On this Day in Chinese History; 24 April

This day, 24 April, in 1189, construction commenced on the Marco Polo Bridge or Lugou Bridge in today’s Beijing, that would be setting for the Incident marking the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. In “The Travels of Marco Polo”, Rustichello da Pisa quotes Polo as saying of the Bridge, “Over this river there is a very fine stone bridge, so fine indeed, that it has very few equals in the world”.