Xiluo Bridge: Fifteen Years at a Standstill, Seven Months to Connect North and South

30-second overview: The Xiluo Bridge was not built in one go. Construction began in 1937; by 1941, 32 piers were complete, but the superstructure halted due to war. In 1952, U.S. aid steel arrived, and Taiwanese engineers alongside foreign technical personnel finished the bridge in seven months; it opened to traffic in January 1953. It linked Changhua's Xizhou with Yunlin's Xiluo, and also joined the Japanese-era piers, the postwar steel truss, the Taiwan Sugar trains, and local petitions into a segment of history you can walk across.^{1 2 3}

Image: Wikimedia Commons, author Fcuk1203, CC BY-SA 3.0. Image file page and license terms: Xiluo Bridge.jpg.

In 1937, the bridge downstream on the Zhuoshui River had its piers, but not yet a road to walk on. In 1941, after 32 concrete piers were finished, the Pacific War diverted the steel originally meant for the superstructure to military use. It was not until December 25, 1952 that the bridge was truly completed, and the opening ceremony was held on January 28, 1953.^{1 2}

What is most worth remembering about the Xiluo Bridge is this time gap. The blueprint left the piers first; war, steel shortages, local petitions, and Cold War transport demands then rewrote the project repeatedly, and only fifteen years later did the bridge grow its complete steel truss. The piers belong to one era, the truss to another; the two finally met above the Zhuoshui River as a single road.^{1 2}

The Zhuoshui River Kept Two Nearby Places Apart

Xiluo is in Yunlin, Xizhou in Changhua; between them lies only the lower Zhuoshui River, yet crossing was never simply a matter of wanting to. The National Archives Administration records that traveling from Taichung to Dounan via the detour through Jiji, Zhushan, and Douliu took 99 kilometers. With a bridge spanning the Zhuoshui, the route could be shortened to 58 kilometers. In the rainy season, the trip from Xiluo to Xizhou could require a detour of roughly 80 kilometers.¹

Distance appears to be a highway problem, but in reality it was also the time cost of local life. When the river ran low, people could ford it or use a makeshift bridge. Once the rains came, the markets, schools, relatives, and goods on both banks were severed by a broad channel. Xiluo and Xizhou looked close, yet traffic had to make a wide loop first — this is why local figures kept demanding a bridge.^{1 3}

In 1936, locals formed the "Zhuoshui River Bridge Promotion Alliance," turning the wish to cross into an engineering case that could be presented to the government. The following year, the Taiwan Governor-General's Office decided to invest in the Zhuoshui River bridge project. Residents on both banks first framed "there should be a bridge" as a public issue; only then did the project have a starting point. The Governor-General's decision and the engineers' designs followed this local demand.^{1 3 4}

Curator's note: Before the first steel beam of a bridge appears, the locality has already built it into public life through petitions, meetings, and waiting.

32 Piers Frozen in War

Construction began in 1937; the piers were completed in 1940 or 1941. Official and historical compilations differ slightly on the year, but all point to the same structural fact: piers first, superstructure added later. The cultural heritage registration lists 1938 as the official groundbreaking year and records a work stoppage around 1941 due to the Pacific War.^{1 2 3}

The piers are not merely the backdrop of a half-finished product. They are the most concrete temporal markers on the bridge today. The substructure consists mainly of portal-type reinforced concrete piers completed during the Japanese era; the superstructure is a Warren truss made of steel in the early postwar period. Standing on the bridge you see a red steel bridge; underfoot you tread the engineering seam left by two political eras.²

War pulled the bridge's steel away from the Zhuoshui River toward military use. After Japan's surrender in 1945, the Taiwan Provincial Administrative Executive Office and local figures attempted to reacquire steel, even approaching the Anshan Iron and Steel Works, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The February 28 Incident and the Chinese Civil War followed in succession, creating instability in both society and material conditions; the project still did not truly return to the bridge.¹

This standstill represented more than "construction delay." It left a batch of finished piers exposed to the river, time, and political change, and forced local residents to repeatedly explain to new government agencies why the same river-crossing problem had not disappeared. In 1948, Liao Chong-guang and Li Ying-tan formed the Xiluo Bridge Resumption Committee; local organizations turned waiting back into action.⁴

U.S. Aid Steel Arrived After the Korean War

In late 1949, the central government relocated to Taiwan; Changhua and Yunlin representatives again petitioned the Taiwan Provincial Consultative Council. In 1950, Li Wan-ju proposed securing U.S. aid to complete the bridge. The project's language expanded from "local transportation" to include "wartime transport": if north-south transport relied solely on the Western Trunk Line railway, wartime would lack an alternative supporting route.¹

Before U.S. aid steel arrived, the Xiluo Bridge waited further in ports and paperwork. The United States had originally promised steel; after the Korean War broke out in June 1950, steel exports to Taiwan were paused due to battlefield demand. This is another counterintuitive aspect of the Xiluo Bridge: it was delayed by Cold War geopolitics, yet also because of Cold War geopolitics Taiwan's transportation and military position gained greater attention, finally creating the conditions for resumption.^{1 2}

In April and November 1952, two batches of steel arrived from the United States. Taiwan Machinery Company, Heavy Machinery Plant, and Taiwan Mining Company undertook construction; the site also had American, Japanese, and Filipino technical personnel assisting. Pile driving, erection, girder placement, riveting, painting, and deck paving were compressed into a single construction season.¹

Girder placement especially required precise handling of weather, earthquakes, tools, and site conditions. The National Archives Administration records that the bridge was completed ahead of schedule on December 25, 1952 — roughly seven months from resumption to completion. This figure should not be dismissed with the word "miracle." It more closely resembles a hastily assembled multinational engineering crew, once materials were finally in place, clawing back fifteen years of stagnation in one push.¹

A Bridge That Carried Both Cars and Five-Fen Trains

The Xiluo Bridge spans approximately 1,939 meters, with a deck width of about 7.3 meters, employing a Warren through-truss — steel for the truss, concrete for the piers. The Cultural Heritage website lists it as a historic bridge building, registered on October 31, 2001.^{2 3}

The deck was not only for automobiles. Taiwan Sugar's narrow-gauge trains also ran on the bridge; the sight of trains and cars running side by side placed the sugarcane, goods, people, and vehicles of both banks into a single transportation cross-section. Yunlin County Government data notes that later, as the sugar railway's importance declined, rail slippage caused accidents, and the tracks on the bridge were removed; today only the highway portion remains.³

This change makes "transportation construction" more than a story of greater speed. When the Taiwan Sugar railway still operated, the bridge was a tool of industrial transport. When the rails were removed, the bridge retained the trace of an industrial era receding into the background. Walking the red truss today, readers cannot see the five-fen trains, but can imagine from the bridge's scale how they once shared the same narrow roadway with highway traffic.³

Image: Wikimedia Commons, author Shangkuanlc, CC BY-SA 3.0. Image file page and license terms: Taiwan Province Yunlin County Xiluo Township Xiluo Bridge-1.jpg.

The opening ceremony on January 28, 1953 gave this wait a public moment. Photos, documents, and commemorative postmarks preserved by the National Archives Administration record crowds pouring into Xiluo Township, with streets and walls displaying celebratory banners reading "Bridge Open, North and South One Family." This phrase was not a pretty metaphor added later for the bridge. It appeared on local streets and walls that very day, recording how residents understood this bridge.¹

Curator's note: The bridge once carried cars and trains, and also carried the collective exhale of residents on both banks at "finally being able to go straight across."

How a Bridge Turned from Steel into Road in Seven Months

The Xiluo Bridge's resumption did not end with a batch of steel delivered to the riverbank. Engineering narratives preserved by the National Archives Administration break construction into several interlinked links: piers first had to bear the superstructure; steel girders had to be lifted when river conditions allowed; riveting and joint work had to be done on site; finally a deck capable of carrying automobile traffic had to be paved. These tasks cannot be summarized as merely "fast," because any single link's delay would have pushed the seven-month construction season back to the next wait.¹

The bridge's spans also make it a visible engineering scale. The Cultural Heritage website records a total length of 1,939.03 meters; Yunlin County Government records a deck width of about 7.3 meters. This is not a causeway that fills the gap between banks, but a road that repeatedly passes through steel trusses, with piers transferring weight to the riverbed. The 31-odd truss openings the reader sees correspond to an engineering method that breaks a long distance into multiple structural units.^{2 3 4}

The deck at the time also had to contend with the Zhuoshui River's natural conditions. The channel is wide, scouring strong; pier positions could not be decided simply by extending the roads on both banks. The project had to find constructible nodes between transportation demand and the river environment — this is also why the bridge's history cannot be written simply as "U.S. aid construction." U.S. aid provided the critical steel; local petitions provided sustained political pressure; the engineering team turned materials into a structure that could withstand daily traffic.^{1 2}

From the Shortest Route to the Longest Memory

The Xiluo Bridge was once called the "Far East's First Great Bridge." Cultural heritage registration data cites "at the time the longest bridge in the Far East, second longest in the world" as part of its historical value; Transportation History describes it as the longest bridge in East Asia upon its 1953 opening. Different sources' ranking contexts are not entirely identical; a more prudent statement is: at opening, its nearly two-kilometer scale made it a noted engineering feat in the bridge history of East Asia and the Far East at the time.^{2 4}

Later, the Zhongsha Bridge and other routes shared the original transport function. The Cultural Heritage website notes that the Xiluo Bridge remains open to traffic but is no longer the sole north-south artery. After its transport role changed, the bridge's value did not automatically become purely scenic. It still faces practical issues of deck maintenance, traffic safety, steel corrosion prevention, and cross-county management coordination. Preservation is not sealing the bridge in time, but letting it continue to withstand public scrutiny while still in use.^{2 3}

A 2025 United Daily News report also shows that local cultural-history groups hope to upgrade it to a monument; the Changhua County Cultural Heritage Review Committee resolved to maintain its historic building status, citing the existence of similar bridges, the structural form's uniqueness, and monument designation criteria. This decision does not mean the Xiluo Bridge lacks historical value, but that different heritage statuses have different evidentiary thresholds. The bridge's preservation therefore requires simultaneously addressing engineering judgment, historical narrative, and local expectations.⁵

This debate need not be reduced to "locals want tourism" versus "experts disregard history." Heritage status must answer a different question: for a bridge still in use, needing structural maintenance, whose value derives simultaneously from engineering, transportation, industry, and local memory — what system should preserve it? The Xiluo Bridge's present still demands concrete choices between traffic safety and historical preservation.^{2 5}

Taiwan Panorama writes of the Xiluo Bridge as the starting point of Xiluo people's northward dreams, and records how the red steel structure, the Zhuoshui riverbed, and local cultural activities have reformed ways of viewing it. The bridge's transport function can be replaced; its function as a local landmark has not disappeared for that reason.⁶

At night, the red truss is no longer just an engineering structure, but also a place to stroll, drink coffee, and watch the sunset. Another Taiwan Panorama article notes that later bridges shouldered most transport work, yet the Xiluo Bridge remains in locals' sightlines through its nighttime light and shadow. The old bridge's nighttime light and shadow need not be romanticized. Infrastructure that steps back from the front line can still become a vessel of public memory.⁷

The Piers Did Not Close the Book on History

The Xiluo Bridge's story did not end with the 1953 opening, nor was it finalized with the 2001 historic building registration. It was first a project demanded by locals to shorten their journey; then a facility where the postwar government sought U.S. aid and maintained transport; then a segment of the Taiwan Sugar industrial line; finally a cultural asset requiring cross-county negotiation. No layer completely erased the one before it.^{1 2 3}

If we only call it the "Far East's First Great Bridge," readers remember the ranking but not why the bridge body has two vintages. If we only call it a "historic building," readers know it should be preserved but may not understand why both banks were willing to wait fifteen years. If we only photograph it as a red sunset landscape, the five-fen trains and construction site vanish from the frame.

A reading closer to the Xiluo Bridge is to see it as a timeline spliced together many times over. The piers begun in 1937 were not replaced by the 1952 steel girders; the Taiwan Sugar rails did not disappear with their removal; local petitions did not lose meaning after the opening ceremony. They all remain on today's bridge, merely seen in different ways.^{1 2 3}

Standing on the bridge, the Zhuoshui River still divides Changhua and Yunlin into two banks. The bridge, however, turns this boundary into a distance one can walk on foot. The most enduring aspect of the Xiluo Bridge is not how long it once was. It lets a bridge's history simultaneously record "how to cross the river," and also record how a group of people, when war, materials, and systems were not theirs to decide, kept the act of crossing the river in public life.

Further Reading

• Taiwan Sugar Railway: How a Five-Fen Train Threaded Through Taiwan's Industrial Memory
• Taiwan Railway History: How Railways Rewrote Distances on the Island
• Chianan Irrigation: How a Waterway Transformed Agriculture and Local Life

References