Fuchuan Shicao Village Huilong Bridge begins with a mountain stream and a work of patience. In 1741, during the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty, builders in Shicaomu Village set a timber bridge across the water, then gave it a roof, walls, eaves, and the dignity of a small public room suspended above the creek.

Its structure is direct and memorable. Stone abutments hold two spans. Thick fir beams, each about 22 to 26 centimeters in diameter, carry a wooden deck. Above the deck rises a covered corridor and pavilion, five bays deep, built with a column-and-tie timber frame and roofed in small grey tiles. The pavilion gathers itself into three tiers of eaves. Beneath the upper roof, fir boards curve into a rolled ceiling, a quiet wooden shell under a hip-and-gable roof. At both bridgeheads, horse-head walls form the entrances, turning passage into ceremony.

The measurements keep the bridge human in scale. It is 20.36 meters long and 4.70 meters wide. Its east and west spans measure 4.68 meters and 5.54 meters. The deck stands about 2.51 meters above the streambed. The pavilion rises to roughly 7.98 meters. The whole site covers 95.7 square meters, a compact place where shelter, crossing, craft, and village life meet.

Huilong Bridge belongs to the wind-and-rain bridge tradition of Fuchuan’s Yao region, a distinctive branch of Chinese covered bridges. Across Fuchuan, this tradition includes arch bridges, stone-beam bridges, and timber-beam bridges; single-span bridges and bridges with as many as five spans; bridge roofs made of timber or brick-and-timber; corridors and pavilions in several arrangements; and pavilion roofs with hip-and-gable or overhanging-gable forms. Most timber frames use the column-and-tie system, while some combine it with raised-beam construction.

What makes Huilong Bridge compelling is its layered modesty. Stonecutters built the banks. Carpenters selected fir, laid planks, joined frames, and shaped eaves against rain. Masons gave the entrances their horse-head profile. Their work still reads in wood, tile, stone, height, and proportion. In 2013, Fuchuan’s Yao wind-and-rain bridges were listed among China’s Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level, preserving this rare Guangxi bridge form for the future.