Zhejiang’s corridor crossings – think Bridges of Madison County, but with Chinese characteristics
- In 2004, one Chinese-speaking foreigner decided to go in search of the province’s ornate bridges before they were rebuilt in the name of tourism
- Some of these spectacular roofed river crossings date back hundreds of years and rear up dramatically, topped with writhing dragons or ceramic fish
Back in the early 2000s, most China guidebooks contained a familiar list of mostly metropolitan destinations, although even then it was the countryside that often offered experiences of considerably more charm. There was less comfort, but fewer cons, fewer crowds and fresher air.
But the coffee-table books on ancient Chinese architecture that had begun to fill the bookshops of Beijing offered new ideas for rural exploration. In among familiar images of the great Hakka earth fortresses of southern Fujian province, the cave dwellings of Shanxi, or the white-walled Hui houses of Anhui, there were surprises such as the then largely unknown pseudo-European watchtowers of Guangdong’s Kaiping, and the ornate corridor bridges of southern Zhejiang.
Despite the poorly printed, blurry black-and-white images, many of those bridges looked too spectacular to remain in obscurity. Like small houses that had woken from sleep, they yawned themselves open at both ends, and stretched luxuriously like cats. Some were straightforwardly horizontal enough to resemble those in Clint Eastwood’s 1995 film The Bridges of Madison County, but with Chinese characteristics, such as a small shrine part way across. Others reared up dramatically, their two-storey centre sections topped with writhing dragons or ceramic fish, tails a-thrash, and almost leapt off the page.
After comparing tiny characters from photo captions with those on provincial maps, I found several of the bridges were accessible from the Zhejiang coastal metropolis of Wenzhou. On the grounds that anything ancient in China not already being marketed for tourism was ripe for redevelopment, and that anything for which tourism promotion was planned was in danger of being pulled down and rebuilt, there was perhaps little time to lose. A few days later, I boarded a train heading south.
Once they had overcome their shock at encountering a Mandarin-speaking foreigner, the surprisingly helpful staff in the bookshop in Taishun town sold me a map showing the location of the 27 langqiao, or corridor bridges, in the county
Even in 2004 Wenzhou was traffic-choked. Branches of McDonald’s jostled those of KFC and were surrounded by outlets selling pirate DVDs of the latest Hollywood release only days after its opening weekend. Most traditional buildings had vanished, to be replaced by gimcrack shoddiness in white tile and blue glass. Save for the remnants of treaty-port-era foreign consulates on an offshore island, this was hardly the place to be hunting for history.