China's mega-bridges: Pushing technological boundaries
A varied topography in China creates captivating scenic attractions as well as natural chasms that block transportation. The desire to make connection easier even in the remotest village motivates China to roll out amazing mega-bridge projects.
Over the past five years, China has built more than 90,000 bridges and broken many world records.
Professor Manabu Ito, former president of the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering, said that China has surpassed the US, Europe and Japan in the construction of long-span bridges and has been leading the world in both quality and quantity since the 21st century.
The world has seen China build cross-sea bridges that have brought more regions into the radius of economic centers in coastal areas, erect long-span bridges astride deep valleys in mountainous areas and magically replace weathered bridge surfaces overnight in cities. The success of all these projects proves China's determination and progress.
"We can tell the state of local economy and technology from a bridge's construction. By reviewing the history of bridge construction across the nation, we can see the whole picture of a country's political, economic, scientific and technological levels", said Mao Yisheng, the founder of Chinese modern bridge engineering.
China has dominated the list of world's highest bridges, capturing 8 of the Top 10 spots and repeatedly broken the world record set by itself.
Beipanjiang Bridge completed in 2016 holds the record for highest bridge in the world. The cable-stayed bridge, spanning across the valley at the boarder of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces in southwest China, sits over 565 meters — the height of a 200-storey skyscraper — above the river.
China has kept pushing the boundary of possibility in building the world's longest bridge. The country now boasts of 7 of world's longest cable-stayed bridges, 6 of suspension bridges and 6 of cross-sea bridges.
Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the world's longest cross-sea bridge under construction, is expected to open in December 2017. The 55-kilometer-long water span will connect the three major cities on China's Pearl River Delta into a "one-hour-drive economy circle".
Guardian praised it as one of the "seven wonders of the modern world near completion".
China astonishes the world not only for its highest and longest bridges, but also for bridges with amazing design.
Zhangjiajie Glass Footbridge, stretching over a 300-meter-deep canyon in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan province of central China, is now the highest glass-bottomed bridge in the world. CNN listed it among the most amazing bridges worldwide.
The entirely transparent bridge, first opening to the public in September 2016, gives tourists who set foot on it a thrilling illusion of walking in the air.
Whether it was during the Sui Dynasty over 1,400 years ago when the world's oldest open-spandrel arch bridge was constructed or nowadays, China is always in a class of its own in making technological breakthroughs of bridge construction.
The completion of Nanpanjiang Railway Bridge in 2016, which removes the last obstacle to bringing high-speed train to Yunnan, marks the country's huge success in solving the problem of building bridges across earthquake fault zones.
The arch was the first highest bridge that uses double-column framed piers to support the deck, with concrete filled steel tubes as the "spine" to increase its bearing capacity by 40 percent.
The construction of bridges across China makes the experience of taking days to tramp hill and dale or using a ropeway to arrive at the opposite side of the valley in many mountainous places a past memory.
The most profound impact of large infrastructure projects which consume a massive budget lies not in how many world records they break but how much change they bring to people's life.
The completion of Qingshuihe Bridge in 2015 connects the last county in Guizhou to China's highway network, reducing the time for people in Weng'an county to cross the Qingshui river valley from days to 3 minutes.
China's mega-bridge projects in the latest Five-year Plan endorsed the country's technological level and national strength. Bridges made have been one of the most pervasive symbols of China in the global arena.
Editors: Luo Yu, Zhao Zhengyu (intern)