Yunnan-Tibet Journey 12

Yunnan-Tibet Journey 12 At 15:20 on the afternoon of September 14, 2023, after nearly eight hours of driving, the Yunnan-Tibet Tour arrived at the Lancang River Border Checkpoint entering Liuku, Lisu and Nu Autonomous Prefecture. After entering Liuku, we drove along the Nujiang River and arrived at the second attraction of the day: Nujiang Xiangyang Bridge at 16:40. This is my second visit to this bridge after 25 years. Liuku Xiangyang Bridge was built in 1966 and officially opened to traffic on New Year's Day 1970. It is a steel cable flexible automobile suspension bridge with a clear span of 131 meters, a total length of 136 meters and a carriageway width of 4 meters. At that time, it was a flexible automobile suspension bridge with a wooden structure deck and a designed load capacity of one Class 13 heavy-duty vehicle. After the completion of the Nujiang Bridge in 1991, Xiangyang Bridge was only for people and horses to pass. After 1993, motor vehicles were prohibited from passing through. Now, only pedestrians are allowed to pass through. In 1999, Xiangyang Bridge underwent its first large-scale renovation. The bridge deck was converted from a wooden structure to a steel structure, and the width of the bridge deck was increased to 5.5 meters, making it a horse-and-man suspension bridge. The towers at both ends of Xiangyang Bridge still have Chairman Mao's poems painted in red paint: "A bridge spans the north and the south, the sky becomes a thoroughfare", "Red rain turns into waves at will, green mountains turn into bridges intentionally", and the horizontal banner reads "Long live Chairman Mao", and below it is the name "Xiangyang Bridge". We stayed at Fukang Hotel on the bank of Nujiang River that night.