Surfing on social media in recent days, you may have been captivated by the addictive punchline "city or not," wondering if you're falling behind the times yet again. But if you ask someone from Zhongshan city what the most "city" thing to do these days is, for sure, it would be to travel through the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link.

At 3 pm on June 30, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, spanning across the east and west sides of the Pearl River Estuary, opened for trial operation. In just two hours, the volume on the mega cross-sea passage had reached over 16,000 vehicles from both directions, with the entrance on the Zhongshan side seeing lengthy traffic.

The mega bridge connects Shenzhen's Qianhai in the east, Zhongshan's Cuiheng in the west, and Guangzhou's Nansha in the north, marking a "key cross" for one of the most densely populated and economically developed regions in China - the "Golden Inner Bay." Instead of detouring via Humen Bridge, travel between Zhongshan and Shenzhen is now cut from at least two hours to as little as 30 minutes. It only takes you 15 minutes from Nansha to the Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport, when the ice in your milk tea hasn't even melted yet.

To make this ultra-fast travel happen, the designers spent 14 years on the research and construction of the mega bridge, culminating in the world's most challenging cross-sea cluster project. In order to accommodate the busy navigation of the Pearl River Estuary, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge boasts the world's largest span for a fully offshore steel box girder suspension bridge with a span of 1,666 meters. It also has the world's highest air traffic clearance altitude at 76.5 meters, or roughly equivalent to 30 stories, navigable for two stacked Titanic ships.

And to allow ships to pass through more freely, the passage integrates a bridge, two islands, a tunnel and underwater interchanges. It has the world's first two-way, eight-lane undersea tunnel, with each standard immersed tube weighing 80,000 tons, a volume comparable to that of an aircraft carrier. Loading such giants into the seabed at a depth of around 40 meters is as difficult as "threading a needle and embroidering" in the sea.

Behind the creation of this super bridge is a group of powerhouse companies from China with absolute strength, many of which are based in the Greater Bay Area. State-own giants such as Guangdong Communication Group that is responsible for its construction, Guangzhou Shipyard International Company and CSSC Huangpu Wenchong Shipbuilding Company, which are involved in the construction of the immersed tube and the underwater tunnel, respectively, and CRCC Harbour & Channel Engineering Bureau Group that undertook third-party monitoring, while others like Unilumin Group, which provided tens of thousands of sets of LED lighting fixtures, Foshan Electrical and Lighting, which supplied lamps and communication equipment fittings, and Keshun Waterproof Technologies, which designed the waterproofing program... These local enterprises worked their magic and together created an infrastructure miracle across Lingdingyang Bay.

In the future, the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link, along with nearby major crossings - the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, Humen Bridge, Nansha Bridge, the under-construction Shiziyang Tunnel, and the planned Lianhuashan Link and Shenzhen-Zhuhai Link, will strengthen connectivity between the bay area cities and facilitate the comprehensive development of the area in different dimensions, including economic unity, industrial synergy, transportation, logistics, and supply chain, creating an even greater regional miracle.

Where there are mountains, we build roads, where there is water, we construct bridges. Miracles are never just about luck. Great achievements stem from hard work. These super engineering projects are the most vivid embodiment of both Chinese wisdom and Chinese modernization through solid work.