China: 770 pounds of eggs spilled from truck cause mad scramble (video)

From Beijing Cream blog:

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.

More. (Thanks, Anthony Tao)

• [voiceinthedistance]

  They were only separated with the help of thousands of empty plastic water bottles.

• [NoahScalin]

  Eggs…term…in…ate….

  • [Lemoutan]

    Too soon, man, too soon.

• [retepslluerb]

  Hmm.. 6000 eggs would be 600 cases of eggs. A case of 10 eggs (free range) costs about € 2,4 over here, so it would be a substantial sum. 

  • [Jonathan Roberts]

    I’m guessing not free range ;-) They sell eggs by weight where I live, it works out about 8-10 US cents per egg. That’s about 3000 RMB altogether, which would probably be significantly more than the driver earns in a month.

    • [retepslluerb]

      Oh sure, factory eggs would have been cheaper over here too (though forbidden since 2009), in bulk even more so. 

      Just wanted to point out that 6,000 eggs can be a substantial sum even in “first world” countries.

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  Those look like really big eggs.  From ducks, maybe?

• [Jason Baker]

  If this were a legitimate egg wagon, the eggs wouldn’t have dropped. I think the guy just didn’t like the traffic on the street and wanted to shut the whole thing down.

  • [Itsumishi]

    You evidently haven’t spent much time in Asia. People cart around huge loads on whatever they can.

    • [ocker3]

      OP is not serious, it’s a sly Akin joke

• [morkl]

  The guy in the end: making an epic pancake?

• [bo1n6bo1n6]

  Did the cops add flour? 

• [Matthew]

  You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few… ok I think he’s taking it a bit far.

• [snagglepuss]

  Eeeeeeegggsellent.

  • [B E Pratt]

     That was Vincent Price’s line as Egghead on Batman (TV show).

• [BombBlastLightingWaltz]

  Eggactly! *Homer trying to impersonate Monty Burns*

  “Doh!”

• [Gimlet_eye]

  Because many seem to have broken and not bounced, they were real eggs, and not the fake ones they make from chemicals. More.

• [Brainspore]

  Meanwhile, in America…

• [Ron Zajac]

  No need to get approximate about the jin. A “gong jin” (“public” or metric jin) is exactly 0.6kg, or 600g. I’m pretty sure that the Chinese speaking world hasn’t used the old (pre-metric)  ”jin”, really, since Chinese officialdom realized that the metric system was the bees’ knees, way back when.

  Some time ago, I came over all curious about the size of the old Chinese jin. If the original Chinese jin had approximately been about 500g, officials would have rounded their metric jin accordingly. Therefore I’m pretty sure that, even if the “jin” cited in this article is the old, pre-metric jin, it would still be significantly closer to 600g (0.6kg).Anyway, as the actual jin  is 20% bigger than your “approximation”, this only serves to make the numbers more impressive.

  Dem’s lotsa eggs!

• [datamaskin]

  i like that womans comment… “eggs broken -mad scramble” :)

• [Ivan]

  In comparison to the west, the chinese don’t eat that many eggs. If the chinese used eggs in food to the same extent as in the west, each year it would take the entire grain production of Canada to feed the hens to produce the eggs. Apparently. 

• [Chris Meacock]

  I swear Harry Chapin had a song about this, something like “600 pounds of mashed eggs”

• [Brian Murtagh]

  The same thing happened in Zweibruecken Germany when I was a kid and my dad was posted there. We ate practically nothing but eggs for a solid fortnight.