Putang Bridge

Structure

Putang Bridge is a continuous multi-span stone arch bridge of nine bays. It is 91.3 metres long and 5.7 metres wide in the clear. Below it stand eight piers with pointed cutwaters; of the nine arches above them the central one is the largest, with a span of 10.6 metres, and the arches diminish toward either side. The arch stones are local volcanic tuff, laid side by side in bond without hinges. The bridge carries a balustrade and posts, the posts carved with various patterns.

These figures agree exactly in two reports, The Paper and Xinhua Daily Media Network, and are the cultural authorities' figures; this entry takes one as primary and the other as corroboration. People's Daily Online additionally records balustrades and panels on both sides, with carved posts between them bearing lotus and lotus-leaf designs.

Date of construction

Reports give the start of construction as the second month of the third year of the Zhengde era (1508) and completion as the tenth month of the seventh year (1512), five years in all. As to who paid for it, Xinhua Daily Media Network has the local scholar Zhao Qi build it alone, while People's Daily Online has the brothers Zhao Qi donate their own wealth and raise subscriptions. The difference lies between sole funding and joint funding by brothers; this library holds no original contract or stele record, so neither account is preferred.

The old gazetteer does corroborate one point. Volume 3 of the Kangxi Gazetteer records, under archways, that the Shangyi Archway stands at Putang and was erected for the righteous commoner Zhao Qi, and under bridges and fords that the Putang Ferry lies twenty-five li to the south and that the Shangyi Bridge is now built there. This shows that Zhao Qi was indeed publicly commended for a righteous act at Putang, and that the bridge there was at one time named Shangyi Bridge. Neither the year of the commendation nor the deed it honoured is given in the gazetteer, and no inference is drawn here.

How the bridge got its name

The site began as a ferry. The old gazetteer account of the Putang River, quoted here only at second hand and not verified against the original volume, records that an earlier stone bridge fell into ruin in the late Southern Song, that the authorities then set up the Putang Ferry and used corvée labourmen to row travellers across; that in the first year of Huangqing (1312) the Lishui assistant prefect Ni Xian and the professor Chen Rui restored the ferry; and that in the Hongzhi period the authorities urged the richer households of the county to rebuild the bridge jointly, without result. After the bridge was built in the Ming, it took over the old name of the ferry and was called Putang Bridge.

The Kangxi gazetteer's "now the Shangyi Bridge is built" is the earliest known textual link between that ferry and the name Shangyi Bridge, but the gazetteer does not state that this is the surviving structure. Xinhua Daily Media Network states that after completion the bridge was renamed Shangyi Bridge and was rebuilt in the Qianlong period. Secondary sources further record that in the ninth month of the tenth year of Zhengde the magistrate Chen Xian commended Zhao's righteous deed, renamed the bridge Shangyi Bridge and wrote a Record of Shangyi Bridge, after which the name Putang Bridge was restored; no original of that record has been seen, so this is flagged as awaiting verification.

Heritage designation

The bridge was listed in 2013 in the seventh batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level, the only such site in Lishui District. The date of announcement given in the reports is May 2013.

Before that elevation the bridge had been protected at county and then provincial level. The provincial batch is given in secondary sources as the fifth batch of Jiangsu Province Cultural Relic Sites announced on 22 October 2002; this library has not verified the original announcement, so the year is left as unconfirmed. The Jiangsu provincial list published by the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism no longer includes the bridge, since its level has risen to national.

Many old bridges exist in the Nanjing area, but People's Daily Online reported in 2015 that only two are rated as Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level, the other being Qiqiaoweng in the southeast of the city.

The bridge and the temple fair

Putang Village, where the bridge stands, is also known for the Cishan temple fair, held for three days around the twenty-sixth day of the sixth lunar month and organised by the Putang Incense Hall, with neighbouring Shangcang, Xiacang and Li villages taking part; it was entered in the Jiangsu provincial intangible cultural heritage list in 2009. The procession passes over Putang Bridge. Accounts of the fair's age differ, with "over 600 years" and "close to 550 years" both current; both are given here without preference.

Protection and repair

When the road was built in the early 1930s, Putang Bridge was put to use as a road bridge. In the early years of the War of Resistance against Japan, troops on retreat blew it up with explosives, leaving a pit in the deck, later patched. It then carried motor traffic for a long period, as a result of which parts of the side wall came away, several tie stones in the arch rings broke, some arch rings and piers tilted outward, and the deck leaked; a new bridge was therefore built on the west side to take the traffic.

The Paper reported in 2020 that the bridge had undergone four major repairs: the first two in the Qianlong period of the Qing and in the Republican era, the third after wartime destruction, after which it long served as a road bridge carrying cars, and the most recent in 2009, when deck stones and side wall stones were replaced and the balustrade and deck slabs filled in. The defects recorded at that time were weathered blocks in the revetment walls with local spalling, a weathered and loosened deck through which water could seep into the body of the bridge, and balustrade panels weathered and pitted by fallen stones.

Repair began in November 2020, with a professor from the School of Architecture of Southeast University taking part in the investigation, carried out on the principle of repairing the old as the old, and reported as due to finish in 2021, with a bridge-site cultural park to be built nearby.

In early 2015 a report said that white paint had been applied to the balustrade panels and the drum stones at the bridgeheads, and that the words "Drive Safely" had been cut into the balustrade at the head of the bridge; the district cultural relics authority said the paint came from village environmental tidying, was stopped part way, and was hard to remove. The stone of the bridge body and panels is itself a dark red.

Open questions

• Whether the builder was Zhao Qi alone or the brothers, accounts differ and are both given.
• The renaming to Shangyi Bridge and the Record of Shangyi Bridge appear only in secondary sources; the Kangxi gazetteer gives only that the bridge there is now the Shangyi Bridge and that a Shangyi Archway was raised for Zhao Qi, without a year.
• The provincial listing year of 22 October 2002 has not been checked against the original announcement.
• The structural figures come from media reports, in the cultural authorities' terms, not from a measured survey.
• The Kangxi gazetteer's "now the Shangyi Bridge is built" does not state that this is the surviving structure, and must not be used to date the nine-arch Ming bridge.
• Comparative claims such as "the only one in the Nanjing area" or "the most arches surviving" reflect the situation as reported at the time and may change as the number of old bridges changes.