Promptly at noon on March 17, a heavy truck hauling a dark substance and on a dark mission pulled out of the Gaobeidian Wastewater Treatment Plant in eastern Beijing.
A wastewater treatment engineer helped a Caixin reporter identify the unusual load, which jiggled in the truck’s bed like gelatin as the driver headed down a bumpy road.
The substance was unprocessed sludge—a mucky, smelly and hazardous byproduct of the sewage treatment process. Anything less disgusting coming out of the Gaobeidian plant, the engineer said, would not have jiggled.