China opened the world's longest cross-sea bridge to great fanfare last week ahead of the Communist Party's 90th anniversary, but the fact is, the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge isn't quite ready for the traffic it is now seeing.
The 42-kilometre bridge, which now links the booming northern port city of Qingdao in Shandong to an airport on the island of Huangdao, is still a work in progress.
Workers are still tightening up screws in its support facilities and have yet to install lights, according to an official from the project's contractor, the Shandong Hi-speed Group.
Cai Jianjun, head of the project's Huangdao work station, told the South China Morning Post that 'there are still a few openings in the bridge's fences'.
State media broadcast images of unscrewed and half-screwed fences, as well as a few gaps along the bridge, on Monday. Construction of such safety facilities would take at least two months, China Central Television quoted a project engineer as saying.
Cai said 99.5 per cent of the work had been done when the bridge opened last Thursday. He denied its incomplete state posed safety risks.
'Even if there were no openings, vehicles could still drop into the sea if a strong collision occurred,' he said.