Fan vests offer summer relief to Nanjing's outdoor sanitation workers

Outdoor sanitation workers in Xuanwu District of Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, are staying cool on the job this summer thanks to newly issued fan vests that blow a steady breeze during the city's sweltering heat.

With temperatures hitting 35 degrees Celsius, workers said the fan-equipped outfits have made a world of difference.

"It feels very cool when you put on the vest and switch on the little fan. The wind makes it a lot cooler. Without it, I would have needed to carry a towel to wipe away sweat. Now I'm not bothered about it," said Ma Jilan, a street cleaner.

"The vest uses a three-piece fan set, including two small electric fans and a rechargeable battery pack with three speed settings, low, medium, and high. Once you put it on, the vest can cool you down despite the scorching weather. The air flows straight up, and your body feels cool," her colleague Xiang Liuchun said.

The idea came from a local sanitation company that began researching cooling solutions in June. After consulting frontline workers and testing different designs, the management chose the fan-circulating vest model, and dispatched the first batch of over 20 units to local workers in mid-July. After trials, the company has now equipped its entire workforce.

The Nanjing Urban Management Bureau later promoted the vests, attracting interest from sanitation departments and companies across China.

The cooling vests are just one part of a broader package of measures the city has rolled out to protect sanitation crews during extreme heat.

"We issue an annual notice on high-temperature operations, which allows companies to flexibly adjust shifts and keep workers out of the hottest hours. At the same time, machines are used to replace human labor. We increase the frequency of mechanized street sweeping and other services during peak heat periods, so when machines keep running, workers get a break," said Gao Dapeng, deputy director of the bureau's environmental sanitation management division.

Fan vests offer summer relief to Nanjing's outdoor sanitation workers

A space network consisting of 1,000 satellites is expected to be completed in 2032 by China.

This is one of the key steps in the "Three-Body Computing Constellation" project launched by Zhejiang Lab, aiming to send AI into space to achieve in-orbit data processing.

In the space computing domain, Zhejiang Lab, a research institution based in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, and focused on frontier technology, represents a formidable force.

Wang Jian, director of Zhejiang Lab, explained in an interview with China Media Group (CMG) why the target was set at 1,000 satellites.

"First, you need to ensure sufficient computing power. Second, interconnectivity is crucial. Without a certain density among satellites, fault tolerance will be very poor. It's similar to cloud computing. If you have 10,000 machines, it wouldn't matter if two or three break down," said Wang.

According to Wang, the 1,000 satellites could form a tight network, which will significantly improve the using effect.

"The logic is simple: satellites are usable in principle, but they can't be used when they're not overhead when you need them. So what does a constellation of 1,000 satellites mean? It means that if the orbits are well designed, we can guarantee that anywhere on Earth, there will always be a satellite overhead within three minutes -- thus solving the problem of timeliness," Wang explained.

China to launch 1,000 satellites by 2032 for space network