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Cultural Heritage

Traditional Carpenter Techniques of Wooden-arched Bridges in Pingnan

编辑: 小编 时间:2023-07-03 17:51:12 浏览次数:

Wooden-arched corridor bridge, also known as wooden-arched intersecting wind and rain bridge, looks like a rainbow with wooden beam intersected and pressed in a staggered manner, and represents the most sophisticated category in China's traditional wooden bridges. It is recorded in the History of Science and Technology in China - Bridge Volume by Tang Huancheng, a famous bridge expert, that "it is unique in China in the global bridge history."  It holds substantial value of cultural relics and scientific and cultural connotation. Wooden-arched corridor bridge in Qingyuan is designed in a form of house and bridge protecting mutually and has distinctive architectural creativity. It arching part is composed of the upper and lower systems and contributes to a complete integral. Such a technique is developed after undergoing continuous process improvement, development and creation by folk craftsmen (especially master craftsmen) based on the actual conditions as the wooden structure technology is perfected.

The broken-line intersecting wooden-arched corridor bridge in Pingnan is also known as rainbow bridge and rainbow-beam wooden gallery bridge owing to its rainbow-like shape. Further, the bridge house on the wall renders it a common name of "Cuo bridge". The first wooden-arched corridor bridge in Pingnan was built in the Song Dynasty and represents a traditional folk construction technology in Pingnan. Its process includes bridge address selection, bridge building, leveling,  and water column and bridge gate building. The construction technology of wooden-arched corridor bridges in Pingnan symbolizes an outstanding representative of China's rainbow bridge construction. Keeping constant innovation and development in the historical inheritance course, traditional unique process characteristics of eastern Fujian have been developed. Further, the public culture property featured by eastern Fujian styles has made such bridges bear extremely valuable traditional process value.

The traditional carpenter techniques of wooden-arched bridges have been included in the List of World's Nonmaterial Cultural Heritage.