scene as well. Perhaps the most elegant is the Yudai (Jade Belt) Bridge, a humpbacked feature that rises high like a breaking wave. On the opposite side of the lake is the magnificent Seventeen Arches Bridge that reposes like a symmetrical 150-meter-long rainbow as it rises slowly to a crescendo before diminishing. Hundreds of carved lion figures sit atop the balusters of the bridge. Clearly examples of human ingenuity and artistic sensitivity, these bridges continue to inspire the poetic imaginations of visitors, stirring images and reminiscences that link them to the interwoven fabric of China’s enduring civilization.
In integrating the rational and functional with the romantic and aesthetic, the anonymous builders of most of China’s bridges created tangible links across voids that, to poets, speak of “rainbows lying on the waves” and “turtles’ backs reaching the clouds.” Joseph Needham was hardly exaggerating when he suggested that “No Chinese bridge lacked beauty and many were remarkably beautiful” (1971: 145). Viewing Chinese bridges as architectural structures provides opportunities to comment on Chinese technology, connections with Western engineering developments, and aesthetic traditions.
Viewed by many as China’s most glorious bridge, the Shiqigong (Seventeen Arches) Bridge in the Yihe Yuan or Summer Palace in Beijing, rises like a rainbow in a gentle 150-meter-long arc.
The Bridge of the Twenty-four in Yangzhou was sited so that it is one element in a composition that not only includes nearby water and a pavilion but also “borrowed” scenery beyond, with trees and a pagoda.
At the end of the nineteenth century when this photograph of the Bridge of Nine Bends at the heart of West Lake in Hangzhou was taken, the complex known as Lesser Yingzhou Isle was much as it was in 1607 when it was created—a lake within a lake and an island within an island—using mud dredged from the bottom. Substantial expansion took place beginning in 1982 to reach its current extent.
Rising like a camel’s back or a surging wave, the white marble Yudai (Jade Belt) Bridge in Beijing’s Yihe Yuan or Summer Palace, is one of China’s most beautiful structures.
Sichuan Garden Parks
Unlike the compact metropolitan gardens of the Jiangnan region, characterized by cleverly dense yet elegant compositions of specific elements and an internal focus, the gardens in the Chengdu Plain of western Sichuan tend to sprawl loosely, with rugged, even primitive, elements. Reminiscent of what is known of the evolution of ancient imperial parks and gardens, which Jerome Silbergeld characterizes as vast zoological, botanical, and geological “theme parks” (2004: 208), to later expansive imperial estates, Sichuan gardens preserve an open-style design of loose and fluid components, with an emphasis on water and relatively flat terrain. Rockery, unlike in Jiangnan gardens, is essentially absent, with hills and mountains only glimpsed from afar. Dense bamboo groves, overarching trees, and dark surfaces together project a rustic primitiveness. It is within this natural context that bridges of many types are situated, a good many of which appear as if deposited there by nature—logs fallen across a rivulet, cobblestones deposited after a flood. Good examples are found in the park-like setting for the thatched cottage of Du Fu, the renowned seventh-century poet, where the sculpting and shaping of the overall site and the assembled placement of bridges, water, and associated buildings evoke the naturalism of earlier times in China and an aesthetic that some see even as Japanese. Once-private gardens in Sichuan have evolved into public parks that memorialize the region’s noted historical figures.
This sprawling public garden in Chengdu, Sichuan, centers on the heralded caotang or thatched cottage of Du Fu, a Tang-dynasty poet. It is said that Du Fu chose this location near Huanhua Xi (Washing Flowers Creek) because of its simple beauty. With dense vegetation, including groves of bamboo, the naturalistic garden differs significantly from better known gardens in the Jiangnan region. Paths lead to as well as help define distinctive areas of the garden. Although none of the bridges is ancient, each, as these images show, is a relatively simply composition of stone, wood, and bamboo laid simply as planks or aligned in a zigzag shape.
Historical and Modern Bridges
Over the past two decades, some of the world’s most daring and beautiful bridges have been built in China, achievements essentially unknown in the West. While new bridges in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and a few other large cities are well known, countless other fine bridges have been completed as components of the country’s explosive development of its overall transportation infrastructure. These include innovative engineering approaches that have challenged the structural status quo, including girder bridges that receive some support from cables and even some “next generation” structures that seemingly defy accepted engineering principles and basic physics. Not surprisingly, as elsewhere in the world, the international media reports on failures, such as the Fenghuang Bridge in Hunan, whose collapse in 2007 was attributed to contractors cutting corners, but rarely highlights the extraordinary medium-scale and smaller modern bridges being built throughout the country.
Old China hands remember well the national pride accompanying the completion, in December 1968, of the Yangzi River Bridge at Nanjing, a majestic double-decker, double-track highway and railway bridge, which Western engineers had claimed would be impossible to build at the site. Today, there are more than fifty bridges spanning the Yangzi, with another sixty planned to be added by 2020, each one deemed necessary in order to nurture interregional trade. The Chinese press heralds the completion of each new bridge in terms of originality and importance, many of which are world class. Shanghai’s Lupu Bridge over the Huangpu River, opened in 2003, which has a main span of 550 meters, is the world’s longest arch bridge. In eastern Zhejiang province, the Xihoumen Bridge, now the second longest suspension bridge in the world, was completed in December 2007, overtaking the Runyang Bridge linking Yangzhou and Zhenjiang in 2003, which at the time was China’s longest suspension bridge. In the summer of 2007, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge became the longest transoceanic bridge in the world, although it does not have the longest cable-stayed main span; it is expected to be open to traffic in 2008. A feasibility study has been carried out to build an even longer cross-sea suspension bridge across the Qiongzhou Straits between Guangdong and Hainan provinces. The completion of new structures in provinces and counties is always a time to savor— and boast about—the technical, economic, and aesthetic significance of bridge building.
Spurred by the need to rebuild and refashion China’s large, medium, and small towns and cities, planners and architects have brought about a transformation of urban landscapes, including not only the development of transportation infrastructure but also the expansion of green spaces, including parks as well as tree-lined roads, canals, and streams. Such developments, unfortunately, have brought in their wake the well-documented and tragic destruction of cultural landscapes, including the demolition of countless old houses, neighborhoods, temples, and bridges, all in the name of progress. As is well known, moreover, environmental degradation has fouled the air and water over much of China at a scale that is intolerable, increasing dangers to the health and quality of life of hundreds of millions of people. At the same time, even in a city as polluted as Beijing, the investment in green spaces has led to the restoration of cultural heritage as well as the creation of ersatz historical landscapes.
