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ChinaPeople & Culture

Chinese man who spent five years ‘Breaking Bad’ caught cooking methamphetamine under the stairs

  • Arrest of 48-year-old in Sichuan draws comparison with protagonist of US TV hit
  • Idle leather factory worker learned chemistry to build sophisticated operation

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Police officers collared Lei after watching his home in Luzhou city, Sichuan, and discovering his laboratory under a stair. Photo: The Paper
Martin Choi

A Chinese man was likened to the protagonist of the American TV drama Breaking Bad when he was caught by police after spending five years cooking methamphetamine in a secret laboratory.

The 48-year-old man, identified only by his surname, Lei, mastered “five methods” of making the drug from scratch in Luzhou in Sichuan, according to Chengdu Economic Daily.

Police arrested China’s Walter White at his home, where they found a drug lab beneath the first floor stairway of the building he lived in.

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Officers found a series of notebooks in the concealed lab which, they said, drew a portrait of Lei’s increasing sophistication in cooking meth. Photo: The Paper
Officers found a series of notebooks in the concealed lab which, they said, drew a portrait of Lei’s increasing sophistication in cooking meth. Photo: The Paper

More than 180 grams of finished methamphetamine and tablets, 5,350ml of liquid containing the substance, lab equipment plus raw materials were found in the tiny room.

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“He must have watched too much Breaking Bad,” quipped one Weibo user among the many who made the same connection to the television series that has been wildly popular in China.

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