Shanghai's Bridges: Yangpu Bridge

After spending several weeks looking at bridge photos of New York City taken from a ferry, we are now looking at a bridge photo of Shanghai taken from a ferry. The ferries are an easier way of crossing the Huangpu River than walking over a bridge. Ferries cross at many points along the river, the fare is less than a yuan, and they cross the river in about five minutes.

The Huangpu River is 114 km (71 miles) long and runs from the Yangtze River to the East China Sea. Its about 400 m (1300 ft) wide, 9 m (30 ft) deep, and flows through Shanghai.

Shanghai is an interesting city. It was long dominated by Europe, conquered by Japan, and transformed after the war by the Cultural Revolution, and yet the people of Shanghai seem surprisingly relaxed and happy. The current population is about 20 million people (the population of New York City is under 10 million people).

We'll begin our examination of Shanghai bridges at a point several miles east of the Bund (the former European part of the city). The Yangpu Bridge crosses the Huangpu River between the Yangpu District in Puxi and the Pudong New Area. It has six lanes and carries 100,000 vehicles a day (The George Washington Bridge across the Hudson has 14 lanes and carries 300,000 vehicles a day).

The center span is 602 m (1975 ft) and the towers are 223 m (732 ft) tall. Vertical clearance for ships is about 48 m (158 ft). The entire viaduct is several km long, but the cable-stayed portion is 99m - 144m - 602m -144m - 99m.

The bridge was completed in 1993 by the City of Shanghai with technical review by Holger S. Svensson. It was built by the Shanghai Huangpujiang Bridge Engineering Construction Company. It is a steel, cable stayed bridge with towers shaped like elongated letter A's (there's hopefully a better name for that shape). The cables are in what is called a semi-fan arrangement, which means the cables are attached high and close together on the towers and they aren't parallel. The deck is stiffened by relatively shallow plate girders. It has a composite (steel to concrete) deck.

Shanghai's Bridges: Yangpu Bridge by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Arch Bridges: The Anshun Bridge (1)

Stone arch bridges have been built in China for over  2.000 years.
Long, open spandrel stone arch spans have been built since 600 AD (such as the Zhaozhou Bridge). Shapes like 'horse's hoof,' 'egg-shaped,' 'pot bottom,' and 'pointed,' refer to variations of catenary, parabolic, circular, and elliptical arches used in China.  An excellent history of arch structures can be found in 'Chinese Bridges' by Ronald G. Knapp.

The Anshun (Peaceful and Favorable) Bridge crosses the Jinjiang River in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China.  Marco Polo mentions it as one of four Chinese bridges that he admired during his travels.  That bridge was destroyed during flooding in 1980's. Li Chuncheng, the mayor of Chengdu in 2003, had the bridge rebuilt with a popular restaurant on top as part of an effort to revitalize downtown, which was highly successful.  The new bridge is a three span, closed spandrel stone arch, with stone dragons seated on cutwaters below round openings to reduce water pressure during floods.

Walking along the river, I saw couples practicing ballroom dancing (or strolling arm in arm), children catching cicadas with branches, groups practicing Tai Chi Chuan, old men smoking pipes, and young men fishing between the many different arch bridges crossing the Jinjiang River.

Arch Bridges: The Anshun Bridge (1) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.