Evolution of waste treatment in China
A feces collector in Beijing in the late Qing and early Republican periods Photo: BEN
Waste management has been a global concern throughout history. Even in ancient times when economies were underdeveloped, people were concerned with similar issues.
A city polluted by trash
The Han Feizi, an ancient Chinese text attributed to the political philosopher, Han Fei (280–233 BCE), records that during the Shang Dynasty (16th–11th century BCE), people throwing garbage in public would be sentenced to hand cutting under criminal law at the time. Although such punishment has been criticized as too harsh, it reflects how seriously waste management has been taken ever since ancient times. During the Warring States Period (475–221 BCE), when Shang Yang (395–338 BCE) conducted reforms in the state of Qin, he adopted the law of the Shang to deal with waste problems.
The Tang government also made strict regulations in relation to waste management. According to the Tang Lü Shu Yi (Comments on the Tang Code), those found spitting, urinating or throwing garbage in public would receive 60 strokes of the cane, and employees of the authorities would also receive the same punishment if they failed to prevent these wrong doings.
Historical documents have proved the necessity of strict trash management. According to the records of Chang’an during the Sui and Tang dynasties, failures of waste management could have caused serious problems.
In the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220), palaces and large building complexes were equipped with underground sewage systems that drained liquid waste from the palaces into the city. The waste was then transported to outside the city, finally being discharged into the Wei River. Unfortunately, the common people didn’t enjoy the same sanitary facilities. The streets in Chang’an became choked with filth and garbage. In order to address these problems, Emperor Ling of Han (c. 157–189) ordered one of his officials, Bi Lan, to invent a new type of road sprinkler named fan che ke wu, according to the Hou Han Shu (Book of the Later Han). Fan che ke wu watered the road to prevent dust from drifting around, thus improving the urban environment.
Chang’an gradually grew into a large city in the Sui Dynasty (581–618). During the Kaihuang era, there were hundreds of thousands of people living in Chang’an. Waste became an obvious and visible problem faced by this populous city. It is recorded that because many civilians casually threw trash onto unpaved streets and roadways, where it was left to accumulate, some roads contained trash piles that tended to perch above the surrounding buildings by as much as 10 feet. Moreover, some citizens buried trash under the earth, leaving it to rot and decompose. This trash produced toxic substances, such as nitrates, which dissolved in the local water supplies and permeated deeper into the ground, finally turning the groundwater into salty, undrinkable liquid. In 582, in order to escape from these polluted areas, the Sui spent nine months building a new city named Daxing in the southeast of Chang’an.
Trash to treasure
Although most people in urban areas were beset by an increasing amount of trash, there were still people turning unwanted items into cash, such as Luo Hui and Pei Mingli who lived during the Tang Dynasty.
Chao Ye Qian Zai, a collection of stories of the Tang Dynasty, mentioned that a person named Luo Hui in the early Tang era built his family wealth by collecting the excreta of humans and animals in urban areas and selling them to the farmers out of town. His neighbors scornfully called him the “Night Soil Remover” and called his house the “Henhouse.” One day, an intellectual named Lu Jinwen came to Luo’s house for a visit. Lu was surprised by the luxury of the house and the graceful demeanor of Luo’s family. He asked Luo, “Why do you still engage in such a dirty job when you have become so affluent?” Luo answered, “If I stayed home and enjoyed my life, my fortune would be used up sooner or later.”
Another person who sought fortune among the manipulation of trash was Pei Mingli. According to Tai Ping Guang Ji (Anthology of Tales From Records of the Taiping Era), during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang (598–649), Pei made his first pot of gold by collecting unwanted items at a low price and selling the sorted and restored items to the common people. He then bought a wasteland outside the city of Chang’an. In order to remove the stones and bricks from the land, Pei erected a wooden pole near the land and hung a basket onto it. He called for people to pick up the stones on the wasteland to throw into the basket. People who hit the basket would get rewarded. Soon the wasteland was cleaned and grass began to grow. Pei invited shepherds to let their sheep graze on this land so that the manure from the sheep would provide high quality fertilizer for his land. Gradually, this wasteland became more and more fertile.
Waste recycling
Waste treatment had become more systemized by the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Jiedao Si, official scavengers in charge of urban management, were established under the order of Emperor Taizong of Song (939–997). There were 500 soldiers working as official scavengers. Dressed in black and equipped with whips and sticks, they were responsible for cleaning the streets and traffic control. In some large cities, there were also some non-official waste removers who collected and transported waste out from the cities and sold this on as fertilizer.
The Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) adopted the same system of waste removal implemented during the Song era. Álvaro de Semedo, also known as Zeng Dezhao, a missionary in China during the Ming Dynasty, recorded that a systematic approach to waste management began to develop in urban and rural areas. There were people who specialized in collecting excreta and transporting it out of town for sale. Every piece of garbage, even “a rag in the street” would be picked up quickly by those scavengers.
When it came to the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), health and sanitary conditions were not so great in urban areas. The Qing government attempted to address the problem by adopting the code of the Tang Dynasty, changing the punishment from 60 into 40 strokes of flogging for dumping waste. This situation didn’t work out as well as the government had hoped and as a result, the streets were found to be overflowing with garbage as usual.
In 1906, a Japanese man named Sohou Tokutomi (1863–1957) undertook a 78-day trip in China. In his journal, he mentioned that people in Hangzhou turned the streets into landfills and they even didn’t care about the mountains of garbage in front of their houses. In order to prevent people from dumping feces in public, the government of Hangzhou built some open-air toilets in the city. The disgusting smell that came from those toilets travelled all through the town, particularly in hot weather. “Feces traders” made money from the toilets by selling the feces to farmers, but they didn’t care about the problems of pollution and jeopardizing public health. Additionally, using the toilets became troublesome because every morning, people that needed the toilets joined queues that were as long as the lines for tickets in a busy train station. Although there were official organizations in Hangzhou responsible for municipal sanitation, it seemed that they didn’t put a lot of effort into their jobs.
Under these circumstances, the chambers of commerce in Hangzhou and Suzhou initiated movements to deal with the municipal sanitary issues. Under the instruction of the chamber of commerce, some communities established autonomous organizations to raise capital for street cleaning. Finally, the sanitary conditions in the two cities were improved through the joint efforts of the autonomous organizations and the public.
In the late Qing Dynasty, sanitary conditions in Beijing were also improved. One obvious change was that a large number of toilets emerged around the city, and the government strengthened control over public urination. Workers were employed to recycle human feces. They rang a bell to attract the attention of households.
The article was edited and translated from Beijing Evening News. Lai Chen is an associate professor from Fuzhou University.
edited by REN GUANHONG