China boasts an $8.5 billion bridge that stretches an impressive 102 miles, capturing the fascination of conspiracy theorists everywhere.

China boasts the longest bridge in the world, stretching an impressive 102 miles, a fact that has captured the fascination of conspiracy theorists.

We all know by now that the country is no stranger to mammoth projects, whether that's a hydropower plant so powerful it's slowing the Earth's rotation, or the planet's most expensive megaproject.

Back in 2011, China unveiled the Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, which took four years and 10,000 workers to build.

It currently holds the Guinness world record for the world's longest bridge at around 102 miles long - or 538,560 feet. That's the length of almost 90 Brooklyn Bridges end-to-end, for some context.

Costing around $8.5 billion, the structure is part of the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway and links the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing.

Once the bridge became operational, the commute between the two locations was reduced from approximately four and a half hours to only two.

The Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge, roughly 31 meters off the ground, signified a major engineering milestone for the country. Constructing a bridge of such scale would've been no mean feat, especially when you consider the challenge of building it across varying terrain.

The bridge crosses low rice paddies, densely populated cities, sections of the Yangtze River Delta and a few miles of open water across the Yangcheng Lake in