Ever been in a hotel so big that it’s made you wonder just how many people could live in it if every single room was full, and if its guests never left?
That’s basically what has happened in the massive Regent International in China’s Qianjiang Century City – it was built to be a hotel, but those plans were abandoned and it’s now simply an enormous block of apartments, with an astonishing 20,000 people living there.
The Regent International is 675ft tall, making it a huge building, with an unusual S-shaped design.
Amazingly, those 20,000 residents haven’t even filled the building completely – its maximum capacity is around 30,000 people, so there’s room for another 10,000 to arrive.
Those are slightly mad numbers, and things become even more dystopian when you learn that the building houses a whole bunch of amenities so that these 20,000 people don’t have to actually ever leave.
There are shops embedded in the building, including a food court, nail salons, swimming pools, barbers, supermarkets and internet cafes.
This means that basically every need you might have should be available within the Regent International, making it a sort of town in a building (with a pretty chunky population compared to many towns, too).
For such a huge building, there aren’t that many ways to glimpse its interior, though – residents don’t seem to have posted much about it.
Instead, we’re reliant on scant social media clips that have emerged, including some pretty amazing exterior footage of the building’s sheer size captured by drone.
One TikTok creator did show a little of the building’s inside as she apparently made her way around it, although you only really get to glimpse the building’s foyer, rather than getting a real sense of the geography of its corridors.
Still, people in the comments under those videos are in awe at the scale of the building – one person wrote: “My town only allows for minimum 1/2 acre plots. My neighbors are still to close even with that. I could never live in that building.”
Another asked an ironic, but quite fair question: “If you work in that restaurant and live in the same building; are you working from home?”
Just think about it – could you happily live in a building of this size? After all, it’s one thing living in a mid-size apartment block, but quite another living in one of the most densely populated buildings you could possibly hope to find. Just think of how many neighbors you’d have!
If you’ve been anywhere on the internet this week, you probably would have seen the absolutely wild building in China that has room for 30,000 residents.
The enormous building has been getting a lot of attention on social media in the last couple of weeks as drone footage showed off its sheer scale, with people getting their heads around the fact there are 20,000 residents in it (with room for 10,000 more).
TikTok user Yasmin – whose handle is @official_yasmin – took the bold step of actually going to the Regent International
As she enters, we get a glimpse of what looks like a really lavish entryway on the ground floor. This makes perfect sense, given the building was initially planned as a six-star hotel before it was turned into residential apartments.
The most interesting segment in the TikTok, though, comes right near the end, when Yasmin says there is a huge restaurant on the building’s 32nd floor. This is apparently open to all residents, although you do need to book into it.
That’s no surprise since it doubtless can’t feed 20,000 people at once – but we’re sure it’s still a massive space.
And the restaurant isn’t the only amenity in the building. If you wanted, you’d never even have to leave the Regent International – as it’s also stocked with supermarkets, nail salons, hairdressers, fitness centers and more.
The comments under Yasmin’s video are full of people trying to digest the size of the building, as you’d imagine, but there are some funny observations.
One comment asked: “If you work in that restaurant and live in the same building; are you working from home?”
And people can’t get over the scale of it all, with another observing: “My whole town fits in there with 10 thousand people to spare and literally rn as many people as my town live there.”
The Regent International is indeed seriously large, but it’s surprisingly affordable if you wanted to join the 20,000 people there right now – you can get a small apartment for as little as $210 (albeit one without windows).