China Closes Its Record-Breaking Glass Bridge
The highly anticipated 'world's highest and longest" glass-bottomed bridge has opened to visitors in central China. It bridges two mountain cliffs that are known to be the Avatar mountains in Zhangjiajie, Hunan province.
The 430-m long bridge was completed in December and cost $3.4m to build and stands 300m above ground.
It also has 99 panes of three-layered transparent glass. The six meter-wide bridge was designed by Israeli architect Haim Dotan and has set world records for its architecture and construction.
According to BBC News, officials even staged high-profile events to try and ensure the public of the bridge's safety. They sent in sledgehammers and even drove a car, filled with passengers across the bridge.
However, the record-breaking structure hanging over China's Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon has closed, 13 days after it opened to the public.
"We're overwhelmed by the volume of visitors," a spokesperson from the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon's marketing and sales department told CNN.
He added that the capacity of the glass bridge was limited to 8,000 visitors per day, but the total demand was ten times as much.
When asked whether the bridge was cracked or broken, the spokesperson said "there was no problem." He even confirmed there have been no accidents.
The announcement was made by the attraction's management on its official Weibo account, a Chinese microblogging site. It did not specify when it might reopen and apologized for the inconvenience caused.
Furthermore, visitors are not happy about the news.
"I have booked everything and now you are saying you are closed... Are you kidding me?" wrote Weibo user XiaoMOMOYa in response to the official statement.
"The Scenic Area is deficient. There's trash everywhere and no bottled water for sale. It's right to reopen only after they've cleaned up the place," wrote another user, Fashiwanying.
During the suspension, the management plans to improve their infrastructure, parking lots, ticket-booking system, customer service and other areas.