1932 Hengyang Rumor: To Build a Bridge You Need Living People to Fill the Piers, the Whole City Shuts Its Doors at Dusk

In 1932, the Green Grass Bridge over the Zheng River in Hengyang, Hunan was due to be rebuilt, converted into a stone arch bridge. The soil at the river mouth was loose, the bridge foundations were hard to drive, and there had always been trouble, with the schedule delayed again and again.

At this time, a sentence suddenly spread around the city: since the bridge piers could not be driven down, they needed burlap sacks to bag people and stuff them into the piers.

In the old days among the folk, this was called "da sheng zhuang": when building a big bridge or a big house, you had to bury a living person underneath to suppress it. This belief was widespread in many places in old China, and the elders had all heard of it.

Hengyang city immediately fell into chaos. Every household shut their doors as soon as it got dark, for fear of being snatched with a sack over their heads. The children in the street were not allowed to come out and play, and one household shouted "be careful" to the next. For a while, at night in Hengyang, there was almost no one on the streets.

Later people said it was a rumor, that no one was really taken away, and there was no record of anyone being buried in the bridge piers.

Later, an old man named Li Fuchun recalled the incident, saying that the rumor "somehow managed to fool many people."

Such "da sheng zhuang" rumors appeared in many cities during the Republic of China era. Whenever a bridge or city wall was being built, it would spread to some village or street that they were going to catch people. No one was actually ever caught, but every time, the whole city would shut their doors at dusk.

Someone heard a sentence from somewhere, passed it to another person, and that person passed it to the next. By evening, the whole city had shut its doors.

#Folklore #网络转载 #民间传闻