TOP 5 MAN MADE ATTRACTIONS IN CHINA

It is the tallest and longest glass bridge in the world. The bridge is a part of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park and is 430 meters long and 6 meters wide. It is suspended about 260 meters above the ground. It connects two mountain cliffs of the so-called Avatar mountains (the movie was filmed here) in Zhangjiajie in the Hunan province. The construction costs were $3.4 million and it had to be closed shortly after opening due to excessive crowds, but it was opened again and is one of the major tourist attractions in China since then.

China has an immensely large high-speed rail network, which currently measures 20,000 kilometers. This makes it the world’s largest network of its kind. The so-called HSR extends to 29 of the country’s 33 provinces and the whole network is expected to reach 38,000 km in 2025. The annual ridership of HSR in 2016 was an immense 1.44 billion, making it the most heavily used network in the world. At the end of last year, the country opened the largest high-speed rail. It connects the east and the west of the country, the cities of Shanghai and Kunming, and is 2,252 km long. Other notable lines are the Beijing – Guangzhou High-Speed Railway and the Shanghai Maglev.

Located in a natural basin of the Dawodang depression in Pingtang Country, Guizhou Province, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is the largest radio telescope in the world and a popular attraction in China. It took five years to build and cost 160 million euros. It has a diameter of 500 meters, the size of 30 football fields, which is almost double of the now second largest radio telescope of Arecibo. Chinese media reported that the FAST radio telescope has double the sensitivity of the Arecibo Observatory and five to 10 times the speed. The main aim of the project is to search for signals from stars and galaxies and perhaps extraterrestrial life amid China’s rising ambition in the space and science.

Hosted in Harbin, the capital of the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival is the biggest of its kind in the world. The weather conditions are favorable, because Harbin is located in Northeast China and receives cold winter from Siberia. The ice city was built by 10,000 workers on an area of 800,000 square meters. 150,000 cubic meters of ice were sculpted to create constructions that will die with the change of the season. Some of the ice sculptures represent animals, cartoon characters or some famous landmarks. The festival lasts for one month from January 5 and is a real tourist magnet. It attracts more than 2 million people from the whole world.

Before 2016 came to an end, China inaugurated the world’s highest bridge. The construction of the bridge began in 2011 and it was opened in December 2016.  It is situated 565 meters high above the Beipan River. The bridge crosses the river on the border between Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. The bridge spans 1.34 km (0.83 miles) between Xuanwei city in Yunnan province and Shuicheng county in Guizhou province. Moreover, the bridge is part of the Huangrui Highway, which connects the Hangzhou city with Ruili City. The reported cost of the Duge Bridge was 138 million euros. However, it is one of the most fascinating attractions in China now.

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