Tang Huancheng in his youth with a model of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge

Renowned bridge expert Tang Huancheng (left)

　　Tang Huancheng was born in Shanghai in 1926 and graduated with honors from the Department of Civil Engineering at National Chiao Tung University in Shanghai in 1948. After graduation, he joined the Wuhan branch of the China Bridge Company founded by Mr. Mao Yisheng, where he worked in design. He participated in the preliminary conceptual design of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge and also took part in the design of Yangtze River bridges in Nanjing, Chongqing, Jiujiang, and other locations.

　　Throughout his life, Tang Huancheng loved bridges, built bridges, and wrote about bridges. He was not only a bridge design expert but also a rare bridge aesthetics expert and bridge historian. The Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge was his first work.

　　In the 1950s, during the solicitation of architectural and artistic design schemes for the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, Premier Zhou Enlai personally approved the "Tang Huancheng scheme" as the first choice. In addition to meeting the technical requirements of bridge construction, Tang Huancheng's bridgehead design scheme fully considered aesthetic principles in the transition between the main bridge and the approach bridges. This served as a reference for the construction of many subsequent bridges.

　　In 1954, the state solicited artistic schemes for the Yangtze River Bridge bridgehead from architectural design institutes and university architectural design departments across the country. Twenty-five schemes were submitted nationwide, and Mr. Mao Yisheng and architectural experts such as Yang Tingbao of the Architectural Society evaluated them into first, second, and third prizes, which were reported to the central government. In the end, Premier Zhou Enlai approved Tang Huancheng's scheme as the first prize and adopted it. Thereafter, Tang Huancheng also participated in the design of the deep-water foundation structure of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, making an indelible contribution to the completion of China's first Yangtze River bridge.

　　Tang Huancheng's love for and dedication to the bridge cause were admirable, and he proposed many innovative technical schemes. For example, in the scheme comparison for the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, he proposed a 250-meter-span rigid-beam flexible-arch combined road-rail bridge scheme (later used for the Jiujiang Yangtze River Bridge) and a lock-joint tubular column pier scheme (the essence of which was later adopted by Japan).

　　In 1989, Tang Huancheng boldly proposed building coastal expressways and railways and studying cross-sea transportation projects for China's three major straits: the Bohai Strait, the Qiongzhou Strait, and the Taiwan Strait. In 1994, he served as project leader for the preliminary work of the Qiongzhou Strait cross-sea transportation project until August 2002. During this period, he led the completion of the planning scheme, preliminary feasibility study, and the second-stage engineering feasibility report. In March 2003, he was appointed senior technical consultant to the Bridge Engineering Group Co., Ltd., and continued to think about and devote himself to the dream of China's three major strait crossing projects.

　　In May 2008, Tang Huancheng, then 82, received the "Mao Yisheng Bridge Award."

　　Throughout his life, Tang Huancheng loved bridges, built bridges, and wrote about bridges. He was not only a bridge design expert but also a rare bridge aesthetics expert and bridge historian.

　　In the past 10 years, he collected technical materials from different eras in countries around the world that have undertaken cross-sea transportation projects. In his book "World Cross-Sea Transportation Engineering," he recorded bridge and tunnel cross-sea projects that have been built, are under preparation, or are in design across 44 famous straits on six continents and between continents, and described in detail the solution processes and specific methods for key links in planning, design, and construction. This work has had a positive impact on domestic and international research on cross-sea transportation engineering.

　　In addition, he also published books such as "Ancient Chinese Bridges" (Chinese-English bilingual edition), "Bridges," "World Bridge Aesthetics," and "Rainbows Flying Through the Ages—Anecdotes of World Bridges," which attracted worldwide attention.