Ｂｒｉｄｇｅｓ　Ｔｒａｎｓｆｏｒｍｓ　ｔｈｅ　Ａｒｃｈｉｐｅｌａｇｏ

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Zhoushan Archipelago used to hang out alone in East China Sea. For thousands of years, it functioned differently. Li Bai, one of the greatest poets of China, once described the archipelago as inaccessible where deities enjoyed immortality. Dethroned kings and deposed high-ranking officials sought refuge in some isles there. In the sixteenth century, the Shuangyu Port in the archipelago became a teeming center of international trade. History record says that “streets at the port abounded with people in white, yellow and black colors and goods from all over the world”. Modern Japanese scholars compare the archipelago of the 16th century to Great Shanghai of today. The English soldiers seized Zhoushan twice during the opium war for the purpose of occupying the archipelago and turning it into a trade center of Asia and the world.

The Qing Dynasty refused to cede the control of Zhoushan archipelago to Britain after the defeat of the first Opium War. After ceding a fishing village (which grew into Hong Kong) in the south to Britain, the Chinese government signed a treaty with the Britain on the withdrawal of British interests from the archipelago. The treaty stipulated that China undertook never to let other countries use the archipelago.

Economically, Zhoushan was important because it was extremely close to the richest part of feudal China at that time. Zhoushan with more than 1,000 islands is an archipelago situated outside the estuary of the Yangtze River, nestled against Shanghai, Ningbo, Hangzhou and other important cities in the Yangtze River Delta. The archipelago boasts the countrys large fishing grounds and offers various otherworldly tourism destinations. In particular, the archipelago boasts great prospects for building deepwater ports for ocean shipping. Unfortunately, however, the port potentialities have been untapped for decades for the archipelago was not connected in a big economic way with the mainland.

After the founding of the New China, Zhoushan served as a military fortress for a long while. Economy and infrastructure dawdled for decades. It was not until 1983 that the first regular ship service began to shuttle between Zhoushan and Ningbo. But the blue highway depended totally upon the temper and whim of the sea for its effectiveness. Zhoushan lagged farther behind while much of the rest of Zhejiang witnessed fast economic takeoff.

Zhoushan as an important fishing port needs to ship its fresh seafood fast to mainland retail outlets. In the past, ferries moved the goods at a painfully slow rate. Zhu Zhongfei, a businessman who ships seafood from the archipelago to the rest of the country, still remembers a painful loss that took place a long time ago. At that time he was running two trucks to transport fresh seafood to the mainland. The first truck caught the ferry on time and reached the market on 12 sharp. The crabs were sold at 50 yuan a kilo. The second truck didnt make the time and arrived at the market at five oclock in the afternoon. The crabs were sold at 30 yuan per kilo. Had the second truck of crabs arrived at noon he would have been richer by 50,000 yuan at the end of the day. In those days, 50,000 yuan was a huge fortune.

In all these years, Zhoushan islanders traveled by boat or by ship from island to island or from the archipelago to neighboring important cities such as Shanghai and Ningbo. Today old people on these islands have sad memories of tragedies of boat accidents and deaths.

In May 1996, the people on the archipelago started a massive mind-emancipation discussion and pondered about development issues and the future of Zhoushan. They agreed that bridges would be the only way out economically. But financially, Zhoushan was broke in 1996 and 1997. The droughts and floods in 1996 and 1997 brought a loss of 3.7 billion yuan and the revenues in the two years added up to less than 400 million yuan. The government was supposed to finance the projects of mending damaged seawalls across the archipelago and to provide loans to fishermen for building steel fishing ships. But the government and the people determined to build bridges.

So bridges were to be built. On drawing board were five bridges and expressways which measure more than 50 kilometers in total and connect islands and span straits and reach Ningbo. The government raised money and the islanders eagerly chipped in. Some even sold house chickens and eggs to put together a small sum of cash for the project.

On January 7, 2003, Xi Jinping visited Zhoushan shortly after taking the position as the chief of CPC Zhejiang Committee. He endorsed the project saying that the bridges would bring fundamental changes to the archipelago and adjust the economic map of the province most favorably and that the bridges would play a strategic part in the economic development of both the Yangtze River Delta and Zhejiang.

With the first bridge constructed in 1999, all the five bridges were finally connected in October 2008. With the bridges built, the distance between Zhoushan and Ningbo is shorter by fifty km or three hours if measured in time. Nowadays, the archipelago is as large as Singapore and Hong Kong put together. The bridges have given Zhoushan more potentialities for further development and closer link with the vast inland of the country.

Local residents believe the bridges will put paid to poverty which has harassed them in many ways in the past. For one thing, new jobs will bring young people back to islands. Old people look forward to spending their twilight years with their grandchildren. Children in some broken families look forward to see their moms back. After a bridge was completed, a man brought his wife and son to the bridge. They took off their shoes and socks and walked barefoot all the way from one end to the other, trying to tell themselves it was not a dream.

With the bridges in position, Zhoushan has taken off economically. At present, the per capita GDP in Zhoushan has topped 4,000 dollars, a significant landmark in its economic fortune. Economists explain that the per capita GDP of $4,000 signifies a threshold for a country or a region to enjoy a much better life. □