The Wan'an bridge, a 900-year-old wood arch bridge built during the Song Dynasty (960-1127) in Pingnan county, East China's Fujian Province, was destroyed by fire on Saturday night, resulting in the collapse of China's longest wood arch bridge. There were no reported injuries from the fire.
Investigations are still being conducted to determine what started the fire. The Pingnan County Public Security Bureau's Criminal Investigation Department has been brought in to conduct additional research on the matter.
"The spontaneous combustion of the bridge on the water is rare, so I speculatively conclude that it was probably caused by human behavior and not a natural disaster." Peking University's Xu Yitao, a specialist in ancient architecture, told the Global Times on Sunday.
Also known as the Bridge of Universal Peace, the Wan'an bridge was China's longest wood arch bridge ranging from 98.2 meters.
It holds significant cultural value as it shows ancient Chinese mastered wisdom and ingenuities in wooden architecture designs, especially when the wooden arch bridge prototype in a length such was extremely difficult to manifest.
"Bridges are often made of stones, the wooden arch bridge condenses a lot of Chinese ancient wisdom, techniques and also the economic thinking of choosing the wood material."
"It was a lost example to prove the Chinese wisdom on wooden architecture like the one you see from the art piece 'Along the River During the Qingming Festival," Xu remarked.
Saturday's incident was not the first time the Wan'an bridge was threatened by fires. During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), in the reign of the emperor Kangxi, the bridge had also been burnt and later restored.
Fire prevention is one of the important works needed for protecting ancient wooden architectures, Shan Jixiang, head of China Cultural Relics Academy and former curator of the Palace Museum, told the Global Times on Sunday.
In 2005, the bridge became one of the Sixth batches of national key cultural relics protection units.
The damages led experts to call for an enhanced "four preventions" solution to protect ancient wooden architectures.
Xu explained to the Global Times that fire protection, using a monitoring system for ensuring ancient architectures security, preventing damages caused by thunder, enhancing human preservation such as patrolling, and building close ties to local fire brigades were four major aspects of the unified protection system that can reduce potential damages to ancient buildings.
Shan also noted that fire prevention needs to be carried out according to the specific situation of the architecture; for example, researchers were more focused on thunder prevention of the Palace Museum as it had caught fire before in history from being struck by thunder.
"Other methods include applying flame retardant materials on wooden buildings, but this is debatable when it comes to architectural relics. A more effective way is to enhance fire alarm measures, for example, installing automatic induction fire extinguishing facilities, water mist induction device and such," Xu noted.
Before the Wan'an bridge, in 2021, the Wengding village, the last primitive tribe of China in Southwest China's Yunnan Province was engulfed by fire after an 8-year-old child was playing with fire in the village.
Oversees, in 2019, France's most famous cultural landmark Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris had also been swallowed by fires that it alarmed world conservation for ancient architectures.
"It is can be said that nowadays, such disasters on ancient architectures are unavoidable, especially when they still engage with people's activities," Xu noted.
"The more effective way to protect such architectural relics is human-being oriented. The public should be more conscious on how we behave. This is related to public education on such relic's values. Conserving them is not merely researcher's job." Xiao Fangping, an architectural archaeologist in Wuhan said.
(Source: Global Times)
Comment