Dismantling Coffins to Safeguard the Country

During the Anti-Japanese War, the Zhejiang Security Office was located in Gaoqian Village. To the southwest of the village was the Gaoqian River, which the villagers used to ford, since there was no solid bridge. To enable the Chinese troops to cross the river, the villagers of Gaoqian flattened a graveyard in the west of the village and dismantled the coffins for planks. They used the planks to build a level bridge across the Gaoqian River, eight meters wide and fifty meters long, and repurposed the graveyard as a large playground. It is said that when the coffins were dismantled, the wood filled the playground. Later, the ancestral graves were moved up the hillside. The bridge was named “Coffin Bridge”.