Due to the unique tidal flat landform, Gulou in Jiangmen City established the tradition of making use of the water system to dig ponds and form mounds for fishing and farming. As the water system and fish ponds occupy a large area and form a fragmented spatial pattern in local villages, many bridges have been built to connect the areas segmented by water. With rapid urbanization in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, many local villagers have abandoned the traditional fishing lifestyle in favor of living a more urban life. For this reason, water villages in which people make a living by fishing have been gradually disappearing.

Gulou Waterfront is an eco-cultural tourism resort developed by OCT in the context of rural revitalization, aiming to combine rural development with the cultural background of local villages on the premise of preserving the unique spatial fabrics featuring mounds and ponds. The resort maintains the form of the basic local water system while organically integrating nature education, parent-child recreation, and fishing & husbandry activities. Those operations in the resort require several bridges in certain areas, to facilitate the movement of people and fishing boats.

During the fishing civilization period, roads were poorly developed, so water systems became the key route for transportation and logistics. Since bridges need to be walkable while also ensuring more space for boats underneath to pass through, traditional bridge construction techniques in China adopted “arches” to create space for the passage of boats under bridges, and enhance the effectiveness of the structure. Due to the abundance of woods, Southern China has the tradition of applying timber to build bridges.