Jinze Travel Guide

Jin Ze is a typical so-called "watertown" - those villages/towns along canals of the area, crosscrissed by the small canals/rivers, with houses built along the river, some people may live on the boats - their mobile home. Rivers, used to be the main arterials for such towns.

Rainbow bridge, Pu Qing, was built by Chinese and American engineers (MIT?) to prove that the bridge on the famous Chinese ancient painting, qing1 ming2 shang4 he2 tu2, is buidable.

The bridge was built with logs (64 of them plus 5 beams under) and bamboo pieces, to form an elegant arch shape. It has no nail or whatsoever: logs are interlocked at the joints. It is 16.18 m long and 4 m wide.

It was painted in red color, standing out in the old town part of Jin Ze, where overall color is gray: old stone houses, and stone roads.

The 1999 PBS/NOVA 1-hour TV program about the story of building this particular bridge (that was how we knew about the bridge):
http://www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/ceonline00/0500feat.html