Dubbed the ‘umbilical cord’, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge stretches 34 miles (55 kilometres) across the Pearl River Delta.

Due to open to the public this summer, this long snake of bitumen will connect a relatively small city on the Chinese mainland with the two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau.

The bridge aims to reduce travel times between China, Macau and Hong Kong, from three hours to just 30 minutes and has been built to withstand a magnitude-8 earthquake and a super typhoon

Assistant director and senior engineer at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Authority, Guo Xinglin, says the most technically difficult aspect was the construction of the installation of a 6.7 kilometer-long submerged tunnel.

The tunnel sits in relatively shallow waters and runs between two artificial islands, each measuring 100,000 square meters. The structure’s 55-meter high steel cylinder frames are the equivalent of an Airbus A380 – the world’s largest passenger jet.

Information supplied by the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Authority has revealed that the total cost of the bridge was $7.56 billion, $4.32 billion of which was funded with bank loans.