Qinghua Rainbow Bridge, Stone beam bridge in Qinghua Town, Wuyuan County, China
Qinghua Rainbow Bridge is a stone beam bridge over the Le'an River in Qinghua, Wuyuan County, Jiangxi, with four piers and five openings across 140 m in length and 3.1 m in width. Each pier is built of cut stone blocks 14.37 m long, 7.15 m wide and 8.1 m high, with a pointed cutwater facing upstream. Four large timber beams span between piers, carrying planks and a roofed gallery whose width varies from 4.5 m over the openings to 11.5 m over the piers.
Sources disagree on the origin: The Records of Wuyuan Scenery dates the bridge to the Song dynasty, while the Hu family genealogy and the Wuyuan County Annals place its construction in the Qianlong period (1736–1796) of the Qing. It was listed among the sixth group of Major National Historical and Cultural Sites on April 25, 2006, and on July 8, 2020, floodwaters destroyed part of its deck.
The name comes from Li Bai's Tang dynasty poem Climbing Xuancheng Xie Tiao North Tower in Autumn, whose line "two waters clasp a bright mirror, twin bridges fall as a rainbow" is carved as a couplet beside the shrine to Yu the Great on the second pier from the east. The bridge takes its name from that verse.
The bridge crossed the Le'an River in Qinghua town, Wuyuan County, Jiangxi. After the flood of 8 July 2020 destroyed part of the deck, check locally before planning a visit, since the structure is a protected national site under repair. The surviving piers and beams stand in the river channel.
The shrine on the second pier from the east holds a statue of Yu the Great, the legendary tamer of floods, flanked by a couplet taken from Li Bai's poem Climbing Xuancheng Xie Tiao North Tower in Autumn: "Two waters clasp a bright mirror, twin bridges fall as a rainbow." The bridge takes its name from that line.
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