(Forge ahead in a new journey and make contributions to a new era, old districts and new appearances) Expressway and "cloud" bridge meet Guizhou and become a land transportation hub in southwest China

  China News Service, Pingtang, Guizhou, May 28th: ​​Expressway and "cloud" bridge meet Guizhou to become a southwest land transportation hub

  Author Zhou Yanling Pu Wensi Liu Meiling

  Every weekend, Zhang Xinmin, a young man born in the 1980s, drives across the world's first concrete tower bridge, the Pingtang Bridge in Guizhou. This bridge is 110 stories high and 2,135 meters long. The speed of the yard can get from one end of the bridge to the other in just 2 minutes.

  "This bridge shortens the journey from Kedu Town to Pingtang County from 2 hours to 40 minutes." Zhang Xinmin said, if driving on the bridge on a rainy day, there will be mist on both sides, and the surrounding mountains will be beautiful. Under the eyes, it will give people a feeling of flying in the clouds.

The picture shows tourists visiting the bridge science museum in the Sky Bridge service area.

Photo by Zhou Yanling

  In 2019, the Pingtang Bridge located in the Pingtang-Luodian section of the Yuqing-Anlong Expressway was completed and opened to traffic. The bridge tower is designed in a diamond shape, and the main tower is 332 meters high. It is known as the "Sky Bridge" by the industry. In 2021 The bridge won the highest award of the 38th International Bridge Congress (IBC) - the Gustavus Lindshall Prize.

  Guizhou, an old revolutionary base area, is located in the southwest hinterland of China, and 93% of the territory is mountainous.

In the past, due to technological lag, Guizhou encountered a bottleneck in the development of highway transportation. Now, Guizhou has erected bridges between mountains and mountains, connecting both sides of mountains and rivers.

  These bridges erected in Guizhou are not only "bridges of miracles", but also "bridges of prosperity" for ordinary people.

Pinglihe Village, located under the Pingtang Bridge, has an average altitude of 640 meters and is known as the "natural greenhouse" in Pingtang. Fruits such as April peaches, loquats, and plums grown in the village are sold both inside and outside the province.

There are also villagers who bring their own fruit to the Sky Bridge service area for sale, which is in short supply.

Hotels in the Skybridge service area.

Photo by Zhou Yanling

  "It used to take more than 50 minutes to go from home to this service area, but it only takes 20 minutes to drive after the Pingtang Bridge is opened to traffic." Liu Quanjiao, a villager in Pinglihe Village, said that if it was the peak tourist season, he would go to the rural revitalization agricultural product store in the service area every day. deliver fruit.

  The reporter saw in the Sky Bridge service area that in addition to the functions of the general service area, the service area also has a bridge museum, an astronomical science museum, an astronomical observatory, a cliff hotel, a rural revitalization direct-sale store and an RV camp. Turn into a tourist attraction.

  "If you live in a cliff hotel in the service area, you can see different scenery of the bridge every day when you open the window." Zeng Hui, a tourist from Xiamen, said that the pylons and steel cables of the Pingtang Bridge form a huge "harp". Standing tall among the mountains, it is very spectacular.

The picture shows the Yunwu Bridge on Du'an Expressway.

Photo by Qu Honglun

  In addition to seeing the majesty of the Pingtang Bridge from the hotel and the viewing platform, Zeng Hui and his wife also walked into the bridge museum in the service area to experience the "Guizhou Miracle" of China's bridge construction.

"Although it is not easy to build a bridge with a terrain like Guizhou, after learning the story of Chinese bridges and bridges in Guizhou in the bridge museum, and then looking at the Pingtang Bridge from the viewing platform, the mood is different."

  In recent years, Guizhou has built more than 500 square kilometers of "high-speed plains" with more than 8,000 kilometers of expressways, 12,000 bridges, and more than 2,100 tunnels.

The picture shows the Heliu Expressway.

Photo by Qu Honglun

  During the interview, Zeng Hui, who drove all the way from Xiamen to Guizhou, could not help but sigh: "I never imagined that Guizhou, where there was no three miles of land in the past, is now a 'plain' and a moat becomes a road."

  At present, the framework of "six horizontals, seven verticals and eight joints" has been initially formed in Guizhou, with a total of 24 inter-provincial passages and at least 3 inter-provincial passages formed with surrounding provinces.

The criss-crossing highways and towering bridges have transformed Guizhou from a geographic hub in the southwest to a land transportation hub in the southwest.

(Finish)