The East Taihang Glasswalk was a

skywalk The SkyWalk is an approximately 160 metre enclosed walkway connecting Union Station to the CN Tower and the Rogers Centre (SkyDome) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Part of Toronto's PATH network, the SkyWalk passes above the York Street ' s ...

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

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 ; its principal peak is ...

Hebei Hebei is a Provinces of China, province in North China. It is China's List of Chinese administrative divisions by population, sixth-most populous province, with a population of over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. It bor ...

Province,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Opened in October 2017 it is built above

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

, 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 that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

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 Zhangjiajie Glass footpath is a skywalk bridge in Zhangjiajie, Hunan, above the Wulingyuan area. The bridge, built as an attraction for tourists, is glass-bottomed and is transparent. When it opened it was the longest and tallest glass bottomed b ...

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