Xishan Bridge

Xishan Bridge

Xishan Bridge

Wuxi is the birthplace of hyperbolic arch bridges in China, and the country's first hyperbolic arch bridge — Dong Arch Bridge — was built here. On April 17, 1964, on Banqiaobin at the southern end of Dongting Town in Wuxi County, an unusually designed bridge came into being. Because it features an arch both horizontally and vertically, people called it a hyperbolic arch bridge. Since the bridge was constructed in Dongting, it was named "Dong Arch Bridge."

Speaking of this, Rong Dehai, the former director who still leads the city’s key engineering construction office, is filled with emotion. He said, “Nowadays, every major bridge must not only serve a transportation function but also showcase landscape characteristics.” The former director was involved in the construction of several canal bridges in Wuxi.

In 1982, the first bridge over the new canal section, Xishan Bridge, was opened to traffic, linking both banks of the Grand Canal. Since then, Liangxi Bridge, Shanbei Bridge, Jinkui Bridge, Ronghu Bridge, Fengxiang Bridge... one after another, these bridges have emerged and stood tall over the ceaselessly flowing Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. Truly, over 30 years of development, countless “rainbows” have risen above the canal. In the past, to save costs, most bridges were simple arch types, but nowadays various bridge designs such as basket-handle arch bridges, cable-stayed bridges, and composite arch-beam systems have emerged one after another. In his view, the changing shapes of the bridges over the canal reflect not only the city’s economic strength but also the evolution of people’s concepts. The Ronghu Bridge completed in 2003 is the one that best combines traffic functionality with landscape beauty. Using steel pipe concrete for the main tower of the bridge is also quite rare in domestic cable-stayed bridge designs.