Yizhang Sanxing Bridge

For centuries, travelers to Yizhang faced a peculiar test of memory: they had to state the exact number of stone steps on each side of the town's great river crossing to prove they had actually visited.

The northern end of Sanxing Bridge has twelve steps, and the southern end has eight. This crossing over the Yuxi River, positioned directly opposite the old Kuiwen Gate, began in the 1440s as a wooden structure with fourteen tiled pavilions built by Magistrate Ma Jing. When a mountain flood destroyed it in 1561, Magistrate Chen Fuyao donated one hundred gold pieces of his own money to rebuild it in stone. Workers labored through the spring wet season, miraculously spared from rain until the third lunar month when the final arch was locked. The current structure, rebuilt in 1760 after another devastating flood, relies on massive green sandstone blocks weighing up to five hundred kilograms each. To survive the seasonal mountain torrents, the builders shaped the bridge piers like sharp axe-heads, pointing upstream to slice through the rushing water.

Today, the bridge remains structurally intact, serving as a quiet pedestrian link within Nanguan Ancient Street. The rough chisel marks on the green sandstone have smoothed into a polished sheen under the soles of centuries of merchants, soldiers, and locals.