Thousands of residents in central China's Wuhan city gathered on
Sunday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening to traffic
of the country's first railway-highway bridge across the Yangtze
River.
Construction of the 1,670-meter-long Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge,
located in the capital city of Hubei Province, started on September
1, 1955 and completed on October 15, 1957.
"The bridge has experienced hundreds of floods and more than 70
traffic collisions over the past five decades, but it stands still
as before," said Zhao Yucheng, a retired engineer from the bridge
section of China Railway Construction Corporation and also
co-designer of the bridge.
"The bridge is very 'healthy' with its piers never moved and its
girders never distorted and it is able to stands for another five
decades," said Zhao.
The bridge has played a crucial role for transportation in
central parts of the country across the Yangtze River, with 296
trains and tens of thousands of vehicles passing through it
everyday, said the department of communication in Wuhan,
"The bridge has also become a symbol of Wuhan and receives
thousands of visitors every year.
The 6,300-kilometre-long Yangtze River, also the third longest
in the world, originates from the Tanggula Mountains in
southwestern Qinghai Province, and flows through Tibet, Yunnan,
Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shanghai, where
it empties into the East China Sea.
The Yangtze River Delta area has become one of the economic
powerhouses in China after rapid development in the last two
decades.
Statistics with the China Railway Construction Corporation shows
that by March 2005, 39 bridges had been erected over the Yangtze
River and more bridges will be built in the future.
The total number of bridges across the Yangtze will reach 60 by
2010 and 100 by 2020, said the local transportation department.
(Xinhua News Agency October 15, 2007)
