Entity
Gusheng Fengming Bridge
Dalibai, Yunnan, China
The Gusheng Fengming Bridge arches over the rushing waters of the Yangxi River, historically known as the Jiming Jiang, at the northern boundary of Gusheng Village in Dali. Initiated during the Ming dynasty by the local scholar Yang Fu, this single-arch stone structure has carried centuries of travelers. In 1805, the First Jia residents of the village pooled their donations to rebuild the structure, erecting a celebratory stone stele. Three decades later, in 1834, another local scholar named He Jun sponsored a major repair, ensuring its survival.
The bridge is a physical record of regional engineering, built from a coarse local granite known as hemp-stone. It measures twenty meters long, four meters wide, and five point eight meters high, with a single arch spanning six point four meters. Large, solid stone blocks form the foundation, supporting a semi-circular arch ring made of precisely cut long granite blocks. On the deck, pedestrians walk across smooth, foot-worn granite slabs, flanked by curbs thirty centimeters wide and seventy centimeters high. At the ends of the balustrades, visitors can touch the cool, rounded surfaces of stone drum ornaments and small carved stone lions.
At the southeastern corner stands a brick and stone stele wall, measuring four point one meters high, two point four meters wide, and zero point seven meters thick. Its southern face holds the original 1805 reconstruction stele. On the northern face, a relief carving depicts a deity figure, Xian Changzhe Shen, representing a compassionate elder holding a staff, wearing a shoulder-length hood, with a long beard that appears to drift in the wind.
Following an official inspection in 2015, local authorities reinforced the bridge and cleaned its surrounding steles, adhering to a philosophy of restoring the structure to its original form. Today, the bridge remains an active pedestrian passage. It is a central piece of Gusheng's Seven Ancients heritage, connecting the modern community directly to its ancestral past.