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Surreal sentinel reaching for the sky

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Steely grey in the early morning gloom, the Tsing Ma suspension bridge, to be officially completed today, stands like some surreal sentinel guarding both gateways to Lantau Island and urban Kowloon.

Yet nobody who has seen the bridge can fail to be impressed by its elegant structure - more than 300,000 tonnes of steel and concrete soaring 206 metres into the air between Tsing Yi and Ma Wan.

Spanning nearly two kilometres of open sea, the $7.2 billion structure is, at 2.14 kilometres long, the world's longest combined road and rail suspension bridge. Yet despite its tremendous strength, people gasp at what seems the bridge's flimsiness.

They wonder in awe how millions of grains of sand, cement and stone bonded with a kind of water-based super adhesive can stand firm in slender columns that reach for the sky.

When they see these towers apparently supporting thousands of tonnes of steel plate and wire that form the deck and cables, non-engineers must ponder how it does not collapse.

Yet the bridge, properly maintained and barring unforeseen disasters, is designed to last 120 years and will not need replacing until 2117.

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