While they are not quite of the flying variety, a high-living army of pigs in China is raising eyebrows at home and abroad. The porkers are part of a vertical farming project involving two 26-storey skyscrapers in Ezhou, in the central province of Hubei. Playing on the mythological character Zhu Bajie, also known as Monk Pig, from the classic Chinese novel , mainland social media has dubbed the skyscrapers Bajie Buildings, referring to the pigs as “the second elder brother living in a high-rise.
” From the outside, the high-rise blocks look no different from normal residential buildings. However, instead of housing people, they are home to an industrial-scale vertical pig farming operation. Jin Lin, general manager of the farm, which was built by Hubei Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Husbandry, told Global Times that each building has a floor area of 390,000 square metres and together they can produce 1.
2 million pigs a year. The operation employs more than 800 people, meaning each member of staff is responsible for approximately 1,500 high-living hogs. Operations began in September 2022 when the first batch of sows was introduced.
The animals were divided into groups and transported to their designated floors using elevators, initiating their life cycle within the skyscrapers. The cycle begins in the gestation area, moves to the farrowing area where the pigs give birth, then progresses to a nursery 23 days after their birth. The whole process concludes in a raising area where the .
