Bridging communities

A wooden covered bridge stands inside a museum hall. At its entrance are several tables set with teapots, while handwoven bamboo baskets nearby hold local specialties gathered from fields and villages.

The scene re-creates the everyday life once found around China's traditional covered bridges. On Aug 7, the exhibition Guardianship — Three-Year Action on Covered Bridges opened at the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum in Beijing.

Centered on the systematic preservation of covered bridge heritage, the exhibition features 35 bridge models from across China. Mostly found in the mountainous areas of southern China, covered bridges have long served purposes beyond transportation, providing spaces for rest, community gatherings and traditional rituals.

In 2023, China's National Cultural Heritage Administration, together with several government departments, launched a three-year initiative to protect covered bridges. Since then, the project has documented 2,193 bridges nationwide and completed restoration work on more than 100 ancient bridges. The traditional design and construction practices of Chinese wooden arch bridges have also been inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

For the exhibition, a provincial-level representative inheritor of this traditional craftsmanship was invited to re-create a section of a covered bridge from Taishun, Zhejiang province, at full scale. Using timber transported from Zhejiang and two months of construction work inside the museum, the installation combines physical scenery with multimedia displays, exhibiting the bridge as a living cultural space.

"Covered bridges were built for people. They carry cultural meanings, with many living traditions growing alongside them," says Jiang Mingwei, a curator at the China Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum.

That connection between the bridges, their surroundings and local communities is also why the museum chose to showcase this structure in a venue dedicated to intangible cultural heritage, Jiang says.

Visitors can also enter a learning space in the exhibition hall, where they can assemble models of wooden arch bridges and experience traditional construction techniques.

However, preserving these wooden structures remains a challenge.

"Exposure to wind and rain, insect damage and natural disasters threaten their survival," says Lu Yuanzheng, director of the Zhejiang Institute of Ancient Architecture Design and Research.

Lu recalls a typhoon in 2016 that destroyed three nationally protected covered bridges. When he arrived in the villages afterward, he saw grief on the residents' faces.

The villagers organized a recovery process of the damaged bridges from the river, salvaging about 70 percent of the original structures. "Their emotional connection to these bridges is extremely deep," Lu says.

That story is also featured in the exhibition. Lu, who serves as one of the exhibition's curators, says the show aims to highlight three aspects of the preservation efforts: documenting the research and restoration process of the three-year campaign; showing the relationship between covered bridges and the ecosystems around them; and emphasizing the cultural bonds between the bridges and the communities that protect them.

For Zhang Xianwen, former director of the Guangxi Cultural Heritage Protection Research and Design Center, the biggest change brought by the three-year campaign was the shift from scattered community efforts to a coordinated national approach.

In the past, repairs of covered bridges in Guangxi were mainly carried out collectively by villagers and were often informal and fragmented. Before the campaign began, Zhang says, he did not even know how many covered bridges existed in the region.

"The three-year action was the first time China treated covered bridges as a category of heritage and carried out systematic, centralized protection," Zhang adds. "It transformed individual community efforts into a national initiative guided by the government while still involving local communities. That was a breakthrough."

As preservation efforts move forward, the challenge is not only to keep these bridges standing, but also to ensure that the traditions, stories and communities surrounding them continue to thrive.

baishuhao@chinadaily.com.cn