Among all of the shops on Nanluoguxiang, NLGX was chosen by the local Jiaodaokou government bureau to be the first test case of a centralized fire safety system, which includes water sprinklers and a smoke detector! The piping and equipment was installed over the weekend and yesterday was the ceremonial “first sprinkling”, attended by local government officials, army officials, police, media, and of course, us!
It was a raucous morning over at NLGX yesterday, which included turning on the newly installed sprinklers for 30 seconds, a hutong fire brigade of 3 electric-powered tricycles, and no less than 8 hutong firemen strapped in full fire fighting gear. It was a glorious scene to behold, and we have it all recorded on picture and video form!
Check out some of the pictures below! We’ll upload the video as well for your view pleasure! Also, if you see any trace of this fire system test and our shop in other media outlets, please let us know and leave us a message in the comments! Thanks!
Looks like quite a spectacle…I can imagine those firemen zooming down the streets of the hutong, 1 driver, 2 on the side and one on the back, hand horns blaring!
hand horns – gotta love it – hope we can find a used ‘air raid’ siren powered by a hand crank from pan jia yuan before we leave beijing – would be a nice fixture/conversation piece in our apartments back home. hey, would you like me to ask someone to pick up a san fran cable car bell for the coffee bar? (random question – you don’t have to answer that) best, bt