Difficulty: Summiteer (Level 3)
In ancient China, there was a very profitable and competitive job called the “dung collector”.
These people collected human waste, called night soil, from residents’ chamber pots.
Because there were no modern toilets, people had to use chamber pots to hold their waste, and they couldn’t just throw it away whenever they wanted.
Waste from each home was collected by special workers called “dung collectors”.
Every day at the same time, these workers went from house to house, picking up waste and taking it to the countryside to sell.
Because China was mostly a farming country, farmers really valued this waste as fertiliser. This meant that people who collected dung could make good money.
Therefore, people would even compete for collection territories.
By the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), competition had become particularly intense, with collectors sometimes even taking territorial disputes to court.
During the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, the system became more organised.
Collected waste was transported to designated “fertiliser yards” outside cities, where it was processed, dried and sold to farmers for profit.
