Tiansheng Qiao & Rouge River

Tiansheng Qiao, a “natural” stone bridge created in 1368, is over the Rouge River, Lishui District, which is located in the southeast of Nanjing.Lishui District, Lishui County until January 2013, is a suburban district of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, China.  

Among Hongwu's most pressing concerns upon taking the throne was that of rising water needs in and around his capital. He solved this problem by digging a canal connecting Shijiu Lake to the Qinhuai River, and thus to Nanjing. The canal is about eight kilometers long, and required the services of 80,000 men-soldiers, masons, prisoners-for almost ten years. This number of man-hours sounds preposterous given how short the canal is, until one sees the canal in person: in places it is thirty meters deep, and much of it is carved out of solid rock, including the Tiansheng Qiao section, where Hongwu decided to leave a single arc of stone in place above the watercourse.

The canal is still used by small barges transporting sand and stone for construction. Hongwu perhaps overstated the case when he declared it “as beautiful as a small Three Gorges,” but the sheer rock faces in browns and grays, the bushes and vines trailing down the sides, the trees high on the upper banks and the stone bridge itself are all quite striking. Now, Tiansheng Natural Bridge is one of 48 new views of the Jinling.