Xiaohuajiang City, China —
Crowds gathered to watch a young man bungee jump from the world’s tallest bridge against the backdrop of the towering mountains of southwestern China.
He was standing over a vast valley. The bridge’s roadway rises nearly nine times higher above the water than San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Beyond him, the ancient mountains of Guizhou snaked toward the horizon. Spectators crowded around him, phones raised, eager to capture the moment.
First, let’s check safety. Strapped in a harness, he stood on a platform below the road while staff inspected his equipment.
Then he stepped into the air.
For seven seconds, he plummeted hundreds of meters to the bottom of the canyon.
Then a giant bungee cord bounced him off. Then came the applause.
It was an extraordinary sight, especially because of where it happened. A towering suspension bridge in one of China’s most mountainous regions, where the engineering marvel has now become an unlikely playground for tourists and thrill-seekers.
The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge, which opened in September 2025, towers over the Beipan River in southwestern China at 625 meters (2,051 feet) and is the world’s tallest bridge, according to Guinness World Records.
Built to reduce the once-difficult journey across the valley from about two hours to just two minutes, the bridge connects rural mountain communities to China’s wider road network.
About 3.3 million tourists have visited the bridge since its opening through August 2026, according to figures provided to CNN by local officials.
China has been building bridges to overcome difficult terrain for decades. Hanae raises another question. What happens when the bridge itself becomes a vacation spot?
The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge stretches approximately 2.9 kilometers (1.8 miles) across the landscape, its two giant turquoise towers rising above the canyon as it disappears into the mountains.
But the most unusual feature of this span may be what’s happening underneath that traffic.
Visitors can enter the building itself and step onto the glass observation deck for heart-breaking views of the valley below.
For those looking for something more adventurous, there’s bungee jumping and an exposed walkway beneath the road.
During my visit in early autumn, I was one of the visitors who strapped on a safety harness and walked along the side of the bridge, several hundred meters above the canyon floor.
This experience provided a perspective that most drivers don’t understand. With wide open air beneath our feet and mountains in the distance, it was hard to comprehend the scale of what China had built here.
But in villages within the valley, the bridge’s impact was measured in something more tangible: livelihoods.
For Lin Guoquan, the bridge has opened up possibilities for his family’s village that few could have imagined.
After years of working as a chef in Yunnan, Zhejiang, and Guangdong, Lin returned to Guizhou and began converting old houses, including his grandparents’, into accommodation. He was betting that the new bridge would take visitors to places where outsiders had little reason to visit before.
The gamble appears to have paid off.
“When we first opened, we only had nine rooms. Now we have expanded to 52 rooms, but we still don’t have enough rooms to accommodate all our guests,” Lin told CNN.
His business grew with the incredible surge in tourism. During the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday in February 2026, more than 300,000 visitors were recorded in the bridge service area. That’s more than the population of Buffalo, New York.
Lin has also become a local social media celebrity, amassing more than 100,000 followers on Douyin, China’s equivalent of TikTok, where she livestreams the beauty of the village surrounded by bridges above.
“Many people book rooms in homestays after watching my videos. They ask me for travel advice,” he added.
For entrepreneurs like Lin, attracting tourists is about more than just the roads leading into the canyon. It’s also important to be able to reach potential guests online.
In the past, mobile phone coverage in the area was limited. State-owned carrier China Mobile has teamed up with technology giant Huawei to expand its network and add base stations to accommodate increasing numbers of visitors.
“What people are seeing is this strong physical bridge,” said Zhou Jianguo, a member of Huawei’s China strategy and business development department. “But we need bridges in the digital world as well, and that is our communications networks.”
Near the top of the canyon, tourists post from perches that are the opposite of hospitable.
The 83-room luxury Onaemont Hotel, a renovated village house in Lynn, was conceived as part of a larger development project to build a tourism industry around the new bridge.
Built into the mountainside, this hotel has a restaurant and a panoramic pool. All rooms have direct views of the bridge.
For Cao Luyao, the hotel’s marketing communications manager, the bigger change is not just the number of people visiting this remote corner of Guizhou, but the length of their stay.
“Tourists can no longer just come to see the bridge, but also stay overnight next to the bridge,” Cao said. “This upgrades bridge-centered tourism from a quick transit visit to an immersive overnight stay.”
But as China builds more bridges, the economic arguments for each new project become more complex.
Li Linna, an associate professor at Beijing Normal University, studied 295 tall bridges across Guizhou and found that the average contribution of bridges to improving prefecture-level transportation access has declined.
Her research shows that taller bridges improved county-level transportation access by an average of about 8 percent between 2010 and 2015. Its contribution dropped to about 5% between 2015 and 2020, as the expansion of the highway network reduced the need for additional intersections.
“So every time a bridge is added, the small gain in accessibility diminishes,” Lee told CNN.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the era of megabridges is over.
“For underdeveloped and remote areas in western China’s mountainous regions, cut off by valleys and rivers, building another high bridge could have significant economic and access benefits,” she said.
But the definition of a bridge’s economic value is also changing, she argues.
Traditionally, its benefits have been measured in terms of shorter travel distances, lower transportation costs, and improved movement of people and goods. Now, bridges like the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge offer another reason for travelers to visit places they might not otherwise have considered.
“The key question for the future is where are we going to build these tall bridges, and what specific problems will each bridge solve?” Lee said.
It remains to be seen whether the millions of tourists that flocked to the Huajiang River in its first year will translate into lasting prosperity.
For Xie Boran, director of the Huajiang Project Office of the Guizhou Transportation Investment Industry Group, the bridge’s first year has already produced unexpected memories.
He remembers his colleagues’ excitement when the bridge finally opened. But he also recalls that the newlyweds held their wedding ceremony against the backdrop of a huge suspension bridge.
And some people come to bungee.
Centuries ago, merchants and traders spent up to a month navigating this harsh landscape.
Now, in a strange stroke of luck, people now travel hundreds of miles not to cross the canyon, but to stay above the canyon, admiring the bridge between the mountains.
This place that was built to transport people somewhere else is now where they always wanted to go.
