The
Yongtong Bridge, also called Small Stone Bridge, lies across the Qingshui River
to the west of Zhaoxian County, Hebei Province.
The Yongtong Bridge is very similar to the famous Anji Bridge (Big
Stone Bridge), except that it is smaller than the latter. It was first built
during the Mingchang reign (1190-1195) in the Jin Dynasty. Legend has it that Lu
Ban built the Anji Bridge (Big Stone Bridge), while his younger sister Lu Jiang
built the smaller one. At that time, the brother and the sister competed with
each other in building a bridge over one night. Lu Jiang was not as skilled as
her brother, and therefore she built the small bridge after the big one. When
the daybreak was coming, she had not finished it. A deity happened to be passing
there and secretly helped the sister. As a result, the sister won the
competition for her bridge was more exquisite than her brother's. Though it was
only a fairy tale, it came out with the respective characteristics of the two
bridges and the relationship between them.
The Yongtong Bridge, with an open spandrel, consists of 21 arch stones
arrayed lengthways. The span of it is about 26 meters and the width of each arch
is about 5.2 meters. The bridge is 6.3 meters wide. There are four open arches
on the big spandrel. On the bridge are 22 foursquare roofing poles. On the body
of the bridge and the balustrades there are many beautiful and vivid carvings in
relief such as River Spirits, flying horses, swimming fish and so on, which were
mostly carved in the second year (1507) of the Zhengde reign in the Ming Dynasty
(1368-1644). During the past dynasties, many scholars left a lot of inscriptions
here inspired by the beauty and elegance of the
bridge.