He had spent two weeks traveling through the mountains of Yunnan, his suitcase full of memories and his mind in vacation mode. All he wanted was to get home. His apartment is on the eighteenth floor of a skyscraper in Chongqing. He opened the door, walked into the living room, and looked up: in one corner of the ceiling hung a rough, gray mass the size of a basketball. It was a nest of giant Asian hornets (Vespa mandarinia), and the buzzing sounded like a miniature diesel engine.
All it took was a crack left open on the balcony. These insects, notorious as “murder hornets” for their potent venom and monstrous size, took advantage of the owner’s absence to settle in comfortably. He backed away, quietly closed the door, and urgently called the local fire department.
In the end, the vacation didn’t end peacefully. It ended like a scene straight out of a horror movie, with a tenant he had never invited.