Tumen 4 - Broken Bridges (Tumen, China; 10/2008)

The neat thing about Tumen is that it's right across the river from NK. If I remember my history correctly (and I may not), the Japanese built a number of bridges over the Tumen and Yalu rivers during their occupation of NE China (mid 1930s through the mid 1940s). Their primary purpose was to provide a quick route for the transportation of looted resources from China to Japan. Unfortunately/fortunately, these bridges were destroyed not too long after they were constructed: further south along the Yalu, some were bombed by the Americans during the Korean War in the early 1950s. Far up in the NE, in Tumen, the Japanese actually had to bomb their own bridges as a means of blockading Russian attack, after the onset of the Russo-Japanese conflict.

The broken bridge along the Tumen River was never reconstructed, for obvious reasons, and remains unusable to this day. The funny thing is that you really don't need it to get to the other side (or for the other-siders to come across to China)--the river is narrow and shallow and it freezes over during the winter. Today, it's just this odd artifact of Chinese / Japanese / NK history that serves no practical purpose. There hasn't been an effort to clean up the debris and the fallen parts. It's just...kinda there.

I feel like those in the area (at least the older Chinese) passively acknowledge it as part of a past reality that they can still recall. And I feel like they look upon the first-world expats and tourists who come to seek it out so eagerly (cameras in tow) with some degree of mirth and judging bemusement.