In 1933, the Nationalist government conducted a public tender to build a bridge over the Qiantang River. Mao Yisheng's "road and railway double-decker bridge" was designed to be superior, beating american experts and winning the bidding.
However, the outside world is very skeptical about Chinese's own construction of a bridge on the Qiantang River. Because several bridges in China were built by foreigners before, and there are also problems of the tide of the Qiantang River and the sand sinking at the bottom of the river for more than 40 meters, it is very difficult to build a bridge on the Qiantang River.
In July 1935, the construction of the Qiantang River Bridge began, but it did not go well at the beginning. A piling boat sank, and all the migrant workers on board were killed; the tide of the Qiantang River blew the No. 4 sinker away four times, blowing farther and farther. The outside world and the public are increasingly questioned.
At that time, Zeng Yangfu, director of the Construction Department of Zhejiang Province, said to Mao Yisheng: "If the Qiantang River Bridge cannot be built or built well, the first person to jump the Qiantang River is you Mao Yisheng, and then I have raised Fu and jumped again!"
In the face of tremendous pressure, Mao Yisheng was not ambiguous. Building a bridge for the motherland is his long-cherished wish for many years. He believes in his own strength, even if the pressure is great, he will not retreat!
Mao Yisheng was born in 1896 in a family of scholars in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province. When he was 10 years old, something happened that made him and Qiao form an indissoluble relationship. That year, the Dragon Boat Festival held a dragon boat competition, and everyone stood on the Wende Bridge to watch, but the bridge collapsed, and many people, including his three classmates, were unfortunately killed. And he didn't go because of his stomach pain, and he luckily escaped the disaster. Since then, he has made a promise: I will build a strong bridge in the future!
Since then, as long as Mao Yisheng sees the bridge in his life, he will look up and down, and when he sees the knowledge about the bridge in the book, he will also copy it down.
In 1916, Mao Yisheng graduated from the former Tangshan Institute of Technology majoring in bridges, and later went to the United States to study with the first place, and received a doctorate degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1919.
After Mao Yisheng returned to China with solid professional skills, he always wanted to build a modern bridge for the country. Therefore, although the repair of the Qiantang River Bridge is a "hot potato", he resolutely accepted the challenge.
According to his design, each pier should be bottomed by 160 wooden stakes. However, there are more than 40 meters of sediment on the rocks at the bottom of Qiantang Lake, which has caused great difficulties in piling. In the traditional way, migrant workers worked for a day and a night to hit a wooden stake, and the progress was very slow. Mao Yisheng meditated on a solution. One day, he saw his daughter watering the flowers with a kettle, and the water washed open a small hole in the flower soil, and suddenly the grass suddenly opened.
Using the same principle, he filled a large container with a lot of water, raised the container, and let the water rush directly to the rock to be piled. Under the huge water pressure, the sediment on the rock is washed away, so it is much easier to drive piles directly on the rock.
This method is called the "water sinking pile method", and to this day, it is still commonly used in the bridge industry. In this way, migrant workers can drill 30 wooden stakes a day and a night, which greatly improves the progress of the project. After rigorous calculations, he changed the iron anchor in the sinking chamber from three tons to ten tons, and solved the problem of the sinking chamber running around by buoyancy.
The tide of the Qiantang River is world-famous, and the impact of the tide is huge, and it is undoubtedly very difficult to construct in the tide. How did Mao Yisheng overcome this problem?
He cleverly used the buoyancy of the Qiantang River to "turn difficulties into help", when the tide was high, the steel beam was transported by boat to the two piers, and the steel beam naturally fell on the two piers when the tide fell, which was really labor-saving and labor-saving.
Mao Yisheng overcame one difficulty after another, which lasted 925 days and nights, cost 1.6 million US dollars, and finally built the double-decker road and railway dual-purpose Qiantang River Bridge with a total length of 1453 meters and a foundation depth of 47.8 meters.
The bridge was completed and opened to traffic on September 26, 1937, which is the first modern steel bridge designed and constructed by the Chinese itself, which is of landmark significance in the history of Bridge Engineering in China.
Mao Yisheng also turned the bridge site into a school, he let many civil engineering students to practice, on-site teaching, to maximize the role of the site display, to cultivate a large number of bridge engineering talents.
At the same time, he was also very prescient, and found someone to photograph the entire process of building the bridge as a reference for future bridge repairs. Now this 2500-meter-long video film has become an important reference for China's bridge profession.
At that time, the Japanese army invaded China, and the Qiantang River Bridge also had a bad fate. On the 89th day after the bridge was completed and opened to traffic, in order to prevent Japanese devils from taking advantage of it, Mao Yisheng was ordered to blow up the bridge with his own hands.
This became the most unforgettable and painful moment in Mao Yisheng's life, he wrote in his diary: "It is as uncomfortable as strangling his own own son with his own hands!" Facing the iron hooves of the Japanese devils, he wrote a book: "The War of Resistance will be victorious, and this bridge will be restored!" "No husband without restoring the bridge!"
After that, the Japanese began to repair the Qiantang River Bridge, the Japanese repaired it, our army blew up at the same time, and the bridge experienced "four repairs and four explosions" before and after. Until 1953, under the auspices of Mao Yisheng, the Qiantang River Bridge was finally completely repaired and opened to traffic.
In 1955, Mao Yisheng presided over the construction of the first bridge across the Yangtze River, the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge. He devoted himself to the cause of bridge construction all his life, learned bridges, built bridges, and wrote bridges, and made outstanding contributions to the bridge cause of the motherland, known as the "father of Chinese bridges".