China’s got some of the wildest bridges on Earth — massive, jaw-dropping structures that look like they belong in a sci-fi movie. But the Hongqi Bridge in Sichuan just became a headline for all the wrong reasons. Today part of the 758-meter bridge on National Highway 317 collapsed straight into the Yalong River after a landslide from a nearby mountain tore it apart. The crazy part? Nobody got hurt. Authorities had actually shut the bridge down the day before when they noticed cracks and the ground shifting nearby. It’s like nature gave a little warning, and for once, humans actually listened. That call probably saved lives.
BREAKING: 758-metre-long Hongqi bridge collapses in southwest China, months after opening pic.twitter.com/5XPidizPaG
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) November 11, 2025
Officials say this wasn’t a case of shoddy engineering or weak steel. Nope — the blame falls squarely on the land itself. The whole area sits in a seismically active zone on the Tibetan Plateau, which basically means the ground moves whenever it feels like it. The slope next to the bridge cracked, shifted, and then let loose. The bridge didn’t stand a chance. It’s not a design flaw, it’s the planet reminding us who’s really in charge.
Report the full story! No misleading. The bridge collapsed due to a landslide-induced mountain deformation. This was a natural disaster.
A day earlier, the government staff had detected land subsidence on the mountain and the road cracks during their road inspection. They… https://t.co/0Ocl1Qy9sx
— Li Zexin 李泽欣 (@XH_Lee23) November 11, 2025
Video and images show total chaos — concrete snapping, dust clouds swallowing the valley, and chunks of roadway tumbling into the river. Brutal scene. And this thing was new, too. Built to last, engineered to impress, but no amount of steel can hold back a mountain that’s had enough. Now, inspectors are swarming the area, checking every other bridge and tunnel to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again. You know it’s serious when the government moves that fast.
At the end of the day, this is one of those “nature doesn’t miss” moments. It’s not corruption, not bad maintenance — just a reminder that the ground under our feet has the final say. One day you’re driving over a shiny, high-tech bridge; the next, it’s sitting at the bottom of a river. It’s wild, it’s dramatic, and honestly, kind of terrifying. But hey — no casualties, no cover-up, just pure geological chaos doing its thing. Mother Nature 1, Infrastructure 0.
