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Scary moment as 1km high glass bridge with people 'cracks'

Dubai - People cling to the side-rail in fear.

It was a cracking humour that had its shade of sham.

Last week, a video showing a glass walkway cracking under a man's weight went viral in China. In the video, a tour guide stumbles over and falls to his knees in fear as hairline cracks spider out from under his feet, and more appear as he falls onto the glass.

It occurred at the walkway around the eastern face of the Taihang Mountain in Hebei, China. The glass path hangs 1,180 metres (3,871 feet) above sea level, with a direct view of the drop down, according to a report on Mashable.

Now, the video has turned out to be bogus. The fright was fake.

The East Taihang district administration issued an official apology on its WeChat channel, to explain that the splintering glass was merely an "effect" it worked into a portion of its bridge, in order to be "provocative".

The walkway designers had placed shattered fragments of glass in one of the layers, stretching across several panels at the end of the bridge, it explained.

When you walk over those panels, the glass appears to shatter under your feet, and you can even hear the sound of glass breaking as you walk.

So it wasn't glass really breaking, it just looks and sounds like it.

Though the letter says they are "very sorry that people got frightened", it doesn't intend to replace those shattered panels with regular ones, because they hope people will want to come and experience them.

The letter says the tour guide in the video knew what was going on.