Sidelights on Chinese Life

by J. Macgowan

In order to get to our boat, which we had arranged should meet us at this place, we had to cross the bridge that spanned the river here to get to the other side where it lay awaiting us. This bridge is a famous one, and is a very fine specimen of what the Chinese builders can do in the construction of such. It consists of about twenty-five spans, the widest of which is sixty-five feet, whilst the others vary somewhat in their measurements.

As the river flows here with a very rapid current, and moreover is liable to sudden rises after heavy rains in the interior, it was essential, in the erecting of this bridge, that it should be built so strongly that it would be able to stand not only the wear and tear of the ever-flowing river, but also the mighty strain of the deluge of waters that comes roaring down the gorges that lie above it either after some tempest, or in consequence of an unusual downpour during the rainy season in the spring.

The great width between each pier was not a matter of choice but of necessity. To have placed them any nearer to each other might have risked their being swept away by the river tide, which when swollen by the storms of summer rolls down with prodigious volume and force over the very spot where the bridge had to be built. It was also equally necessary that the slabs of stone that composed the roadway of the bridge should be enormously heavy, so that they might be able to resist the impetus of the flood that would at times roll over them and yet not be strong enough to lift them from their positions and hurl them down the river.

It was a bold design and one seemingly impossible of achievement, and yet it has been done. Many of the slabs are seventy feet long, six feet in thickness and about four feet in width. As you slowly tread your way over them and try and pace out their length, they appear Titanic in their dimensions, and the question that is most often in the mouths of the visitors who have come to witness this great engineering feat is how ever did the builders manage two hundred years ago not simply to cut such huge blocks of granite from the mountain side, but also to place them in the position they have occupied for two centuries at least.

This question is one that was easily answered by the untaught architects, who, without any other guidance than their own common-sense and their general knowledge of building, had undertaken to throw a bridge over a stream that depended for its moods on the changeful, fitful temper of the elements. They first of all built their piers in the river when the water was at its lowest. They waited till the winter months, when the north-east monsoon had driven the winds in wild confusion far down into the South, and the mountain streams were dry, and the current flowed in a sluggish, indolent stream.

A FAMOUS BRIDGE.

To face p. 361.

They then began to quarry out the mighty slabs that were to make the roadway of the bridge, and that should be so weighty as to be able to resist the fierce onrush of waters when the river, maddened by the storms, flung itself down the gorges and, flecked with foam, careered in wild confusion towards the sea.

The hills near by that ran down to the very edge of the water abounded with stone exactly suited for the purpose, and as the proper lengths were chiselled out of the hillsides, they were deftly slid down on rollers and placed on rafts that were moored by the edge of the shore. Here they were allowed to rest in peace and quietness until some great downpour filled the rivulets and the mountain streams and the thousand and one tributaries that sent their gurgling, gathering forces to swell the waters of the main river.