The East Taihang Glasswalk is a

skywalk A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclos ...

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

located in East

Taihang Mountains The Taihang Mountains () are a Chinese mountain range running down the eastern edge of the Loess Plateau in Shanxi, Henan and Hebei provinces. The range extends over from north to south and has an average elevation of . The principal peak is ...

Hebei Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, an ...

Province,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Opened in October 2017 it is built above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...

, stretches long, and is roughly wide. The bridge was the subject of some controversy for a special effect that made it appear as if the glass was cracking beneath the feet of those trying to cross it.

Infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

sensors would determine when a pedestrian was walking across the bridge, at which point light decorations and sound effects would produce the illusion of glass cracking. The administration of East Taihang officially apologized for the illusion shortly after the bridge's opening, saying that the effect was designed to be "provocative". The East Taihang Glasswalk was part of a larger design scheme in China to create "invisible" glass-bottomed footbridges. Other notable skywalks of this variety include the Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge and the Yuntain Mountain Walkway. After a series of deaths and injuries on glass bridges in

, the province elected to close all 32 of its glass-bottomed skywalks, including the East Taihang Glasswalk, on October 30, 2019, while it examined their safety protocols.

References

Buildings and structures in Hebei Tourist attractions in Hebei Buildings and structures completed in 2017 Glass-bottomed bridges {{PRChina-bridge-struct-stub

See also

References