China has been terrible for my ego and even worse for my waistline. Being one of few Asian American journalists specializing in the coverage of transportation infrastructure, I enjoyed a dubious but sometimes special status as someone whom you could easily recognize in the crowd of just about any engineering conference (albeit sometimes as someone's wife or secretary). But it's very humbling to be in a country where you basically blend into a crowd of 1 billion people--just another Asian face. And after five days of non-stop Chinese banquets with endless dishes of savory vegetables and meat spiraling past me on a gourmand merry-go-round, I have definitely acquired a layer of fat around my waistline that probably looks like that on Peking duck. Even a trudge up the Great Wall's sometimes 2-ft-high steps, a workout to rival any Stairmaster, didn't burn it off. (A Chinese guy with a peg leg galloped past me, singing, then stopped for a smoke).

To boot, I have spent the past five days consistently disillusioning the natives with my inability to speak Chinese. Feeling a vague and unsettling sense of failing my heritage (my father came from a North Korean strain that ended up largely in China, where he was born and raised speaking the language), I tried to memorize the syllables for "I'm sorry, I can't speak Chinese." Attempting to verbalize doesn't convince the natives that I can't speak Chinese. It just convinces them I must be a retarded Chinese. But I am not in China for ego, diet or even cultural enrichment. I'm here to get a glimpse into the mind-boggling construction that is sprouting bridges and roads like hyperkinetic ivy. A junket sponsored by T.Y. Lin International was tricky because technically, I had to go as a tourist. I was not allowed to ride the elevator up one of the twin pylons of the Second Wujiang Bridge ( a cable-stayed crossing in Fulin) in part because women "tourists" are out of the comfort zone there.

China has begun to build long-span bridges like there's infinite tomorrows. They're zooming around the learning curve with an overachieving zeal. Engineers are learning to use epoxy-treated asphalt on decks to make them last longer, and apparently have been "inspired" by the new Bay Bridge self-anchored suspension (SAS) span to try a few long-span SAS structures themselves.

On Wednesday I saw one such SAS structure in Foshan, Nanhai District, about an hour outside Guangzhou. The $55.6-million Pingsheng Bridge, scheduled to open by October, crosses the Dongping waterway with a main span of 350 meters. That means that until the Bay Bridge SAS in San Francisco opens with a 385-m main span, this bridge will be the world's longest of the type. The irony, notes Man-Chung Tang, T.Y. Lin International chairman, is that his firm was hired as a consultant by owner Foshan Road and Bridge Construction Co. to review the design because the Chinese engineers figured they could learn from the Bay Bridge span construction. But as it turns out, this bridge was built in about three years while the Bay Bridge, buffeted by politics and delays, is just getting going.

Caltrans engineers recently visited the Changping site to see what they could learn from it. We also visited the Nanhuan Bridge, with a 316-m-long SAS main bridge span. The entire 750-m-long structure was completed in two years. It now awaits a brand new town to connect to and a lake to be created underneath it.

The steel orthotropic girders comprising the main twin spans of Pingsheng will each carry five lanes of traffic and a 3.5-wide pedestrian walkway. They are flanked by standard concrete box girders to create a total length of 680 meters.With heavy barge traffic beneath, the contractor, China Railway Major Bridge Co., used a launching girder plus 800-ton jacks to sequentially cantilever out the girders, which are approximately 21 m x 3.5 m deep. The bridge has a single 145-m-high pylon that consists of three columns tapering up to a square cap at the top. It's a strange-looking bridge because the backspan, supported on 50-m-deep concrete piles, has no hanger cables cascading down between main cable and deck. I hope it's not lost in translation, but the Chinese engineers seemed to convey that going with a concrete backspan saved up to 50% of the total cost. Apparently you either love or hate the contrast of half a total bridge being supported by suspension cables and the other half with broad daylight between the main cable and the deck from side view. I rather liked it. The day we visited, it was raining. So we opted not to climb the staircase leading up to the pedestrian walkway. Too bad, because I had another Chinese pig-out lunch awaiting. Including duck, of course.

Next up: The Pittsburgh of China.

September 19, 2006

Wow, thank you Aileen! I had to summon all my "concrete" memory to understand the intensity of your description... I wonder if I understand it all... hope you have a picture or two with your blogs...

Can't wait for the next blog...

Ngo Than Nhan