China holds 50 of the 54 tallest bridges anywhere on Earth. The Huajiang Canyon Bridge sits 2,051 feet above the river below. A drilling crew hit an aquifer and turned it into the bridge’s draw. When it comes to bridges, the Chinese build behemoths unlike any other country. In fact, 50 of the world’s 54 highest bridges are in China, and at the very top of the list is the Huajiang Canyon Bridge, sitting 2,051 feet (625 meters) above a canyon. To describe it as an engineering masterpiece would be an understatement. The bridge runs 2,890 meters (9,482 feet) end to end, hung from a 1,420-meter (4,660-foot) main span between two towers. It takes the height record from the Duge Bridge, which crosses the same river about 200 kilometers (120 miles) upstream. The road it carries, the Liuzhi-Anlong Expressway, threads through Guizhou, one of China’s poorest and most isolated provinces, walled off from the rest of the country for generations by its karst terrain. Also: California Is Building A $19M Bridge You’ll Never Drive Or Walk Across Construction of the huge bridge started in early 2022, and by September 2025, work on it was finished. Not only does it help locals cross the canyon in a minute, down from roughly 70 minutes using the old mountain passes and ferries, but it also serves as an important tourism attraction in the rugged, mountainous region. Video Reddit The Huajiang Canyon Bridge also has a party trick we haven’t seen anywhere else. Crews boring the tunnel at the bridgehead reportedly hit a flow of karst groundwater, no surprise in a province built on hollowed-out limestone. Worried it might work away at the structure over time, the team penned it up instead of pumping it out. Also: Man Gets Toyota Camry Stuck On Pedestrian Bridge After Driving Through It The reservoir they built to catch the water holds 4,000 cubic meters (140,000 cubic feet), and it pulls double duty beyond the bridge itself, supplying the rest area and watering farmland and orchards on the Guanling side of the canyon. The rest gets pumped to the middle of the bridge and let loose, spilling into a misty waterfall about 984 feet (300 meters) wide that falls more than 2,000 feet (606 meters) toward the river. After dark, lasers light the cascade to pull in crowds. Chinese state media has called it the world’s highest artificial waterfall, and the spray pressure can be pushed to take its height to nearly 100 meters (330 feet). A New Tourist Hotspot According to Okdiario, roughly 300,000 people visited the Huajiang Canyon Bridge during the Chinese New Year in February, with more than 70,000 vehicles driving across it. Anyone after more than a drive can take a glass elevator to a coffeehouse on top of one of the towers, 800 meters (2,625 feet) above the valley floor, or throw themselves off the bungee jump and paragliding rigs built into the structure. Between 1929 and 2001, America’s own Royal Gorge Bridge, stretching over the Arkansas River near Cañon City, Colorado, was the world’s highest bridge. However, it was overtaken by the Liuguanghe Bridge in 2001, and since then, China has been home to the world’s highest bridges, with many of them stretching over huge gorges and rivers, aiming to improve connectivity in the nation’s rural areas. Screenshot Reddit
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