The Aizhai Bridge takes the G65 Baotou-Maoming expressway across the Dehang gorge at Aizhai town near Jishou, on the road from Hunan toward Chadong and Guizhou. Its main span of 1,176 metres hangs hundreds of metres above the canyon floor, and it was built as a tunnel-to-tunnel bridge, running from one mountainside portal to the other. Completed in 2012 with Asian Development Bank support, it replaced a four-hour mountain drive with less than one. It is famous alike to engineers, who have given it national prizes, and to travellers, who know it for the view from the deck.
The Aizhai bridge throws a 1,176-metre span over the Dehang gorge on the road from Hunan toward Guizhou, and the expressway package around it is two-thirds bridges and tunnels. It replaced a four-hour drive with an hour's run.