Guilin Liberation Bridge - A Short History

 

The photo on the right shows a picture of Yongji pontoon bridge in the 30th of last century. It connected east and west side of Guilin where the Liberation Bridge is located now.

 

Yongji pontoon boat was made of bamboo laid loosely over dozens of boats, so it could be easily removed whenever a certain number of rafts wanted to pass the bridge. Afterwards it was easily reassembled.

 

This type of bridge was used in Guilin for several hundred years. One of the earliest reports about it was when a Censor called "Chen Ru" ordered to build a bridge out of 50 pontoon boats to facilitate the river crossing for people living on both sides of the stream in 1509A.D..

 

In the year 1939, the old pontoon bridge was removed and replaced by a modern steel frame bridge. It was named after the leader of the Kuomintang, "Chiang Kai-shek Bridge"

 

The Bridge was severely damaged during a Japanese bombing raid in 1944 rendering it unusable. After the war, in 1946 it was rebuild as a pontoon bridge, still named Chiang Kai-shek bridge.

 

In 1951 the bridge was rebuild again in a modern way and directly renamed to "Jiefang Qiao" or Liberation Bridge. The Generalissimo had fallen out of favour in China until then...

 

The bridge was rebuild again in 2001, making it broader and adapting it to modern traffic.

 

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Picture Sources:

(1) 黎明的天空: http://startzxx.blog.163.com/blog/static/43365572009816113018609/

(2) 黎明的天空: http://startzxx.blog.163.com/blog/static/43365572009816113018609/

(3) Life Magazine: Jack Wilkes, August 1945

(4) http://q.sohu.com/forum/20/topic/45310278