the world for her beautiful landscape. But the many mountains and rivers which contribute to this beauty also impede land transport and communications. The deep, broad river known in China as the Long River (also called the Yangtze) flows in a torrent from west to east across the middle of the land and was considered in ancient times an unpassable "natural chasm." Communications were difficult in southwestern China where mountain towers over mountain and rivers crisscross each other. As the Tang Dynasty poet Li Po (701-762) put it in one of his poems:

Travel to Szechuan
Is as hard as the climb to heaven.

Man, however, can conquer nature. The diligent and courageous Chinese people have accomplished a great deal in their centuries of struggle against nature. To facilitate communications, ancient Chinese technicians and working people erected bridges of various types across the rivers and deep canyons. Among these, Chaochow Bridge is a masterpiece.

The years since the founding of the People's Republic of China have witnessed vigorous growth in bridge construction. Four enormous modern bridges have been built across the "natural chasm," the seemingly unconquerable Yangtze. The construction of the giant Yangtze River Bridge at Nanking, completed during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, involved complicated technical problems. The solving of these problems proved that China has attained advanced world level in many aspects of bridge engineering. Today bridges span rivers throughout China's vast land. Perilous mountains and torrential rivers - neither can check the victorious advance of China's gallant bridge builders. Natural barriers bow to the ingenuity and strength of the people.

China has a long history of bridge building. Primitive bridges were made of stones piled high in the sluggish streams, or of tree trunks laid across small rivers. Then other bridge-building materials such as rope, bamboo, timber, brick and hewed stone came into use. Pontoon and crude stone bridges had already been constructed as far back as in the Western Chou Dynasty (llth century-770 B.C.). In the 1st century a long stone girder bridge was built across the Paho River2 in what is now Shensi Province, and by the year 282, stone arch bridges were erected in Loyang in today's Honan Province. After that, bridges of these two types were seen all over the country. More and better bridges were constructed during the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) dynasties. Between 605 and 617 the remarkable Chaochow Bridge was constructed in the present-day Cliaohsien. County, Hopei Province. Another well-known project, the stone girder Loyang Bridge,3 was completed in 1059 in Chuanchow, Fukien. Both structures survive to this day. It has been estimated that more than one million stone arch or girder bridges were constructed in ancient China, to say nothing of the big and small timber and suspension ones. Marco Polo, the 13th century Venetian traveller who visited China, recorded in his travelogue that China was a country of numerous bridges, with 12,000 in Hangchow alone. He praised Lukou Bridge (also known as Lukouchiao) near Peking as "perhaps unequalled by any other in the world." By the 13th century, then, China had already built numerous bridges and excellent ones at that.

Since liberation, China has both assimilated modern bridge-construction techniques from abroad and continued to exploit her own outstanding heritage of bridge building. This combination has opened up a new, specifically Chinese, road for the advancement of the art of bridge construction.

A bridge is a common and yet special structure. Common, because it is indispensable for travel across water courses and gorges, which are found everywhere; special, because, built as a road high above the ground, it needs particular materials and should be planned and constructed according to scientific and artistic designs. A country's bridge construction, therefore, invariably shows the extent of her economic and cultural achievements.

This booklet gives a brief account of China's famous bridges, both old and new. Through the scientific construction and excellent architecture of old bridges, the reader will be impressed by China's ancient civilization, while the colossal modern projects built to advanced techniques will show one aspect of the developing China of today.

Contents
* Introduction
* Glimpses of Ancient Chinese Bridges
* Architectural Achievements of the Ancient Bridges
* Bridges Constructed During China's Semi-Colonial Period
* Bridge Construction in New China
* A Review of the New Bridges
* Exploring Our Own Way in Bridge Building
* Postscript