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A Visual Tour of the World's Longest Sea Bridge

The 26-mile Jiaozhou Bay bridge took four years to built and cost $1.5 billion

By Uri Friedman
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It only makes sense that the country that brought you the Great Wall of China is now home to the world's longest sea bridge. The 26-mile Jiaozhou Bay bridge, which was built over the course of four years for $1.5 billion, links China's eastern port city of Qingdao to an offshore island, Huangdao, according to the AP (the previous record-holder was the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana). It is supported by more than 5,000 pillars, is expected to carry more than 30,000 cars per day, and opened for traffic on Thursday. China, which is already home to seven of the world's ten lengthiest bridges, according to The Telegraph, plans to finish an even longer sea bridge linking southern Guangdong province with Hong Kong and Macau by 2016. But enough words! A story like this needs visuals.

Here's a photo released by China's Xinhua news agency the day before the Jiaozhou Bay bridge opened:

Reuters gives us another view:

The photos are helpful, of course, but what would it be like to actually drive on this thing? The Telegraph takes us on a breathtaking aerial tour:

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.