The balustrades and paving of the long marble bridges near Peking and Hangchau, some of them adorned with statues of elephants, lions, and other animals, present a pleasing effect, while their solidity and endurance of freshes running over the top at times attest the skill of the architects. Wooden bridges furnish means for crossing small streams in all parts of the land; when the river is powerful, or the rise and fall of the tide great, it is crossed on boats fastened together, with contrivances for drawing out two or three in the centre when the passing craft demand a passage. At Tientsin, Ningpo, and other cities, this means of crossing entails little delay in comparison to its cheapness. Some of the bridges in and about Peking are beautiful structures; their erection, however, presented no difficult problem, while that at Fuhchau was a greater feat of engineering. It is about four hundred yards long and five wide, consisting of nearly forty solid buttresses of hewn stone placed at unequal distances and joined by slabs of granite; some of these slabs are three feet square and forty-five feet long. They support a granite pavement. The bridge was formerly lined with shops, which the increased traffic has caused to be removed. Another similar bridge lies seven miles north of it on the River Min, and a third of equal importance at the city of Chinchew, north of Amoy. Some of the mountain streams and passes in the west and north are crossed by rope bridges of ingenious construction, and by chain suspension bridges.
Mr. Lowrie describes a bridge at Changchau, near Amoy, and these structures are more numerous in the eastern provinces than elsewhere. “It is built on twenty-five piles of stone about thirty feet apart, and perhaps twenty feet each in height. Large round beams are laid from pile to pile, and smaller ones across in the simplest and rudest manner; earth is then placed above these and the top paved with brick and stone. One would suppose that the work had been assigned to a number of different persons, and that each one had executed his part in such manner as best suited his own fancy, there being no regularity whatever in the paving. Bricks and stone were intermingled in the most confused manner, and the railing was here wood and there stone. We were particularly struck with the length of some of the granite stones used in paving the bridge; one was eight, another eleven, and three others eighteen paces, or about forty-five feet long, and two broad. The bridge averaged eight or ten feet in width, and about half its length on both sides was occupied by shops.”[360]
A causeway of ninety arches crosses a feeder of the Grand Canal near Hangchau. The stones for the arch in one bridge noticed by Barrow were cut so as to form a segment of the arch, and at each end were mortised into transverse blocks of stone stretching across the bridge; they decreased in length from ten feet at the spring of the arch to three at the vertex, and the summit stone was mortised, like the rest, into two transverse blocks lying next to it.[361] The tenons were short, and the disposition of the principal pieces such that a bridge built in this way would not support great weights or endure many ages. The mode of placing the pieces can be seen in the cut. In other instances the stones are laid in the same manner as in Europe; many small bridges over creeks and canals have cambered or straight arches. When one of these structures falls into ruins or becomes dangerous, the people seldom bestir themselves to repair the damage, preferring to wait for the government; they thereby lose the benefit of self-dependence and action.
Bridge showing the mode of Mortising the Arch.
PAI-LAU, OR HONORARY PORTALS.
It is singular how the term triumphal arch came to be applied to the pai-fang and pai-lau, or honorary portals or tablets, of the Chinese; for a triumph was perhaps never heard of in that country, and these structures are never arched. They consist merely of a broad gateway flanked with two smaller ones, and suggest a turnpike gate with side-ways for foot passengers rather than a triumphal monument. They are scattered in great numbers over the provinces, and are erected in honor of distinguished persons, or by officers to commemorate their parents, by special favor from the Emperor. Some are put up in honor of women who have distinguished themselves for their chastity and filial duty, or to widows who have refused a second marriage. Permission to erect them is considered a high honor, and perhaps the term triumphal was given them from this circumstance. The economical and peaceful nature of such honors conferred upon distinguished men in China is most characteristic; a man is allowed to build a stone gateway to himself or his parents, and the Emperor furnishes the inscription, or perhaps sends with it a patent of nobility. Their general arrangement is exhibited in the [title-page] of this work; the two characters, shing chí, at the top, meaning ‘sacred will,’ intimate that it was erected by his Majesty’s permission.
Some of the pai-lau are elaborately ornamented with carved work and inscriptions; and as a protection to the frieze a ponderous covering of tiles projects over the top, which, however, exposes the structure to injury from tempests. They are placed in conspicuous places in the outskirts of towns, and in the streets before temples or near government edifices. Travellers looking for what they had read about have sometimes strangely mistaken the gateways at the heads of streets or the entrance to temples for the honorary portals.[362] Those built of stone are fastened by mortises and tenons in the same manner as the wooden ones; they seldom exceed twenty or twenty-five feet in height. The skill and taste displayed in the symmetry and carving upon some of them are creditable; but as the man in whose honor it is erected is, generally speaking, “the architect of his own fame,” he prudently considers the worth of that commodity, and makes an inferior structure to what would have been done if his fellow-subjects, “deeply sensible of the honor,” had come together to appoint a committee and open a subscription list for the purpose. Among the numerous pai-lau in and near Peking, two or three deserve mention for their beauty. One lies in the Confucian Temple in front of the Pih-yung Kung, and is designed to enhance the splendor of its approach by presenting, as it were, a frame before its façade. It is built of stone and overlaid with square encaustic tiles of many hues. The arrangement of the colors, the carving on the marble, and the fine proportions of the structure render it altogether one of the most artistic objects in China. Another like it is built in the Imperial Park, but the position is not so advantageous. Fergusson points out the similarity between these pai-lau and certain Hindu gateways, and claims that India furnished the model. The question of priority is hardly susceptible of proof; but his fancy that a large pai-lau in a street of Amoy presented a simulated coffin on it above the principal cornice, leads us to suspect that he was looking for what was never in the builder’s mind.
MILITARY ARCHITECTURE—DRESS.