In the 1980s, when I lived in northeastern China, I used to visit a famous old railway bridge that spanned the Yalu River between the Chinese city of Dandong and Sinuiju, a town in North Korea.

During what the Chinese call the Great Fatherland Liberation War, what we call the Korean War, U.S. bombers blasted the bridge, and for decades, Chinese authorities have kept it just as it was — frozen in a crippled state of twisted metal and crumbling concrete.