During the Sichuan Army’s two-year campaign against the Miao at Chong’an, they had been repeatedly slowed by having to ferry themselves across a deep, unbridged gorge just west of town. In 1874 Mesny wrote in the Shanghai Courier how he was designing a chain-link suspension bridge over the chasm, which lay on the main post road between Hunan and Guiyang: “The bridge will …
Zhou Dawu
In late 1870, General Zhou Dawu (周达武) was made commander-in-chief for military operations in Guizhou, and went on to supress the various Miao and Muslim uprisings in the province. Zhou appointed Mesny “Provincial Superintendent of Foreign Arms”, paid for the suspension bridge designed by Mesny that still spans a small gorge just west of at Chong’an town, and later took Mesny and his wife along …