How the world's highest bridge became a tourist hot spot in China

CNN — Xiaohuajiang, China (CNN) — Against the towering mountains of southwestern China, a crowd gathered as a young man prepared to bungee jump off the world's highest bridge.

He stood above a vast canyon, the bridge's roadway soaring nearly nine times higher above the water than San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Beyond him, the ancient peaks of Guizhou rolled toward the horizon. Around him, spectators edged closer, phones raised, eager to capture the moment.

First came the safety checks. Strapped into a harness, he stood on a platform beneath the roadway as staff inspected his equipment.

Then he stepped into the air.

For seven seconds, he plunged toward the canyon floor, hundreds of meters below.

Then the huge bungee cord bounced him back. Next came the applause.

It was an extraordinary spectacle, not least because of where it was happening: a towering suspension bridge in one of China's most mountainous provinces, where an engineering marvel is now an unlikely playground for tourists and thrill-seekers.

Opened in September 2025, the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge towers 625 meters (2,051 feet) above southwestern China's Beipan River, making it the world's highest, according to Guinness World Records.

Built to slash a once-arduous journey across the canyon from roughly two hours to just two minutes, the span connects rural mountain communities to China's wider road network.

From its opening through August 2026, the bridge attracted approximately 3.3 million visitors, according to figures provided to CNN by local officials.

For decades, China has built bridges to conquer its difficult terrain. Huajiang raises a different question: What happens when the bridge itself becomes the vacation spot?

A vacation amid the clouds

The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge stretches nearly 2.9 kilometers (1.8 miles) across the landscape, its two enormous teal towers rising above a gorge that seems to disappear into the mountains.

But the span's most unusual feature may be what happens beneath its traffic.

Visitors can enter the structure itself, stepping onto glass observation platforms offering stomach-churning views of the canyon below.

For those seeking something more adventurous, there's the bungee jump, along with an exposed walkway beneath the road.

During an early autumn visit, I was among the visitors who strapped into a safety harness and walked along the side of the bridge, hundreds of meters above the canyon floor.

The experience offered a perspective few motorists will ever appreciate. With open air beneath my feet and mountains stretching into the distance, it was difficult to comprehend the scale of what China had built here.

But down in the villages within the canyon, the bridge's impact was being measured in something more tangible: livelihoods.

A village transformed

For Lin Guoquan, the bridge opened possibilities he could scarcely have imagined for his family's village.

After years working as a chef in Yunnan, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, Lin returned to Guizhou and began converting old houses, including his grandparents' home, into guest accommodations. He was betting that the new bridge would bring visitors to a place few outsiders had 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, and we still don't have enough rooms for all our guests," Lin told CNN.

His business has grown alongside an extraordinary surge in tourism. During the nine-day Chinese New Year holiday in February 2026, more than 300,000 visits were recorded at the bridge's service area — greater than the population of Buffalo, New York.

Lin has also become something of a local social media celebrity, attracting more than 100,000 followers on Douyin, China's counterpart to TikTok, as he livestreams the beauty of his village, framed by the bridge above.

"Lots of people book rooms at my homestay after watching my videos. They ask me for travel advice," he added.

For entrepreneurs like Lin, attracting visitors now depends on more than the roads leading into the canyon. It also depends on being able to reach potential guests online.

Mobile coverage in the area was once limited. State-owned telecom operator China Mobile, working with technology giant Huawei, has since expanded the network, adding base stations to handle growing numbers of visitors.

"What people see is this mighty physical bridge," said Zhou Jianguo, a member of Huawei's China strategy and business development division. "Yet a bridge in the digital world is equally necessary, and that is our communications network."

Near the top of the canyon, tourists post from a perch at the other end of the hospitality spectrum.

Unlike Lin's converted village homes, the 83-room luxury Onaemont Hotel was conceived as part of the larger development project to build a tourism industry around the new bridge.

Built into the mountainside, the hotel has restaurants and a panoramic pool. Every guest room looks directly onto the bridge.

For Cao Luyao, the hotel's marketing communications manager, the bigger change isn't simply how many people are visiting this remote corner of Guizhou—it's how long they're staying.

"Tourists no longer just come to see the bridge, they can stay overnight beside it," Cao said. "This upgrades bridge-centered tourism from quick pass-through visits to immersive overnight stays."

How many bridges are enough?

But as China builds more bridges, the economic argument for each new project becomes more complicated.

Li Linna, an associate professor at Beijing Normal University, studied 295 high bridges across Guizhou and found that their average contribution to improving county-level transportation accessibility has been declining.

Her research found that high bridges improved county-level transportation accessibility by an average of roughly 8% between 2010 and 2015. That contribution fell to around 5% between 2015 and 2020, as the expanding expressway network reduced the need for additional crossings.

"The marginal gains in accessibility brought by each additional bridge therefore decline," Li told CNN.

That doesn't necessarily mean the era of mega-bridges is over.

"For remote, less-developed counties in mountainous western China cut off by canyons and rivers, building one additional high bridge can deliver substantial gains both economically and in terms of transport accessibility," she said.

But she argues that the definition of a bridge's economic value is changing, too.

Traditionally, the benefits were measured in shorter journeys, lower transportation costs and improved movement of people and goods. Now, spans like the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge offer something else: a reason for travelers to visit a place they might otherwise never have considered.

"The critical question for the future is where we build these high bridges, and what specific problems each bridge will solve," Li said.

Whether the millions of visitors drawn to Huajiang in its first year will translate into lasting prosperity remains to be seen.

For Xie Boran, director of the Huajiang Project Office at Guizhou Transport Investment Industry Group, the bridge's first year has already produced some unexpected memories.

He remembers the excitement among colleagues when the bridge finally opened to traffic. But he also recalls newlyweds holding wedding ceremonies with the enormous suspension bridge as their backdrop.

And then, there are those who come to bungee.

Centuries ago, merchants and traders spent as long as a month making their way through this forbidding landscape.

Now, in a curious turn of fortune, people travel hundreds of miles not to cross the gorge, but to linger above it, marveling at the bridge suspended between the mountains.

Built to carry people somewhere else, it has today become the place they wanted to go all along.