Taiping Bridge

Taiping Bridge was built in the twelfth year of Guangxu Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1886), located in Lixiang River, Taiping Town, Nanchuan District. This bridge may seem like an ordinary Chinese-style covered bridge. But there is actually a very interesting story about the origin of the bridge.

In 1866, the local officials of Taipingchang town offered a lot of money to hire builders to build a bridge that could withstand flooding. A young monk under the age of twenty, claiming to be from the Golden Buddha Temple in Golden Buddha Mountain, said he would build a bridge without taking a cent, but only asked to build a Buddhist temple on the bridge. Local officials were suspicious and tried to offer him some money to get rid of him. The next morning, people found a covered bridge across the river, but the monk was nowhere to be found. People suddenly realized that the young monk must be the reincarnation of the Golden Buddha. The Buddhist Temple is actually the pavilion in the middle of the bridge corridor. People set up a shrine piously in the pavilion to worship Buddha. And that section of the river is prohibited from fishing.

#CoveredBridgesofChina

Wu Weiping (Instagram @wp_bridges_hunter)

Wu Weiping, co-photographer of Fantastic China: 

20 years, 400,000+ kilometers, 100,000 photos...  for capturing the remnants of ancient Chinese Covered Bridges.