Obstacles overcome

Chiang Kai-shek had hoped that Anshunchang would be where the Red Army would repeat the tragedy of Shi Dakai (1831-63), one of the best generals in the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64), which almost toppled the Qing (1644-1911), China's last feudal dynasty.

In May 1863, Shi and his soldiers reached Anshunchang after entering Sichuan from neighboring Yunnan province.

Due to the sudden surge in the level of the Dadu because of a rainstorm, Shi and his men were stranded on the river's south side. To save his soldiers from certain death, Shi went to the Qing military camp, pledging to sacrifice his own life.

Though the Qing military allowed 4,000 Taiping soldiers to walk free, some 2,000 were killed and Shi was sent to Chengdu, the provincial capital, where he was sentenced to death.

A monument on Chunxi Road, Chengdu's busiest commercial street, stands at the site where Shi suffered the cruelest feudal form of capital punishment, with his body being dismembered by thousands of cuts.

When the Red Army came to the Dadu on the same month 72 years later, the current was very swift and the process of ferrying the soldiers in four boats was too slow.

Mao convened a meeting where it was decided to seize the Kuomintang-controlled Luding Bridge 160 kilometers away.

When the Red Army soldiers reached the west bank of the bridge, they discovered that the planks had been removed and Kuomintang troops were converging on the east bank.

"Victory is life, defeat is certain death," Red Army General Peng Dehuai said.

The Red Army controlled a temple on the west bank, which is much higher than the east bank. Under the cover of fire from cannons and machine guns at the temple, 22 soldiers clung to the iron chains of the bridge, laying planks on it, despite coming under intense machine-gun fire from Kuomintang troops on the other side, said Sun, the historian and a former chairman of the Luding county committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Though several injured soldiers fell into the fast-flowing river, the others crawled along the planks they had laid, shooting and launching a torrent of grenades until they finally took control of the east bank.

Today, people only know the names of four of the soldiers. Many of the others lost their lives in subsequent battles, Sun said.

Twenty-two pillars stand in the Luding Bridge Memorial Museum in honor of the 22 brave men. Only four of them are engraved with names, while 18 remain blank, their identities unknown forever.

Less than a minute's walk from Luding Bridge Square, the center of the county seat, is the east bank of the bridge, which was built in 1706 during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722). The words "Luding Bridge" can be seen at the entrance in the emperor's calligraphic style.

In olden times, as the only way to cross the Dadu, the bridge was an important link on the ancient Tea Horse Road for porters who carried tea to Tibetan-inhabited areas, and the holes drilled and fitted with poles that they used for support can still be seen on its west bank.

The 81-km-long Luding county section of the river now has 23 footbridges, 19 road bridges and four cable suspension bridges. The convenient transportation infrastructure means it only takes three hours to drive from Luding Bridge to Anshunchang.