Makers › Engineer / Architect
Mao Yisheng
Bridge engineer who led the design and building of the Qiantang River Bridge at Hangzhou, opened to rail traffic in September 1937, and later directed its postwar repair.
Mural of the event “China Builds Its Own Works”, which this person took part in.
Irrigation from the Jing River began with the Zhengguo Canal, but by the early Republic its head works had largely fallen out of use; the lower Qiantang, wide, swept by a violent tidal bore and deep in shifting sand, was long thought impossible to bridge. After 1930 Li Yizhi took charge of the Jing River works, and the Jinghui Canal opened in June 1932, irrigating 590,000 mu of farmland. In 1934 construction of the Qiantang River Bridge began under Mao Yisheng, and the 1,453-metre double-deck road and rail bridge opened on 26 September 1937. Together they showed that Chinese engineers could carry out large modern works on their own.
Also known as Zi Tangchen
- Roles
- Engineer / Architect
Mao Yisheng, courtesy name Tangchen, was born in 1896 in Dantu (now Zhenjiang), Jiangsu. After graduating from the Tangshan Industrial College in 1916 he studied in the United States, taking a graduate degree in bridge engineering at Cornell and a doctorate in engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Back home he taught at Southeastern University and the Hohai engineering college. From 1934 he headed the Qiantang River Bridge engineering office and built the bridge, whose railway deck opened on 26 September 1937; that December he took part in blowing it up to slow the Japanese advance. He led its repair from 1946, and the bridge reopened fully in March 1948. His books include The Qiantang River Bridge. He died in Beijing in November 1989.
Life and times
Dates 1896–1989
- 1930China Builds Its Own WorksTook partage 34
- 1934Qiantang River Bridge Work Beginsage 38
- 1937Qiantang River Bridge Opensage 41