Tiansheng Bridge

Form and location

Tiansheng Bridge stands on the Yanzhi River in what is now Honglan Subdistrict, Lishui District, and forms part of the provincial protected site "Yanzhi River and Tiansheng Bridge". The surviving structure is the north bridge: 34 metres long, 8 to 9 metres wide, with a deck 39 metres above sea level and a crown 8.9 metres thick.

Origin

The bridge was not built as a bridge; it is a by-product of the canal works. When the Yanzhi River was cut in 1393, the twenty-sixth year of the Hongwu era, a natural boulder arched across the gorge between the two cliffs on the line of the channel. Rather than cut it away, the builders left it in place to serve as the deck — a bridge made by leaving the rock standing. The old gazetteer records the matter under its entry on the river and refers the reader to the entry on Tiansheng Bridge, which shows that in the gazetteer's own arrangement the bridge was always part of the river works. There were originally two, north and south; the south bridge collapsed in the spring of 1528, and only the north one remains.

Protection status and present state

The bridge and the river form a single provincial protected site, entered in the provincial list published by the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism as "Yanzhi River and Tiansheng Bridge, Ming, Lishui District, within the Tiansheng Bridge scenic area, Honglan Subdistrict". Public accounts say the two were listed as a Jiangsu provincial protected site in 1995, but that year comes from a commercial travel platform and no provincial government gazette has been seen, so protection_batch records the year with a note that it awaits confirmation, and confidence is set to medium accordingly. The site is now a 4A-rated tourist attraction and a National Water Conservancy Scenic Area; the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism describes it as "the only surviving bridge in China formed by a boulder spanning both banks of an ancient man-made canal".

Uncertainties

First, the gazette notice and date for the provincial listing need confirmation. Of the seventh batch of provincial protected sites (Su Zheng Fa [2011] No. 181), only the Weijiacun Mound Tombs in Lishui appear, which establishes that this bridge is not in that batch, but the batch it does belong to still requires the corresponding provincial government gazette.

Second, coordinates are left unfilled. Public map data disagree by about three kilometres on the position of "Tiansheng Bridge": one set of data points to Tiansheng Bridge community (about 31.6108°N, 118.9699°E) and another to a point inside the scenic area (about 31.6429°N, 118.9885°E). Until it can be determined which of these corresponds to the bridge itself, this site leaves the coordinates empty rather than give a precise-looking wrong location; they will be filled in after a site survey.