Xinhua Headlines: World's highest bridge opens to traffic in China's mountainous southwest

* The world's highest bridge opened to traffic Sunday morning in southwest China's Guizhou Province, slashing travel time across a deep canyon from two hours to just two minutes after three years of construction.

* The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge, soaring 625 meters above the Beipan River in Guizhou's mountainous terrain, is nearly nine times the height of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

* This mega-project has attracted worldwide attention since its launch in 2022. Now, it has not only added a new landmark to Guizhou, renowned as "the world's bridge museum," but also presented the globe with a Chinese approach for building bridges in mountainous canyons.

GUIYANG, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- The world's highest bridge opened to traffic Sunday morning in southwest China's Guizhou Province, slashing travel time across a deep canyon from two hours to just two minutes after three years of construction.

The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge, soaring 625 meters above the Beipan River in Guizhou's mountainous terrain, is nearly nine times the height of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Spanning the Huajiang Grand Canyon, dubbed "the Earth's crack," the 2,890-meter-long structure is the latest addition to the rapidly expanding infrastructure network of the world's second-largest economy.

This mega-project has attracted worldwide attention since its launch in 2022. Now, it has not only added a new landmark to Guizhou, renowned as "the world's bridge museum," but also presented the globe with a Chinese approach for building bridges in mountainous canyons.

CHASM SPANNED

Guizhou, the only province in China without a single plain and home to deep ravines, has long relied on tunnels and bridges to overcome its jagged karst landscape.

Wu Chaoming, manager of the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge construction project, who is with Guizhou Communications Investment Group Co., Ltd., was born in 1980 and raised in a small mountain village in Yinjiang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou. In those days, the road connecting his hometown to the outside world was fraught with hardships, which are difficult to imagine today.

"From my hometown to the county seat, there was only one bus per day, just as there was only one from the county seat to Guiyang, the provincial capital," he recalled. "The bus was bursting at the seams with people, like tightly packed bamboo shoots in spring. People would even climb onto the luggage rack on the roof."

Since 2012, the province has accelerated its bridge construction endeavors. Guizhou now has over 32,000 bridges either already built or under construction -- a tenfold increase compared to the 1980s.

The former world's highest bridge, which also spans the Beipan River, is situated approximately 100 km from the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge. The previous record-holder, which opened in 2016, has a vertical clearance of 565.4 meters from the bridge deck to the river surface below.

Today, Chinese engineers have managed to break a number of world records in the space of just three years -- not just in terms of height, but also in span. With a main span of 1,420 meters, the Huajiang project has become the world's longest-span steel truss girder suspension bridge located in mountainous terrain, Guizhou provincial authorities said.

Behind these engineering marvels is the immense dedication of builders like Wu. For him, ensuring perfect execution meant conducting at least 15 km of "walking inspections" on the bridge every day -- over a third of a marathon daily.

The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge, notably, is more than a record-breaker. By reducing cross-canyon travel time from two hours to two minutes, it is set to boost resource flow and industrial collaboration within the regional urban cluster -- and bolster Guizhou's integration into the new western land-sea corridor development.

According to official information, as part of a provincial expressway in Guizhou, the bridge is also designed to effectively alleviate traffic pressure on the existing Shanghai-Kunming expressway, a major east-west arterial highway in China, and greatly enhance regional connectivity.

BRIDGE MUSEUM

Due to its sheer number of bridges, diverse bridge types and complex construction technologies, Guizhou has earned the title of "the world's bridge museum."

The province is home to nearly half of the world's 100 highest bridges, including the top three. Moreover, the combined length of its existing and under-construction bridges currently exceeds 5,400 km -- a distance nearly equal to China's north-to-south span. The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge is the latest centerpiece of this living museum.

"The creation of the world's highest bridge was driven by engineering necessity rather than by a desire to set records," said Yang Jian, chief engineer responsible for the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge's design.

"With the canyon surrounded by steep mountains, the project necessitated both bridges and tunnels. A lower bridge height would have required longer tunnels, which would both have increased overall costs and raised safety concerns due to increased driver fatigue," Yang explained. "It wasn't until we completed the design that we were stunned to realize the bridge would stand over 600 meters high."

Yuan Quan, chairman of Guizhou Communications Investment Group Co., Ltd., stated that the bridge's construction had presented a series of world-class challenges -- primarily including complex geological conditions, strong canyon winds, and extremely high precision requirements for high-altitude work.

By leveraging a suite of new technologies, such as satellite navigation, drones, smart monitoring systems and ultra-high-strength materials, the building team achieved millimeter-level precision in high-altitude construction, transforming a once-impassable barrier into a transportation corridor.

"The new bridge is a landmark project that showcases China's innovation," said Zhang Yin, head of the provincial transportation department.

The bridge has achieved multiple technological breakthroughs in the course of its wind-resistance design and high-altitude bridge construction processes -- obtaining 21 authorized patents. Several of its technological innovations have been incorporated into national bridge construction standards.

The successful construction of the bridge serves as a powerful testament to China's world-leading mastery of bridge engineering in complex and perilous karst canyon regions, Zhang added.

"Guizhou demonstrates that complex terrain is not a constraint, but a catalyst for innovation," said Ge Yaojun, a renowned Chinese bridge expert.

BEYOND TRANSPORTATION

The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge is not just a passage facility -- it is a destination in itself.

The local government of Guizhou intends to cultivate this mega-engineering feat into a world-renowned tourist destination, rivaling the fame of the Huangguoshu Waterfall, Asia's largest waterfall, which lies just 50 km away.

Tourism functionality was integrated into the bridge's design from the very beginning of its construction, said Jian Jijun, deputy general manager of a local transportation and investment group in Guizhou.

An area of over 50 square kilometers around the bridge site has been incorporated into the plan for a tourism zone that combines the bridge with tourism. In the future, it will be developed into a high-altitude tourism destination -- featuring extreme sports, science education, sightseeing and vacations.

At the top of the nearly 800-meter-high bridge tower, a cloud-top cafe is currently under construction and is set to open in October. Beyond traditional viewing platforms, thrilling experiences such as paragliding, rope-free bungee jumping, a high-altitude speed runway and a water-screen light show are in final testing and enhancement stages. 

The bridge's potential as a premier destination was vividly demonstrated just a week ago, when the first World's Highest Bridge Triathlon International Challenge took place on and around the bridge. Nearly 200 athletes from more than 20 countries and regions, including the United States, France, Russia and Pakistan, tested their limits on a 36.75-kilometer course.

"For me, the hardest part about this race was not being distracted by the amazing view," said 19-year-old Australian triathlete Joshua Pedlow.

Transportation authorities predict that the bridge will attract more than one million visitors annually in the future. This influx of tourists is expected to give a strong boost to the development of local industries on both sides of the canyon -- such as agricultural product sales, homestays and catering, and cultural and creative products.

(Reporting by Cui Enhui, Zhao Xinbing, Ou Dongqu, Wu Si and Xiang Dingjie; Video reporter: Zhang Yueyuan, Yang Yanbin, Liu Qinbing, Cui Xiaoqiang and Zhou Zhiruo; Video editors: Hong Ling, Li Qin and Liu Ruoshi) ■