Introduction to Bridge Belt in Southwest China

Chengde Bridge in Tengchong County, Baoshan   Photographer: Wu Weiping

Southwest China is a large, mysterious land with a rich diversity of climate, landscape and wild life and is also home to many ethnic groups. The bridges here also have distinct regional characteristics.

The covered bridge belt in Southwest China refers to the covered bridges that situated mainly in central and eastern Sichuan, western Chongqing, western Yunnan and other places. The Tibetan-Burmese Groups live in the west of this area while the Han Nationality speaking mandarin gathers in the east. The bridges in these areas take on distinctive features. On the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, bridges use the diagonal bracing cantilever beams; in Yunnan Province, the covered bridges use diagonal bracing cantilever beam or the arch bracing beams; in Sichuan Province, the bridges are mostly simply-supported timber-beam ones. Since Southwest China has some of the most precipitous landscapes in the world, you must be amazed to see how these ancient covered bridges stood steadily here for thousands of years.