元通古镇
Three-arch stone bridge over a river town's old wharf, rebuilt stone by stone after a nineteen thirty-eight flood.
This guide to Yuantong's old town in Chengdu takes on a deliberate puzzle: how to tell a two-hundred-year-old stone bridge from one built only decades ago. It walks through the Yongli Bridge's origins in the Ming dynasty and its Qing-era rebuild, the old Sichuan masonry technique of stacking stone in overhanging courses with no wooden frame beneath, and the 1938 flood that tore the crossing out of the riverbed. You'll hear about the busy river trade the bridge once served and the boat-shaped stone piers built to cut floodwater rather than fight it head on. Look down at those piers as you cross, where the current still runs fastest.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.