Shanghai's shared sleep pods ran two weeks — then the city dismantled them

At the height of China's sharing-economy boom in early July 2017, shared sleep pods appeared inside Shanghai office buildings — capsule bunks with charging ports, reading lights, fans and disposable bedding, billed at ¥6 per half hour for workers who wanted to nap between shifts. Locations opened on Hengfeng Road in Pudong and in Jing'an and Xuhui districts.

The experiment lasted about two weeks. Inspectors found the pods running without a fire-safety permit and without the special-industry licence required of lodging businesses, and flagged the dense, enclosed design — slow to evacuate in a fire. On 15–16 July 2017 operations were halted; the Jing'an and Xuhui sites closed voluntarily once the Pudong location was investigated, and dismantling began on 17 July.

The episode became a cautionary tale of the launch-first, licence-later model. Shanghai's public security authorities ruled the pods an unapproved business model, and the operating company's own executives said they had been told by headquarters to stop. A service category was over before most of the city knew it existed.