China Guide
Dongbei
The Old Yalu Bridge
Opening time: Daily 8.30am–5pm
Price: ¥15
Address: In the south of town, next to the new bridge
On foot, the nearest you can get to the North Korean soil without a visa is halfway across the river, on the Old Yalu Bridge. The Koreans have dismantled their half but the Chinese have left theirs as a memorial, replete with thirty framed photos of its original construction by the Japanese in 1911, when the town was called Andong. The bridge ends at a tangled mass of metal resulting from the American bombing in 1950 in response to the Chinese entering the Korean War. Several viewing platforms, with picnic tables, are on site, along with Chinese entrepreneurs who charge ¥1 for a few minutes' staring at Sinuiju through a telescope.