赵州桥
Zhaozhou Bridge, the world's oldest open-spandrel arch
Name: ________________ Date: ________
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 当地 | dāngdì | local; in the locality |
| 石头 | shítou | stone; rock |
| 建 | jiàn | to build; to construct |
| 设计 | shèjì | design; plan; to design; to plan |
| 记载 | jìzǎi | to record; to write down; record; account |
| 造 | zào | to make; to build; to create |
| 洞 | dòng | hole; cave |
| 重量 | zhòngliàng | weight |
| 上涨 | shàngzhǎng | to rise; to go up (prices, water) |
| 称赞 | chēngzàn | to praise; to commend |
| 力量 | lìliang | strength; power; force |
| 先进 | xiānjìn | advanced; progressive; advanced individual or unit |
English (for the teacher)
If you go to Zhao County in Hebei, the locals will certainly take you to see a stone bridge. It isn’t big, and it isn’t especially beautiful, but it has stood over the river for more than 1,400 years. It is the Zhaozhou Bridge.
The bridge was built in the Sui dynasty, roughly between 595 and 605 AD. It was designed by an ordinary craftsman named Li Chun. History has left almost no record of him; we only know his name because a Tang dynasty writer mentioned him.
The bridge is over fifty metres long, with a single great arch in the middle spanning more than thirty-seven metres. Building a stone arch that long 1,400 years ago was a remarkable achievement.
But the cleverest part of the bridge isn’t the great arch in the middle; it’s on the arch’s “shoulders” at either end. Look closely and you’ll see four small arches opened up there, two on the left and two on the right. This design is called an “open-spandrel arch”.
Why leave four extra holes here? Li Chun thought of at least two benefits. First, the bridge became lighter. It used much less stone, so its own weight was much smaller and it was less likely to crush itself. Second, it wasn’t afraid of floods. When the river rose in summer, the water could flow through these small arches instead of pushing the whole bridge over. The Tang writer specially praised these four small arches, saying they could weaken the force of floods.
Just how advanced was this idea? In Europe, similar stone arch bridges didn’t appear until many centuries later. Today the Zhaozhou Bridge is regarded as the oldest surviving open-spandrel stone arch bridge in the world. In 1991 an American engineering society named it an “International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark”.
Over more than a thousand years, the bridge has been through many floods, wars and earthquakes. In 1966 a major earthquake struck Xingtai, not far away, and amazingly the bridge didn’t fall.
Of course, ordinary people prefer their own stories. Folk legend says Lu Ban built the bridge in a single night. An old folk song says the immortal Zhang Guolao rode his donkey across to test how sturdy it really was, and left the donkey’s hoof prints on it. It is said that Lu Ban jumped into the river and held the bridge up with his hands.
Cars stopped crossing the Zhaozhou Bridge long ago; it is now a bridge only for people on foot. Next time you cross a bridge with little arches, you might stop and think: Li Chun had this idea 1,400 years ago.