It sounds gross to our prissy Western ears, but it shouldn't. It's a really good use of natural resources -- and it cleans up the local environment!

(Also, this article is fun to read because of the translation. It's not bad... if anything, it's overly ambitious. "Dirty smelly dung" indeed!)
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Energy revolution encourages "poop scooping"
www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-09 11:19:51

NANCHANG, June 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Dirty smelly dung previously littered around rural China has become a scare resource for farmers using marsh gas to cook.

In Zhoutou Village of Taihe County, south China's Jiangxi Province, a silent battle on "poop scooping" was staged almost every morning. Chen Daoyuan, 53, used to be the village's first riser and never fell short of fuel for his methane-generating pits.

Nowadays, he often came home empty-handed as many of his fellow villagers got up earlier and earlier to get the manure of cows, pigs, dogs, rooster, gooses and other livestock.

To beat his rivals, Chen even went out before dawn, searching for manure by flashlight. Other people, not such early risers as him, cultivated a habit of garbage recycling.

From rotten vegetables, crop stocks and poultry excrement to night soil, all that are usable have been used. Some farmers even offered to buy cattle manure from neighboring villages.

As a result, the pilot county for China's rural energy reform has found fewer people littering their domestic waste casually and the local sanitary environment has gradually changed in a better way.

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