Tofu Building: A 5 story residential building in Anhui collapsed, leaving one side in ruins

Tofu building. A five-story residential building in Anhui collapsed, leaving one side in ruins. China's ghost towns are widespread, impacting the European luxury market. Scary. The smart lock of an Anhui woman's home opened automatically at 3 a.m. Netizens, my home is the same. On May 27th, an entire unit of a building in a community in Tongling, Anhui, collapsed, killing at least four people. Residents revealed that a family of three, including their aunt, lost contact during the accident and had not been found after five hours of searching. People left comments questioning whether the building was a tofu dregs construction. On the 27th, the Anhui-Tongling Suburban Emergency Management Bureau reported that at about 1.40 p.m. that day, one side of building 48 in Longyuan community collapsed. CCTV stated that on-site personnel reported about five people missing at the time. Videos circulated online showed that the building was a five-story residential structure, with one side collapsed into ruins, leaving only part of it intact. According to the latest official news from Tongling City, as of 1.28 a.m. on the 28th, all five people had been found. Four were confirmed dead and one, a 12-year-old girl, was still being rescued. Jimu News reported that residents of Longyuan community said a cordon had been set up at the scene and outsiders were not allowed to approach. The building is five stories tall and has two units, with two households per floor. Nearly an entire unit collapsed. Another resident mentioned that the houses in the community were built only 10 years ago, and the collapsed building had been in normal use. Tofu Dregs Projects Shoddy construction refers to cutting corners and using inferior materials in construction projects, which can cause buildings to collapse or fail to meet regulations. This term was first coined by Zhu Rongji, the former premier of the People's Republic of China. In the summer of 1998, a devastating flood hit China. When Zhu Rongji inspected the city of Zhejiang, where an embankment had burst, he questioned the flood control wall at the breach and angrily dismissed it as a roofless project. Later, it was revealed that many construction projects across mainland China were substandard or prone to accidents due to corruption. The term shoddy projects often appeared in major media, with tofu dregs used as a metaphor for weak, easy-to-collapse structures. The causes of these projects include deliberate cost-cutting and the involvement of unqualified architects and engineers who do not understand quality control or mechanics. The consequences often include accountability or the removal of those responsible. YouVideo, under Dahi Daily, reported that residents of Building 54 in the community stated that the houses in Longyuan Community are commercial residences built decades ago and part of an old community without property management. Chao News reported that Li Min, pseudonym, a resident of Longyuan Community, said his relatives living in the same community lost contact in the accident. The collapsed side is my aunt's house, he said. Their family of three has not been found after five hours of search and rescue. Public records show that Longyuan Community was once a demonstration point for the local government's Rural Human Settlement Improvement Initiative. From 2017 to 2022, the community was included in the old community renovation project in batches. Netizens left comments saying, tofu dregs. What kind of quality is this? There will be more building collapses in the future. It must be a prefabricated building. The panels were misplaced, causing the collapse. It's likely due to house renovations and wall demolitions. The old residential area in Team 812 Village, Tongling City really needs to be demolished. They are all old prefabricated houses. These houses are everywhere. No one cares unless they collapse. It looks like there was nothing substantial in terms of steel bars. Others added, do you know why banks only allow loans for 30 years? Because the lifespan of the house has already been calculated by the capitalists. How can they suffer a loss? The house won't even last until the mortgage is paid off. There are now too many old buildings across the country, and most are more than 50 years old. It doesn't even take 50 years. These buildings become hazardous within 30 years. After such a building collapses, how will it be rebuilt? And how will property rights be calculated afterward? One collapses today, another tomorrow. It costs so much money, and I've spent almost my entire life savings to buy a house. China's ghost towns are widespread, impacting the European luxury market. China's vacant ghost towns and unfinished buildings are not only a major issue for the government, but also a concern for European luxury executives. The ongoing decline in housing prices has affected Chinese consumers' purchasing power for luxury goods. The Wall Street Journal reported that around 60 percent of China's household net wealth is tied to real estate. Barclays Economist wrote in a research report on September 12th that, as housing prices fell, Chinese households experienced significant wealth losses, estimated at up to $18 trillion, equivalent to about a $60,000 reduction in wealth per household. Consumption downgrades followed. Data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics showed that national total retail sales of consumer goods in August increased by only 2.1 percent year on year. The low sentiment among Chinese consumers has hit luxury industry in Paris and Milan, with around one-third of global luxury consumption coming from Chinese buyers. The world's largest luxury company, LVMH, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, announced in July that its revenue for the first half of the year was below market expectations. Gucci's parent company, Caring Group, also saw warning signs in its financial report. The company expects revenue to decline by about 30 percent in the second half of the year, following a 42 percent drop in the first half. So far this year, Chinese consumers' luxury spending is down 17 percent compared to the same period in 2023, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group. European luxury brands and their investors had hoped that China's post-pandemic economic recovery would mitigate the impact of slowing consumption in Europe and the United States, but this now seems unlikely. So far, measures introduced by the Chinese government have not been enough to curb the decline in housing prices. Bloomberg Economics estimates that China's real estate market is oversupplied by about 60 million units. UBS estimates that Chinese consumers' share of global luxury sales will shrink by 7 percent in 2024, with an additional 3 percent decrease next year. The last time the luxury industry faced such difficulties in China was during the government's intense anti-corruption campaign from 2014 to 2016, when some officials bribed with luxury bags and watches in exchange for political favors. During those two years, global luxury industry profits barely grew. Next week, global luxury brands will release their third-quarter results, and the latest earnings reports are expected to show that Chinese demand has slowed since the last quarter. Bain, a leading global strategic consulting firm, predicts that China's luxury market is struggling and shrinking overall, with no short-term improvement expected. Scary. The smart lock of an Anhui woman's home opened automatically at 3 a.m. Netizens. My home is the same. An Anhui woman posted a video saying that the smart lock on her front door inexplicably opened at 3 a.m. while the whole family was asleep, which frightened her. Many netizens responded that their families had experienced similar situations. Not only that, some reported that their smart speakers played songs in the middle of the night, and their smart toilets flushed automatically at odd hours. On October 7, a woman from Bengbu, Anhui, shared a video on social media, stating that she found her door open after getting up in the morning. Initially, she thought her child had opened the door and forgotten to close it. However, after reviewing surveillance footage, she discovered that the locked door had opened automatically at 3.39 a.m., followed by the voice-activated lights in the hallway turning on. The woman confirmed that her front door was equipped with a smart lock, and that she had made sure to lock it before going to bed. She had no explanation for why it opened automatically in the middle of the night. After this video circulated on social media platforms in mainland China, many netizens commented that they had also experienced problems with their smart locks. One person said, My home also had a smart lock installed before. It was controlled by a mobile app, and sometimes the door would inexplicably open in the middle of the night, or even during the day. It started happening once a day and then several times a day. It was terrifying. Crying emoji. A netizen from Jiangsu shared, We had the same problem. I told my husband, but he didn't believe me until we got a doorbell camera. One day, the door opened by itself and the dog ran out. After seeing the footage, he finally believed me. The fingerprint password lock was installed by the developer when we bought the house. A Beijing netizen added, My door has opened by itself twice. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and the door was wide open. Previously, mainland media reported a similar case where Mr. Chen from Hefei, Anhui, got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and found his front door wide open. Initially, he thought a thief had entered. After checking the footage, he discovered that the smart lock had opened the door automatically, leaving him feeling frightened. It's not just smart locks causing issues. Many netizens also reported that their smart speakers played songs or made strange noises at night, and some said they're smart toilets flushed by themselves. One Hubei netizen commented, My Xiaowai speaker started singing in the middle of the night, crying emoji. Or it would suddenly say something, so now I unplug it every night. A Yunnan netizen said, I'm really scared of smart devices. At around 4 a.m., my smart toilet flushed by itself. I was so scared, scared, scared.