Xiushan Covered Bridge

Xiushan's covered bridge is a timber bridge with a roof, the kind the Tujia and Miao country calls a wind-and-rain bridge, built so that a crossing does not depend on the weather. The county has the weather for it: 1,341.1 millimetres of rain a year and a mean of 16 degrees. A bridge of this kind is a room as much as a road, with benches along both walls, a dark truss overhead and the water loud underneath. Timber bridges in this rain are temporary by nature, and the ones that stand are the ones that were put back. What survives is the type rather than any single old span.