On the other side of the planet they like to build things bigger, taller, and longer. In Saudi Arabia you’ll find the world’s largest airport, covering an area of 300 square miles. In the UAE you’ll find the world’s highest skyscraper, at a dizzying height of 163 floors. And who isn’t familiar with China’s Great Wall – the world’s longest at over 13,000 miles. Now China can make another lengthy claim, with the Goddess Escalator in the city of Wushan. The Goddess might as well be the stairway to heaven.
The mundane escalator you remember from your local department store whisked you from one floor to the next in about twenty seconds. China’s Goddess will take you on an escalator ride for twenty minutes. In that time you ascend 800 feet, which doesn’t elevate you just one floor but more like eighty. Wushan is built on the side of a mountain, and the Goddess snakes from the lower regions to the upper housing district, saving the residents what used to be a strenuous one-hour hike.
Technically the Goddess is not a single escalator. She’s twenty-one of them one after another – and 8 elevators – resulting in a continuous network that qualifies her to be the world’s longest. I can’t blame the Chinese for calling her a goddess. Heck, I’d travel all the way to Wushan just to experience her “uplifting” twenty minutes.
There are times I think I should’ve been an engineer instead of an architect. Like when I’m riding an escalator. Something about the mechanics, organization, and precision really appeals to me. There’s wonder in still not understanding how it all works. And that moment you step on or step off is a bit of a thrill as you surrender your mobility to a machine. It’s the same feeling you get when you’re trying to catch the chair lift at a ski resort.
The escalator was patented in 1889 (a lot earlier than you would’ve guessed, right?), with the first working version installed at Coney Island ten years later. Original escalators were made of wood, and early models required a hand-crank mechanism before motors became commonplace. Today’s versions – where the stairs flatten and slip seamlessly under the surface only to reappear again at the bottom – came along much later. You can still ride one of world’s oldest escalators (a 1920s model) at Macy’s in New York City.
I have fond and not-so-fond memories of escalators. At the rental car center at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, a single escalator takes you from ground level to the Avis cars three stories higher. It’s kind of a thrill-ride sensation ascending and elevating through that many floors. You actually have time to enjoy the view.
On the other hand I’ll never forget the narrow escalators on the outer edge of the football stadium at the University of Texas in Austin. You ride several of them to ascend to the nosebleed seats, turning ninety degrees from one escalator to catch the next. Those in-between landings are small, so small so that any pause of the patrons means no space for those still moving up the escalator. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to being crushed by a surge of humanity.
Moving walkways go “step in step” with escalators and elevators; devices that make short journeys easier on the feet. In airports moving walkways make sense because your destination is more horizontal than vertical. They may be convenient, but only if those who choose to just “go for the ride” step aside for those who are late for the plane. Hats off to the frustrated person who came up with signage like “STAND to the right, WALK to the left”. Also, they should hold a contest to give moving walkways a more creative name. Escalators sound cool. Moving walkways not so much.
Some day I hope I see Wushan, China. Okay, let’s get real – I could care less about Wushan. I just want to ride the Goddess. Twenty minutes up and twenty minutes down. Over and over and over. I’m too old for the amusement parks but I’ll never turn down another ride on an escalator.
Some content sourced from the Futurism.com article, “China Built the World’s Largest Outdoor Escalator…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.
Life In A Word 
Curious, are you standing the entire time. They could serve coffee if it’s 20 minutes. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good idea! Purchase your coffee before you board and you’d probably be done with it by the time you got to the other end 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
It seems like the elevators will be a bottleneck, but what do I know. I have been on that Macy’s escalator many times. There are some pretty long escalators in the city and it is pretty nerve wracking going down them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe an escalator of more than one floor gives you a feeling of being “trapped”? I’m guessing those Macy’s escalators are between walls (versus in the open spaces of more modern department stores) so I could see how claustrophobia could set in as you ride.
LikeLike
Apparently it took four years to build and cost $23 million. In my country, you could not even get the permits to build such a thing in four years! Congratulations to China!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Woof, I didn’t consider the price tag. People in Wushan must pay a lot of taxes!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Goddess sounds pretty spectacular Dave! I’m glad you included the aerial view so we could see just how far this 20-minute ride goes. I would be mixed on whether I’d try it out or not. When I was a toddler and lived in Canada, I went to Downtown Toronto with my father to watch the Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade. Afterward, we went into Eaton’s Toyland which was inside Eaton’s Department Store. We had to use the escalator to get there. It was a cold day and I was wearing snow pants and somehow the clip broke and the elastic stirrup part flew out of my boot or shoe and got snagged on the escalator’s “moving stairs” slowly pulling the snow pants (one leg only) with it. I was old enough to remember the incident and I was screaming as I was freed from getting swallowed up in the escalator. From that point on, my entire life, if I can’t take the elevator or simply climb the stairs, I stand there, pausing forever before I’ll take that first step onto the escalator.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I wondered if someone out there had an escalator “horror story”. I’m always a little nervous when I see kids playing on the moving walkways at airports. They’re oblivious to the possibilities, like your own example. I’m happy to climb aboard an escalator but I’m also a wary rider. Safety first!
LikeLiked by 2 people
It would be interesting to find out if others share my fear. I can’t imagine kids playing near anything mechanical that moves like that. I’d be afraid of fingers going into the mechanism.
I have had some strange experiences through the years, including being on a carnival ride which stopped and we got stuck upside down and the fire truck had to rescue us. This was in Canada and I was probably eight or nine at the time and with friends and one of our parents. It was during the day. The ride looked like a spider with buckets on each “leg” and the buckets were open but we had seat belts. We were not injured.
Also, three co-workers and I were going out to lunch and we got on the elevator at the 21st floor and we went down one floor (or so we thought); then the elevator stopped, the doors opened, but we were actually between floors. It was too high up to jump out/down. We closed the doors and pushed the emergency button and no one answered it for almost an hour. The Otis Elevator Company employee who responded to Downtown Detroit elevator emergencies was out to lunch. Didn’t he have a beeper or something? This was in the early 90s. One of the women in our group was terrified, started hyperventilating, crying and dropped down to the floor of the elevator crouched in a ball. I think that was more terrifying than the elevator mechanical predicament we were in. It was a good time for me to tell my escalator story and why I always take the elevator or stairs if that is an option! 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
The carnival ride sounds super scary…..I don’t do rides as I don’t like heights, but how long were you upside down?
LikeLiked by 2 people
It was very scary Joni because we were tipped upside down and I don’t remember why it stopped so suddenly, but luckily we had a bar to hold onto (for dear life I might add) and we had a seatbelt too. I think each person had their own bucket to sit in. It took about an hour or a little more. It was during the day so why it took the Fire Department so long is a mystery but maybe they were out on a legitimate fire run. It was in Oakville in the Hopedale Plaza parking lot. The firemen kind of made it into a game so we weren’t too scared.
I went on a rollercoaster once for Senior Skip Day in high school. Most of our class went to Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio. The girls I went with made me go on the rollercoaster despite my protests. I went once and that was it. And the rollercoasters in 1973 are nothing like the ones today where several people have been injured from the sudden movement, up and down to back and forth, to upside down. I’m sure people have whiplash from that. Once and done for me!
LikeLiked by 2 people
That is an amazing accomplishment! I would join you for that ride (or rides). I will confess that I still get a tinge of anxiety near the end of the escalator as I watch the step level out, making sure the tips of my shoes are back from it so that I do not get pulled into the mechanism and ground to a pulp (as almost happened to Linda!).
LikeLiked by 2 people
I can see why Linda would never go near another escalator. There is that sense of “I’m about to be crushed”. On a lighter note, disembarking makes me think about the ski lifts again. You have to time your departure from the chair just right or your skis go out from under you… while others are inevitably watching.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The first escalator I remember riding was in J.L. Hudson department store in Detroit. My brother and I were around age 4 or 5 and were horsing around until we were surprised by the abrupt ending and were stuck on the ground while passengers behind us were tripping over us. We screamed for help from our Mom who had calmly walked away without looking back. We eventually raced after her, shocked that she seemed to disown us!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Now that’s the kind of childhood nightmare to have me never wanting to ride an escalator again. Glad you survived (and were reunited with your mother!)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Now that we don’t have any department stores I don’t have many occasions to ride an escalator, but there is always the bit of hesitation in timing before you step on and off. I don’t like heights in general, so the Goddess would be out for me!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m with you, Joni – not a fan of heights. The Goddess is enclosed for the most part so I think that would help with vertigo. Not that I’ll ever know… 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
You don’t want to go to Wuhan anyway – isn’t that where Covid originated, with the bats?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Goddess is in Wushan, which does sound very much like Wuhan. If “she” was located in the latter city I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near this topic (figuratively and literally 🙂 )
LikeLike