Daniel Beitler
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge – thankfully abbreviated to HKZMB or just HZMB – will finally be inaugurated today after many delays, cost overruns and construction-related controversies, heralding an era of quicker and easier transportation between three cities of the Pearl River Delta.
Given its political importance to a China eager to tie the future of the special administrative regions to the mainland, the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge might warrant a new, more original name.
Today’s inauguration will welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to Zhuhai for the opening ceremony and provide an opportune moment for him to christen the bridge. But he may choose to stick with its current name, the HKZMB, which in Chinese fits the typical nomenclature for such structures.
The Chinese name for the bridge is, as usual, shorter than its English or Portuguese translation. It follows a common naming convention in China, whereby the linked locations contribute a part of their name to create a hybrid term.
For example, four bridges over the Huangpu River in Shanghai are named Lupu (a mix of the Huangpu and formerly Luwan districts in Shanghai), the Nanpu (Nanshi-Pudong), Yangpu (Yangpu-Pudong), and Xupu (Xuhui-Pudong).
In our case, the Chinese name for the bridge is 멍瀧걜댕橋 (Gong-Chu-Ou Great Bridge), with the first three characters originating from the Chinese names of Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macau respectively.
But our bridge comes with political, not just economic, purposes.
Earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin of Russia took the advice of voters in his country who opted to name a newly-constructed 12-mile bridge linking Russian Crimea to the country’s mainland the ‘Crimean Bridge’. The name overwhelmingly beat out nationalist alternatives including the ‘Bridge of Reunion’, ‘Our Bridge’ and ‘The Road Home’, according to reports from Russian media.
At 55-kilometers in length, the monumental structure that is the HKZMB might deserve a name fitting of its scale and achievement. Already it is known as a “Great Bridge” – like the Great Wall, or the Great Firewall, or the Great Leap Forward – but what about the Great-er Bay Bridge?
In fact, there are a lot of strong alternative names for the bridge, which has garnered significant worldwide media attention.
What better way to promote the Belt and Road Initiative than to name one of the most famous Chinese bridges outside of the country the Belt and Road Bridge?
Or it could be the One Country, Two Systems Bridge, to remind Tsai Ing-wen and Donald Trump of the common denominator to diplomacywith China. Or just the One Country Bridge to remind those pesky Hong Kong separatists of Beijing’s non-negotiable stance on its territorial integrity.
It would not be the only instance of a deviation from the usual bridge-naming convention. The politically-important bridge linking the two “brotherly” countries of China and North Korea was renamed in 1990 from the Yalu River Bridge (also a deviation) to the China-North Korea Friendship Bridge (sometimes just Friendship Bridge).
President Xi has a lot of options if he decides the HKZMB is in need of a new name.
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