Maple Bridge: Famous around the world because of a poem

During the Sui Dynasty, once the canal was excavated, Maple Bridge became a station on the waterway transportation route heading north from Jiangsu to Zhejiang Province, bustling with merchants and boats. The poem 'Night Mooring at Maple Bridge' by Zhang Ji made the Maple Bridge outside Suzhou City a cinnabar mole in countless people's hearts, a place everyone yearned to visit. As the main thread of the scenic area, Maple Bridge combines the ancient bridge, ancient canal, ancient pass, ancient temple, and ancient town into an organic whole. The well-known 'Night Mooring at Maple Bridge,' these touching verses, lie quietly among the flowers. Nearby, there is also a statue of the author Zhang Ji, receiving the admiration of tourists from all directions. Maple Bridge is a famous ancient site in Suzhou, with an unknown construction date. The Tang Dynasty ancient bridge that Zhang Ji saw during his night mooring no longer exists; this semi-circular single-hole stone bridge was rebuilt in the sixth year of the Tongzhi era of the Qing Dynasty (AD 1867). The bridge is 39.6 meters long, 5.27 meters wide, with a span of 10 meters, connecting the east bank to Tie Ling Pass. Maple Bridge has a simple and ancient design. In the Jiangnan region, such stone arch bridges can be seen everywhere. Even though the old Maple Bridge area in Suzhou was a major thoroughfare for water and land transportation, with boats and carriages gathering daily and merchants and travelers coming and going, if it were not for the Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Ji's famous poem 'Night Mooring at Maple Bridge,' it would have been just an ordinary stone arch bridge in history, once bustling and noisy. Originally named 'Feng Bridge,' this place was not only a major canal port but also a necessary route for the ancient post road. From the beginning of its construction, it became an important transit station for merchants and travelers, as well as a strategic military location. Whenever grain was transported through the canal, the river and city gates would be under martial law and sealed, hence the name. 'Feng Bridge' was later renamed 'Maple Bridge' all because of Zhang Ji's 'Night Mooring at Maple Bridge.' The poet, staying here during his travels, saw maple trees growing by the river and mistook 'Feng Bridge' for 'Maple Bridge,' using it in his poem. Subsequent generations continued the error, changing the name of the bridge. A thousand years after Zhang Ji, Maple Bridge is revisited, and the elegance, classicism, and romance of the poem's 'moon falling, crows cawing, frost fills the sky, river maples and fisherman's lights, I sleep filled with sorrow' still flow endlessly.