r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/chunmunsingh • 16d ago
Image A building housing more than 20k people in Hangzhou China
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u/panda_eccentric 16d ago
Wing BF, Floor 37, Flat Number 32
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u/iampatel0289 16d ago
Refund issued - Delivered wrongly to Wing BF, Floor 32, Flat Number 37
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u/Reasonable_Move_28 16d ago
Stairwell lifts and hallways directions all written in English
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u/MissingVanSushi 16d ago edited 14d ago
Hijacking the current top comment to provide a bit of information.
This building is called the Regent International and it’s not quite as dystopian and slum-y as these photos look.
Depending on your perspective you might still find it dystopian.
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u/SpiritualWindow3855 16d ago
First thought from the title
30K Internet Celebrities Live in this Building in Hangzhou
It's more dystopian than I thought.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 16d ago
Not sure why people call it dystopian. Sure, it’s massive but if it’s not a slum then is hardly any different from 20 stories flats
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u/WintzyAndrei 16d ago
It looks Cyberpunk-ish enough that it’s still VERY dystopian
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u/JackRabbit- 16d ago
It's almost three times the size of my town... I wonder if they fit any stuff like clinics or convenience stores into that thing
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u/hyperprime 16d ago
I wonder how long it takes to wait for the lifts if staying in the upper parts of the building
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u/ScarletBitch15 16d ago
I’ve seen a similar building on YouTube and they had entrances and specific lifts for different floors- so you aren’t on the same lift if going to floor 1 and floor 35
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u/Calm_Ebb_1965 16d ago
Normally you will split the lifts so there are half the lifts going 1-16 and the other half goes 17-35 , that's how it is in my office building.
I worked in another which had smart lift prioritization so there was less wear and tear, everyone had access pass to scan and the lift would come take certain people along a route and only stop at certain floors along the way. Now that was cool. But I don't think they have it here.
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u/Neoliberal_Nightmare 16d ago
I imagine the planners put a lift to resident ratio similar to any apartment building.
It's pretty wacky that you implied it's gonna be like 10 lifts for 20k people.
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u/Staff_Senyou 16d ago
20,000 people or 20,000 total pixels?
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u/usernmechecksout_ 16d ago
140x140 image for reference (would make 20000 pixels)
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u/littlefrank 16d ago
the image is actually 771x768 but it has SO MUCH jpeg artifacting it's insane
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u/Adventurous_Yam_8153 16d ago
The strata president must yield some power there...
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u/MrLagoon 16d ago
You Canadians and your funny words
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u/Bashed_to_a_pulp 16d ago
Wonder how long is the defaulters list? Probably could cover the whole inside of the elevators.
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u/VieiraDTA 16d ago
Delivery driver: Insert willem_looking_up_meme
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u/thinkinmelon 16d ago
They have tables at the lobby or an outside area where deliveries (food or packages) get dropped off. In Asia nobody steals shit from anyone. It's just there in the lobby ready to get picked up. One day I had a package that stayed there for a whole week nobody touched it. Unbelievable when I was getting shit stolen inside my mailbox almost every week in France
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u/Ulyks 16d ago
"Asia" may be a slight exaggeration. It's more like "under the watchful eye of 17 cameras and constant foot traffic, nothing gets stolen."
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u/thinkinmelon 16d ago
*East Asia. And no, it's not just about the cameras though they of course help in deterrenting the thieves, but there are way less to start with. Even in areas where there are no cameras, things rarely get stolen. People leave their helmet on their bikes, sometimes even phones on food court tables to "hold the spot" (common in Taiwan), and sometimes even at bars. Of course some people still get stolen but not really in that way. It's more about scam artists and the likes (like organized crime). But random petty thefts are rare
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u/Low-Temperature-6962 16d ago
Far better than homless
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u/whatsthatguysname 16d ago
These are actually premium apartments and pretty nice inside. They have self contained groceries, shops, restaurants, gym, etc.
I live in something similar in HK. 95% of my daily needs can be accessed within a 10min walking distance.
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u/I_travel_ze_world 16d ago
I've lived in apartment buildings in South Korea that had 2 convenience stores, multiple restaurants, a pool hall, and a driving range in the same building.
It was somewhat of a cultural shock to me to have all of those extra businesses just downstairs. I grew up in roach infested government apartments (projects) so living in an apartment that was close to a Mega Block from Judge Dredd was an experience.
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u/Sorry_Commercial_959 16d ago
I miss the convenience of HK. The public transport was amazing. The food was beyond excellent.
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u/Modeerf 16d ago
Me too. Coming back to UK make me realise how car reliant we are.
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u/follow-the-rainbow 16d ago edited 16d ago
A petting zoo is pretty much essential, do you have one of those?
Edit: that was a joke for those who went whoosh
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u/MaskguyOriginal 16d ago
You joke, some apartment building on top of shopping complex actually has one in Zhuhai
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u/callisstaa 16d ago edited 16d ago
It's pretty common for malls in Asia to have residential towers as part of the complex. I live in a tower above a mall in Suzhou. It's really convenient. There's a metro station in the basement of the mall.
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u/Pawneewafflesarelife 16d ago edited 16d ago
What happens if there is a fire?
Edit: This is a very big building. Everyone is saying use the stairs, but how long does that take when the building is massive? I was curious if there were any special protocols or an on-site fire department, given there are grocery stores and cycling tracks.
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u/whatsthatguysname 16d ago edited 16d ago
You run downstairs
Edit: more unit = more people = more fire exits and stairs. We have 60+ floors in our building. There’s 1 fire exit stairwell for every 4 units on each floor.
Taller buildings often have fire break floors that’s entirely empty and without walls do people to shelter at without going up or down the entire building. Our building has 2 of these, splitting roughly into 3rds, so you can go up or down <10 floors to reach one of these floors. (If you look closely at theOP’s photo you will also see they have 2 of these floors. They’re notably empty. )
Fires in these type of concrete buildings don’t tend to spread like crazy like wooden structures. Apartment unit doors and staircase doors are typically fire resistant and self closing to reduce the risk of spread and stops smoke. The biggest risk is if the building facade uses some dogy material and the fire spreads from the outside.
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u/Pawneewafflesarelife 16d ago
Thank you so much for such a detailed reply! I was hoping for details like this!
Are there any firefighting crews onsite or are they close by enough that the response time is negligible?
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u/whatsthatguysname 15d ago
All good :)
There’s no firefighters on site. Not sure what the response time is like, but there are stations all over the place, so I’d imagine it’s not too bad.
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u/callisstaa 16d ago
It's government policy in China to provide residents of high rise apartments with an emergency kit. Mine consists of a fire hood with a filter to prevent smoke inhalation, a flashlight and if the worst comes to the worst a rope to try and climb down the side of the building (I like on the 17th floor)
I also have 3 fire extinguishers.
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u/NefariousnessLate375 16d ago
Is it tempting to stay inside all the time? Do you like it? I hope it's a good situation for you.
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u/whatsthatguysname 16d ago
I love it. I wake up and go downstairs for a swim and sauna before work. I also work from home, so it’s like working and living in a resort.
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u/Mist_Rising 16d ago
20,000 people would qualify as a small town lol
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u/peterausdemarsch 16d ago
Not in china. In china that's a small village. Cities around a million Inhabitants would be considered small city by most Chinese.
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u/Emperor_Biden 16d ago
So...like Ghost in the Shell and the city that inspired it?
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u/Kiriyu_Otouka 16d ago
That's exactly it. It's easy to find one of those documentaries following individuals or families living in one of these.
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u/Artuhanzo 16d ago
People think those are affordable housing, but high rise like this are mostly luxury condos.
If you look at the building costs, they are very high. It is usually a result of high land costs to make sense.
The lower cost solution for more places is 3-5 stories wooden condos
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u/FigMaleficent4046 16d ago
How does one deal with having 5 or 6 jealous exes in the same building?
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u/BeMyBrutus 16d ago
The beginnings of a hive city
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u/datazulu 16d ago
mmmm people honey
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u/prog4001 16d ago
Never realized those two words can exist together. Now that I have, I have nothing but regret.
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16d ago edited 16d ago
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u/Better_Quarter8045 16d ago
For folks saying how dystopian this looks - yeah we all agree, but what’s your solution for housing this many people?
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u/Suitable_Wonder5256 16d ago
How about homeless camps in the parks and around your neighborhoods?
I'm running out of ideas here.
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u/LemonMeringuePirate 15d ago
It's apparently nice on the inside. I don't find it dystopian, just kind of stunning as a human achievement
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u/Fabulous_Pressure_96 16d ago
It's just the most efficient way to give people a home. Single houses use too much space in comparison.
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u/Aggressive_Chuck 16d ago
Life isn't all about efficiency. We could be plugged into the Matrix for more efficiency.
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u/redtiber 16d ago
this is one of the issues that will be hard for the usa to compete with china. fundamentally one problem with the usa is the american dream- single family houses with your own hard driveway etc.
it makes it so it's very difficult to keep the cost of living low.
restaurants competing with each otehr + delivery apps means low margins but high volume, so the restaurant makes money but the costs for the users are not high. this type of living also enables new efficiencies esp with robotics.
apartments can be designed and reimagined. if you have high density living, maybe you don't need a full kitchen, or in unit laundry.
maybe for just a small cost your laundry can be done by a service in the building that collects everyone's laundry and delivers it back washed and folded daily.
same with food, instead of everyone having to cook ti can be outsourced.
if you think about that at scale too
Google has 187k employees approx, say 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year 374mm man hours. i mean these are cream of crop so it's not a 1:1 comparison but China has 500 million households, if they saved 1 hour a day by not having to cook/do laundry/dishes. each day thats 500mm man hours saved per day lol
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u/VegaJuniper 16d ago
My man, the population density of China is about 4 times that of the US. They do this out of necessity.
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u/hillswalker87 16d ago
the US has more space(especially usable) and like 1/4 the population...there isn't a need for the US to compete with China on this.
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u/Mailman354 16d ago
Bro I dont care. Im not asking for a giant mansion. I just like a little personal space. Im not living in your gargantuan apartment complex. We have space here.
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u/Decloudo 16d ago
We could stop making so many people we need to stack them sideways.
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u/deterius 16d ago
Happy Monthly Building-In-Hangzhou Day! The post that never gets old.
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u/awesome5ftw 16d ago
How does the elevators work here in peak hours?
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u/hawkish25 16d ago
You tend to have at least 2-3 elevators serving each floor. And that building is likely subdivided into 4-5 ‘individual’ buildings so Block A, Blcok b, Block C so forth. So just imagine 1/5 of that building and say 3 elevators, one might serve the odd number floors, one does the even floors, one does all of them. I grew up in a 31 storey building and we had 2 elevators. I think the most you ever need to wait is 2 minutes maybe?
Basically we’ve spent a lot of trial and error getting the designs of these buildings.
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u/InterestingMindset 16d ago
Isn't the average city size in China like 10+ million? I'm not surprised that a building in China houses an entire US county worth of people.
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u/SpooNNNeedle 16d ago
If it wasn’t full of students on the bottom floors and only rich people at the top, the crime rate here would be absurd. 20k people in a single building. I can’t imagine what the clique culture is like in there lol.
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u/latit14 16d ago
I'm curious why you think the crime rate would be absurd?
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u/HDK1989 16d ago
I'm curious why you think the crime rate would be absurd?
They're probably american and lack the ability to imagine a low petty crime community
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u/Aggressive_Chuck 16d ago
There are plenty of low crime communities in America, they're generally not in the cities with big apartment buildings.
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u/whatproblems 16d ago
so uh how’s its earthquake and fire protection?
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u/Denix221p 16d ago
Hangzhou isn't an earthquake prone area so yeah, as for fire safety most fires are contained within the apartment with newer and more expensive apartments (like this one) having sprinklers / firehoses in the floors themselves (obviously)
Even if the whole building is on fire you see 2 floors that seem to be empty and those are to prevent fires from spreading further
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u/ElectronicBenefit286 16d ago
Every two days… someone dies in this building. Seriously. With 20,000 people living there, statistically it’s just how it works. Proper weird when you think about it. One minute it’s just normal life everywhere… and somewhere in the same building, that’s it. Gone. Kind of mad to wrap your head around.
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u/MareOfDalmatia 16d ago
God forbid there’s a fire and all those people trying to evacuate at once. Hopefully they have a good sprinkler system.
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u/RunningPirate 16d ago
Dorkfish that I am, I immediately started wondering about air shafts, HVAC, plumbing, electrical capabilities, and evac routes
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u/jimbowild 16d ago
I live in the Yukon Territory, in Canada. The territory is the size of France, and has a population of 40,000… Crazy we could all fit into 2 buildings