Bravo China S2 Ep2：Guinness-certified longest highway tunnel

This is the Guinness-certified world’s longest highway tunnel — the Tianshan Shengli Tunnel. At 22.13 kilometres, it is about the length of ten Tsing Ma Bridges. Chinese engineers cut a 10-year project down to just 52 months.

The Tianshan Mountains split Xinjiang into north and south, with travel taking hours of winding roads — and heavy snow could shut them entirely. To cut through, the tunnel had to cross 16 high-risk geological fault zones, at an altitude of over 3,000 metres, in freezing, oxygen-thin conditions.

To boost efficiency and safety, the team first bored a central pilot tunnel, then drove cross passages out to the main tubes on either side, excavating multiple sections at once. The deepest vertical shaft reaches 707 metres, a world record deeper than the height of Hong Kong’s ICC.

During construction, all wastewater was recycled with not a drop entering nearby rivers. Excavated rock was reused to build the tunnel. The team also built a cableway bridge to transport materials so as not to affect the ecology.

Today, the crossing takes just 20 minutes. Emergency transfers and fresh produce can also move reliably. Residents and tourists can make same-day trips between north and south Xinjiang, seeing glaciers in the morning and desert poplars by afternoon.

The Tianshan Shengli Tunnel is a lifeline and a livelihood corridor, protecting the Chinese borderland and the lives of its people.

SD Advocates

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200 storeys tall, with an 800-metre-high café, crossing the “crack in the Earth” in just two minutes. The Huajiang Canyon Bridge in China is the world’s highest bridge and the longest one built in mountain range.

Building across two peaks, an ordinary bridge would sway easily in strong crosswinds. Chinese engineers used a streamlined design to reduce wind impact, and installed a central stabilizer plate in the middle of the deck to split the wind.

To keep the main cables from getting damp and rusting, engineers embedded sensors inside them to monitor temperature and humidity in real time. If levels exceed the limit, a dehumidification system starts automatically—keeping the bridge safe for over a hundred years.

Since opening, the crossing time has dropped from two hours to two minutes, opening up an economic lifeline for mountain villages. The bridge is also a tourist destination. Its maintenance passage is now a glass viewing corridor. And an observation elevator takes you to the tower-top café for panoramic views. At night, the world’s highest bridge water-curtain light show begins, fed by karst water found during construction—irrigation first, surplus for the show.

The Huajiang Canyon Bridge turns a natural barrier into a thoroughfare. China is using advanced technology to protect both the economic and ecological security of the mountain region.