The Big Sleep: Crossing the Hangzhou Bay Bridge
September 11th, 2008 | by This is China! |A British engineering friend of mine recently thought of making an outing to the newly-opened Hangzhou Bay Bridge. He’s an engineer by training and by temperament, and thought others of his friends - engineers and non-enginerds alike - would find it entertaining to take a Sunday afternoon drive from Suzhou to the Bridge to inspect the engineering wonder (it is, after all, the longest suspension bridge in the world that crosses a sea). I opted out of the opportunity.
I explained to my friends that I’d already been back and then forth across the Bridge a half-dozen times. There was only ONCE, I made it plain to them, during which I had NOTslept during the crossing; and that one time I was entertaining a client (so I had to be conscious). Otherwise, the construction, the scenery, even the vehicle in which I’d been riding each time left me non-plussed.
Still, I’ll have to make a better case of the Bridge and other Infrastructure projects in the Yangtze River Delta about which I will be speaking at next week’s conference, “Battle for the Bridge: Industrial Investment in Haiyan, Zhejiang,” hosted by the always-informative folks at the China Economic Review. As the keynote speaker I will whip the crowd into a frenzy about the amazing strides in transportation infrastructure the local and national governments have made in the region, and about future projects and their impact on Western investment. All in 15 minutes.
Such is the plight of the keynote speaker.
Find out more about the conference and its host here.
