On April 28, with the last steel truss girder segment hoisted into place, the Zangke River Bridge on the Guizhou Nayong-Qinglong Expressway (hereinafter referred to as the Naqing Expressway) — the first suspension bridge "built entirely by Guizhou" — was successfully closed, laying a solid foundation for the full completion and opening of the Naqing Expressway.

As a special structure of a kilometer-class long-span suspension bridge, the Zangke River Bridge uses large quantities of steel girders and steel wire, and places extremely high demands on component strength, corrosion resistance and fatigue resistance. The bridge has a total of 398 main cable strands, with the steel wire in the strands totaling 69,100 kilometers in length — enough to circle the Earth's equator 1.7 times if joined end to end — and the steel girders of the main bridge and approach spans weigh 19,920 tons in total. Zhao Mingfu, project manager of the Naqing T15 bid section of Guizhou Highway Group, explained that the bridge's substructure was built jointly by two local Guizhou enterprises, which for the first time produced and processed the main cables, suspender cables and steel structures of a special-structure bridge. "Therefore, the Zangke River Bridge is the first suspension bridge to achieve an all-process 'built entirely by Guizhou' from substructure to superstructure." The photo shows an aerial view of the Zangke River Bridge after closure on April 28.

The Zangke River Bridge is one of the key controlling projects of the Naqing Expressway. Located at the junction of four counties (districts) — Qinglong, Pu'an, Shuicheng and Liuzhi in Guizhou — it spans the Zangke River. It is a dual-tower, single-span steel truss girder suspension bridge with a total length of 1,849 meters, a main span of 1,080 meters, and a maximum distance of 380 meters from the deck to the river surface, ranking 12th in height among the world's 100 highest bridges. The photo shows an aerial view of the Zangke River Bridge after closure on April 28.

The steel truss girder of the main bridge consists of 73 segments, with the largest weighing 231.3 tons and the total weight of the girder segments exceeding 16,000 tons. On-site assembly and a cable crane hoisting system were used, with segments erected symmetrically and synchronously from midspan toward both banks. The closure segment hoisted this time was segment QZ04 on the Qinglong bank, weighing 219.2 tons and hoisted to a height of about 109 meters. The photo shows an aerial view of the Zangke River Bridge after closure on April 28.

Once completed, the Zangke River Bridge will shorten the journey between the two banks of the Zangke River from 1 hour to 1 minute, and will effectively drive local economic development. The photo shows an aerial view of the Zangke River Bridge after closure on April 28.