ABSTRACT
This chapter is critical historiography on the research history of Chinese woven arch bridges.
The Rainbow Bridge in the famous Chinese scroll-painting Qingming Shanghe Tu was first noticed in the 1950s by Tang Huancheng, who later became a bridge historian. The arch-shaped bridge is configured by interlocking beams (woven arch structure). The Rainbow Bridge is understood as a bridge-type only found in China, and its construction technique had been lost since the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127).
In 1980, a group of vernacular bridges in mountains of Southeast China (MZ bridges) is first “discovered” by bridge history academia. Tang, a pioneer scholar in this field, holds the opinion that these bridges embody the inherited technique of the Rainbow Bridges from the Song time.
An academic debate on the “origin” of the MZ bridges ensues, as Zhao Chen hold the opposite opinion to Tang’s: based on a tectonic research, he suggests a local typological evolution of the bridge.
In this chapter, the works of two leading scholars in this field are discussed and partly refuted from a new perspective. Their theories have to be considered within the context of the development of the discipline of architecture in China.
