Fecal Rain? Near Shanghai Airport, Unpleasant Droppings From Above

Pudong airport

SHANGHAI — Some inhabitants near Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport are reporting something far more odious than the usual noise pollution.

According to Zhou, who lives just south of Shanghai in Luchaogang, even on sunny days, he can see "golden raindrops" falling down, accompanied by a bad smell, the Dongfang Daily reported.

The droppings, which Dongfang Daily referred to as "fecal rain," accumulate on locals’ cars and their night-time duvets put outdoors to air out. Since Luchaogang is located under the Shanghai airport flight path, local inhabitants blame arriving aircraft, which in the morning land every five to 10 minutes.

A Pudong airport staff member told the Dongfang Daily that modern aircraft now all have a vacuum system for collecting all human waste into a sealed fecal tank. Even if the system breaks down, the exrement should stay in the tail of the plane and not to be discharged in the air.

However, a maintenance crewman at China Eastern Airlines, while insisting that the vast majority of Chinese civil aircraft today have adopted the new vacuum collecting system, admitted that "old planes still have stool collection containers that are not tight enough and the situation where the feces leak out can indeed occur," the Xinhua news agency reported.

After the initial press reports, Pudong airport has promised to investigate whether some aircraft toilet collecting systems have cracked or leaked.

Meanwhile, some may never be able to hear Prince's classic song the same way again...

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Economy

economy

Globalization Takes A New Turn, Away From China

China is still a manufacturing juggernaut and a growing power, but companies are looking for alternatives as Chinese labor costs continue to rise — as do geopolitical tensions with Beijing.

Photo of a woman working at a motorbike factory in China's Yunnan Province.

A woman works at a motorbike factory in China's Yunnan Province.

Jiang Wenyao/Xinhua via ZUMA Wire

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — What were the representatives of dozens of large American companies doing in Vietnam these past few days?

A few days earlier, a delegation of foreign company chiefs currently based in China were being welcomed by business and government leaders in Mexico.

Then there was Foxconn, Apple's Taiwanese subcontractor, which signed an investment deal in the Indian state of Telangana, enabling the creation of 100,000 jobs. You read that right: 100,000 jobs.

What these three examples have in common is the frantic search for production sites — other than China!

For the past quarter century, China has borne the crown of the "world's factory," manufacturing the parts and products that the rest of the planet needs. Billionaire Jack Ma's Alibaba.com platform is based on this principle: if you are a manufacturer and you are looking for cheap ball bearings, or if you are looking for the cheapest way to produce socks or computers, Alibaba will provide you with a solution among the jungle of factories in Shenzhen or Dongguan, in southern China.

All of this is still not over, but the ebb is well underway.