Guanying Bridge

Guanying Bridge

Guanying Bridge, also known as Guanyin Bridge, is located at Chanbutan in Guanyuan Mountain, north of Wanrong County, about 60 kilometers from the county seat. According to the 1821 Qing Dynasty edition of the *Wanrong County Annals*, the bridge was built in “December of the first year of the Chunhua reign during the Song Dynasty (990 AD), later repaired by Yi Ji’weng and Tang Wenxue, with inscribed characters on the nearby stone cliff.” It was built around 400 years after the world’s oldest stone arch bridge—Zhaozhou Bridge. Despite enduring over a thousand years of vicissitudes, Guanying Bridge remains intact and stands firmly across the green waters. The bridge itself is not large, with a deck made of six granite slabs, each about 10 meters long, 40 centimeters thick, and 30 centimeters wide. The bridge abutments at both ends are lined with neatly cut granite blocks, giving them a solid and weighty appearance. The shadow of Guanyingjian Mountain lies to the north, while green waves ripple beneath the bridge before meandering eastward into Taixi River (also called Kangle Water). Unfortunately, the inscriptions on the stone cliffs on both sides of the bridge have been eroded by wind and rain over time, and no trace of the carvings can now be found.

From the Qing Dynasty to the Republican era, the area around Guanying Bridge at Chanbutan was a major dispatch point for Wanrong’s famed handmade paper. “Small boats could pass through, and bamboo-paper cargoes were loaded here” (*Republican-era Wanrong County Annals*). Tens of thousands of sheets of handmade paper produced in over a thousand vats across Xikeng, Guanyuan Mountain, and Gaoling Village in Guanyuan Mountain were shipped from this location. Each bamboo raft could carry 24 dan (a traditional unit of weight) of paper. At that time, the area was bustling and lively, with numerous inns, taverns, and even seven female-run shops. Merchants came and went in an endless stream, and cargo trade flourished, leaving behind a glorious chapter in the history of Wanrong’s handmade paper economy.