Huitong Bridge spirit still inspires

Iconic structure is testament to nation's galvanizing victory against Japanese invaders, Yang Yang and Li Yingqing report.

Before 2015, Dong Rongrong knew little about her great-grandfather Liang Jinshan, who died in 1977. On Oct 3,2015, Dong, then 29, heard that Liang Youcheng, Liang Jinshan's son, the elder brother of Dong's maternal grandmother, was invited to Beijing as one of the five people representing overseas Chinese to watch the military parade that marked the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese people's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and the World Anti-Fascist War.

Realizing that her great-grandfather must be a very important person, she began to seriously learn about his extraordinary life, especially after she joined the Overseas Chinese Federation in Longyang district of Baoshan in Yunnan province.

Born into a poor family in a village in Longyang district in 1882, Liang Jinshan (1882-1977) became an orphan at 16.

In 1903, to escape persecution by local despots, he fled to Burma (now Myanmar), where he endured starvation and backbreaking labor as a road builder, dockworker, and oil refiner.

Liang Jinshan's pivotal moment came at a British-owned silver factory where he accidentally solved a critical smelting crisis. Later, despite his limited education, his integrity and foresight saved 3,000 miners from a catastrophic collapse in 1916.

Honored with engraved weapons and promoted to general manager, Liang gradually accumulated wealth, becoming one of the richest Chinese men in the country.

"He was, first and foremost, a genuine farmer of down-to-earth integrity. Through sheer diligence and hard work, he achieved prosperity step by step — a testament to his tireless perseverance. Despite never receiving a formal education, he ultimately mastered conversational fluency in five languages," Dong says.

Yet even after attaining wealth, he never turned his back on his homeland. When the war against Japanese invaders erupted, he provided funds for the defense through substantial donations, says Dong, now Party secretary of the federation.

On May 4, 1942, to block the Japanese invaders and save the country, the Chinese army decided to demolish the strategic Huitong Bridge over the Nujiang River in Yunnan province.

It was the only bridge connecting China and the world as the Japanese aggressors had cut off all the other routes for international aid.

However, if the bridge remained intact, the Japanese invaders would reach Kunming in 10 days, which was close to Chongqing, the temporary capital for the then Chinese government since the war's full-scale outbreak in July 1937.

Before the Chinese army blasted the bridge with explosives, a senior official of the Kuomintang government, Yu Feipeng, called on Liang Jinshan, who initially financed the construction of the cable bridge, the first of its kind in China.

For generations, the people of western Yunnan longed for a bridge to connect the two sides of the tumultuous Nujiang River.