Looking for a tourist's smartwatch... Controversy over a sanitation worker who trailed 8 tons of garbage in the heat
Jul 21, 2025
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The garbage pile dug up by two sanitation workers on this day amounted to 8 tons.
According to the Hong Kong media South China Morning Post, Lu, a woman living in Shenzhen, China, recently traveled to Datong, Shaanxi Province with her children.
Lu, who was traveling by train, accidentally put his child's smartwatch in a garbage bag near the seat of the car and got off.
The location tracking function found the whereabouts of the smartwatch, and it was found to be near Datong Station.
After that, Mr. Lu inquired about the matter to the civil service call center in Datong City, and the cleaning service contacted her.
However, the smartwatch had already been moved to a huge container along with eight tons of garbage and moved to an intermediate treatment plant.
The service provider moved the garbage outdoors and began sorting it, and two cleaning staff began searching the garbage pile with their bare hands and looking for watches.
At that time, the temperature was hot, over 30 degrees, but after more than four hours of work, I finally found a smartwatch.
Mr. Lu offered a reward, but the employees reportedly refused it politely.
The case was later promoted by Datong City authorities as an example of tourist kindness, but criticism continued online that "It wasted public resources and overworked workers for one small object.".
The head of Datong City said "If there is a public demand, we must respond. This is what we have to do." Most netizens expressed negative views.
In a recent editorial, a media outlet in Guangdong Province, China, pointed out that "the request may be reasonable if it is an essential and expensive item such as a laptop or artificial wow, but it is inappropriate to put too much effort into a watch that costs only hundreds of yuan.'
The authorities remain silent about whether cleaning workers who did the hard work received additional compensation, and in the end, they glorify the waste of public services and the exploitation of workers.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
