Watch As People Scoop Up, Loot 770 Pounds Of Spilled Eggs Off The Ground

In Zhengzhou, Henan province on Thursday morning, a man in a motorized three-wheel wagon was a bit eager at a yellow light, according to a witness, and crashed into another vehicle, causing him to lose his cargo of 700 jin of raw eggs. We’re not talking about a restaurant server dropping a stack of plates here — 1 jin equals approximately 500 grams, so what we have is 770 pounds of eggs, if you choose to believe it. That amount could serve an entire block of restaurants for a week, and would cost — for some — a month’s salary. (Assuming an egg weighs 2 ounces — it might if it were large and you rounded up — we’re looking at more than 6,000 eggs.)

While some helped the man collect his spillage, others came with plastic bags for their own benefit.

Now, I’m not one to generalize, and I try to avoid extrapolations in this space whenever possible, but it bears mentioning: if you’re the kind who feels the need to scoop eggs off the street to take home and cook, you deserve your spoils. I truly mean that earnestly. It’s not too hard to imagine that these people here, as the saying goes, have eaten quite a bit of bitterness in their lifetime, so that a mountain of broken eggs actually represents a windfall and something to smile at. This is part and parcel of modern China, of course, probably more revealing and true than most of what you read in Western publications whose bureaus are based in Beijing or Shanghai.

Not everyone rushed in with plastic bags and containers. One woman in the video comments, “Eggs broken, mad scramble for them. I wouldn’t dare do that.”

Another man says, “What a pity, such good things.” And then, smiling goofily, he adds, “I’m going to take a picture.”

Snap away, good man.

(H/T Alicia)

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