Japanese Bridge

This guide to the Japanese Bridge in Hoi An opens on its August 2024 reopening, after nineteen months and roughly eight hundred thousand dollars of restoration, when visitors expecting the same weathered timber found bright new tiles and paintwork instead. It follows the backlash online, a local warning about what happens if every relic in the ancient town gets the same treatment, and the defense from Pham Phu Ngoc of the city Cultural Heritage Conservation Center, who says his crew matched the original colors. Along the way it traces the bridge back through seven earlier restorations to 1763, and the local legend of the mythical creature the bridge is said to pin down. The small shrine at its center, added later for a guardian god, still watches the crossing.