Page 60 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

A-Z 53
Bridge Bridge

qiao

A bridge connects things which are separated: therefore, the dead must cross the narrow
bridge that leads from this world to the next, and sinners who do not deserve to reach the
other side, fall down into the foul waters full of blood and pus. According to legend,
Xiuan-cang went on a pilgrimage from Tang China to India to fetch Buddhist texts so
that the Emperor should no longer be haunted by the spirits of the many people he had
killed. On the journey he had to cross a bridge which consisted of nothing more than a
tree trunk: he and his companions ‘lost their bodies’, i.e. they became immortal.
A scene from the novel ‘The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms’ is often depicted: it
shows General Zhang Fei on horseback fighting his enemies on the bridge known as the
‘bridge of the long boards’.
Close to Chang-an on the river Wei is the celebrated Blue Bridge, at which wives
and friends said good-bye to those who were being sent to take up posts in remote
provinces. This bridge is under the protection of its own goddess – the ‘Person of the
Blue Bridge’ – who is none other than the Moon-goddess.
The young Lord Wei once arranged to meet his sweetheart under the Blue Bridge, but
the water of the Wei river rose higher and higher, and he was drowned. This tale of
extreme devotion is very popular in Taiwan, where it is told of two friends who
thereupon became local divinities. According to another version of the legend, Lord Pei
Hang met his sweetheart Yun-ying in a haunted cave near the bridge and both acquired
divine status.
There is also a god of bridges who does not allow evil demons to bring their ills and
sicknesses across. In many parts of China, people cross three bridges on the 16th day of
the 1st month, in order to avoid the pestilential demons. One of the most popular Chinese

legends tells how a pair of young lovers (a cowherd and a spinning damsel) who were so
besotted with each other that they could not work properly, were parted by a river (the
Milky Way) with the result that they could meet only once a year (on the 7th day of the
7th month, or in some parts of China on the 6th day of the same month). It is on this day
that the magpies build a bridge so that the cowherd can hasten to his beloved
spinning damsel. A bridge built by sea-creatures, by means of which a hero is able to
save his life, appears in Chinese, Korean and Japanese legend.
In erotic literature, the bridge stands for the area between the anus and the vagina.
Pictures showing a man hurrying towards a bridge over a stream between two high
mountains have erotic implications.