Who built the first bridge over the Yangtze River? The unlikely tale of Chinese slave, soldier and tycoon Jiang Zonghan
- After escaping serfdom, Jiang Zonghan became a decorated general, and then a businessman, before taking the fall for killing a British explorer – but why did he build this mysterious bridge?
It is not until my taxi is cruising smoothly down the expressway southeast of Lijiang, having escaped the picturesque but overcrowded maze of tourist-thronged alleyways, that I think to ask my driver her name.
“It’s Ms Jiang,” she says, “you know, like Jiang Jieshi [Chiang Kai-shek], who fought Mao and then fled to Taiwan.”
She digs around in the glove compartment and hands me her card, having established that my dinosaur smartphone doesn’t support WeChat, an essential app for swapping contact details in mainland China, even out here in remote Yunnan province.
“Isn’t it also Jiang,” I ask, reading her name, “as in Jiang Zonghan?”
“You know about Jiang Zonghan?” Startled, she turns briefly to look at me. “He’s my ancestor.”
Well that was unexpected.
I had been drawn to this corner of Yunnan for my forthcoming project for Blacksmith Books, A Murder in Yunnan, researching the story of a 19th century British trade expedition that ended in disaster some way southwest of Lijiang, along the Myanmar border.
