14 days ago China opened the world's longest glass bridge. Now it's closed.
On Aug. 20, the world's longest and highest glass-bottomed bridge opened, spanning a valley in Zhangjiajie in China's Hunan province. The engineering feat — tested for safety with demonstrations including driving a car on on the glass and repeatedly hitting it with large hammers — was immediately popular.
But now the attraction is closed until further notice, and it's not entirely clear why. One official told CNN the bridge is temporarily shut down not because of any structural defects or cracks but because the landmark is "overwhelmed by the volume of visitors." The bridge is designed to hold 8,000 people per day, but the official said as many as 80,000 tourists are showing up daily. Meanwhile, the BBC reports other Chinese officials said the bridge was indeed closed for repairs.
One thing is certain, though: Tourists who already made plans to visit the bridge are not happy. After the closure was announced on Weibo, a Chinese social network similar to Twitter, one user angrily replied, "I have booked everything and now you are saying you are closed... Are you kidding me?"
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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