When Buzzy and I were in China, one of the tour sites included a visit to the Yangtze River Bridge which they were very proud of because the Chinese had built it themselves. From Wikipedia
“After the withdrawal of Soviet experts following the Sino-Soviet Split, China was thought to be unable to build a bridge on such a scale by themselves, without outside support. The project was undertaken to prove that Chinese engineers were able to overcome this perceived lack of ability.” For more info click here.
As our tour guide explained all of this to us, she also took a little shot at the United States when she said something along the lines that even U.S. engineers told the Chinese that it was not possible to build such a bridge in the area where they wanted to do so.
Sitting across from Buzzy and me on the bus was a British tourist who was an engineer. Since he too liked to tour as he drank, he and Buzzy had become good friends. When our tour guide disparaged American bridge builders, the Brit leaned over to us and said “That’s poppycock. Americans are the foremost bridge builders in the world so something is being misrepresented here.” Buzzy replied as he took a sip of his Black Velvet, “You call it poppycock, we call it bullshit.”
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| Buzzy on Yangtze Bridge |
All this came to mind as I saw that today in history (click here) marks the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Maybe we should have had some Chinese engineers working on that one for us.