The World’s Longest Sea-Crossing Bridge Just Opened Between Hong Kong And China

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The world’s longest sea-crossing bridge opened between Zhuhai, China and Hong Kong on Tuesday, October 23, breaking records around the globe.

You may not have heard of Zhuhai — it’s not a tourist draw on its own like its newly linked, autonomous neighbors Hong Kong (known for culture, food and architecture) and Macau (a glistening gambling hub), but the Chinese government hopes the new 34-mile bridge might change that and bring more visitors to the area.

Building the enormous bridge required nearly 400,000 tons of steel. That’s enough metal to build 60 Eiffel Towers and about four times the amount used to create the Golden Gate Bridge. To paint a picture of this crazy feat of engineering, the new Chinese bridge is the equivalent of nearly 20 Golden Gates in a row.

The project took nine years to complete, costing more than $20 billion. And the process wasn’t just about creating the physical bridge. The construction also involved building artificial islands, underwater tunnels and more in order to create a bridge that can survive severe earthquakes and typhoons. Even crazier? The bridge route actually goes underground and underwater in the middle between the two artificial islands to let ships pass above it.

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Before the bridge, crossing from Zhuhai or Macau to Hong Kong took hours. Using the new bridge, it’s a short 30-minute journey.

“With the bridge, the traveling time between Hong Kong and the Western Pearl River Delta region will be shortened significantly, thereby bringing the Western Pearl River Delta region within three hours’ drive from Hong Kong,” Frank Chan, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Transport and Housing, said in a statement on Friday.

Want to drive across this record-breaking bridge? It’s not quite that simple. Anyone who wants to cross the bridge will need a special permit through a quota system and be required to pay a toll. There won’t be public transportation going across the new connection, but there will be private shuttle rides for about $10.

It’s an all-around complicated crossing since people drive on the left side of the road in Hong Kong and Macau but on the right in China. The bridge is Chinese territory, so the road is designed with special lanes to assist with merging traffic on the bridge — basically, a system to get everyone driving on the right side.

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Not everyone was supportive of this massive venture. Many people see the bridge as a political symbol linking the special administrative region — it has its own currency, legal system and parliament — of Hong Kong with mainland China. There’s a decades-long struggle between the two governments over China’s influence in Hong Kong’s economy, legal and civil rights (think running for government office, free speech and free press) and China has been exerting more control over Hong Kong in recent years.

“A lot of people in Hong Kong are worried that the direction it’s going in is bad for them, bad for freedom and bad for this idea of a distinctive Hong Kong,” Isaac Stone Fish, a senior fellow at the Asia Society, told CBS.

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Environmental groups voiced criticism as well, saying the bridge harmed local ecosystems — especially endangered Chinese white dolphin populations.

“The project has made irreversible damage to the sea,” Samantha Lee, the assistant director of ocean conservation at the World Wide Fund for Nature, told the BBC. The group estimated that the number of dolphins living in the bridge area decreased from more than 150 to 47 in the last 10 years.

To address these fears, the Hong Kong government announced that they are building more marine parks near the bridge site to give the pinkish dolphins a home away from the bustling bridge. Environmentalists and eco-tourists alike are waiting to see whether this effort can save the endangered animals.

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