Marco Polo Bridge

Put your hand on the stone rail beside you. It is cool, slightly rough, and worn smooth in places by centuries of other hands. Under your feet the old paving dips and buckles. Look closely and you may see shallow grooves pressed into the granite, the marks of cart wheels that rolled across here long before cars existed. The air carries dust from the plain, and somewhere below, the wide bed of the Yongding River stretches away to the south.

This is Lugou Bridge, the bridge over the Lugou River, as the Yongding was once called. Most visitors from abroad know it by another name: Marco Polo Bridge. It sits in Fengtai District, on the southwestern edge of Beijing. For centuries it was the main gateway to the capital from the south and west. Merchants, soldiers, officials and pilgrims all crossed here on their way into the city.

The first stone bridge on this spot was built in the late twelfth century, under the Jin dynasty. The Jin were a dynasty founded by the Jurchen people from the northeast, and they made Beijing one of their capitals. A crossing here mattered enormously. Before the stone bridge, travellers depended on ferries and temporary bridges that floods could sweep away. A permanent stone crossing tied the capital firmly to the roads of the north China plain.

Count the arches as you walk. There are eleven of them, built from heavy granite blocks. The bridge has been repaired many times. A major flood in the late seventeenth century, during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty, damaged it badly, and much of it was rebuilt afterwards. So the stones around you are a mix. Some are very old, and others are later replacements, laid with care to match the original design.

Now look down at the piers on the upstream side, if you can lean safely over the rail. Each pier has a pointed front, shaped like the bow of a boat. These points split the current, and in winter they broke up floating ice before it could crush the arches. Local tradition gives the iron pieces fixed to these points a dramatic name — swords for slaying the dragon, meaning the river itself. It is a poetic name for a very practical piece of engineering.

And then there are the lions. Along both railings, every post is topped with a carved stone lion. But look again. Many of the big lions carry smaller lions — cubs tucked under a paw, clinging to a back, peeking out from behind a mane. Some are so small you will miss them at first glance. This is the first surprise of the bridge: the closer you look, the more lions appear.

That is why counting them became a kind of joke. There is an old Beijing saying, roughly: the lions of Lugou Bridge cannot be counted. People use it to describe anything too numerous to tally. Official counts over the years have produced different totals, usually somewhere close to five hundred. Try it yourself as you walk. You will probably lose track before you reach the far end... almost everyone does.

The lions also differ in age and style. Carvers from different periods added and replaced them, so some faces are rounder and some fiercer, some manes tightly curled and others more loosely cut. A few lions are weathered almost smooth, their features softened by wind and rain. Others look sharper and newer. Walking slowly, you are moving through several centuries of stone carving, one post at a time.

Near the eastern end, look for a tall stone tablet with an inscription. It carries the words Lugou Xiaoyue, which means Dawn Moon over Lugou. This was one of the traditional Eight Views of Yanjing, an old poetic name for Beijing. The calligraphy is attributed to the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty. The image is simple: a pale moon still hanging over the river as travellers set out before sunrise, heading for the city gates.

Why is a Venetian merchant's name attached to a Chinese bridge? In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo described a magnificent stone bridge near the capital in his famous account of his travels. Many readers have identified it with this crossing, and European visitors began using his name for it. That is the second surprise: the name most foreigners use is one that local people rarely use at all. Here, it is simply Lugou Qiao.

The bridge also carries a much darker memory. On the night of July 7, 1937, a clash between Chinese and Japanese troops took place near here. It became known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, or the Seventh of July Incident in China. The fighting grew into full-scale war between China and Japan, a war that lasted until 1945. For many people in China, this quiet stone crossing marks the beginning of that long and painful conflict.

At the eastern end of the bridge stands the old walled town of Wanping. It was built as a small fortress to guard the approach to the capital. Its grey walls and gate are worth a walk. Inside the town is a large museum dedicated to China's war of resistance against Japan. Visitors often go there after crossing the bridge, to connect the peaceful scene around them with the events of 1937.

For much of the twentieth century, heavy traffic still rolled across these old arches. Eventually, newer bridges were built nearby to carry modern vehicles, and this one was protected as a historic monument. Today it is a place for walking. The pace is slow. You hear footsteps on stone, conversations, perhaps a kite string humming in the wind above the riverbed, and the distant sound of the city.

Before you leave, stop in the middle of the span and turn in a full circle. Behind you, the road runs west toward the hills. Ahead, it runs east toward the old capital. Rows of stone lions face each other across the narrow deck, as they have for generations. Put your hand on the rail once more. The stone is the same stone those travellers touched, watching the moon fade over the river at dawn.