Since Wang got into the business in 2010, the price of dried cockroaches
has increased tenfold, from about $2 a pound to as much as $20, as
manufacturers of traditional medicine stockpile pulverized cockroach powder.
"I thought about raising pigs, but with traditional farming, the
profit margins are very low," Wang said. "With cockroaches, you can
invest 20 yuan and get back 150 yuan," or $3.25 for a return of $11.
China has about 100 cockroach farms, and new ones are opening almost as
fast as the prolific critters breed. But even among Chinese, the industry was
little known until August, when a million cockroaches got out of a farm in
neighbouring Jiangsu province. The Great Escape made headlines around China and
beyond, evoking biblical images of swarming locusts.
"People laughed at me
when I started, but I always thought that cockroaches would bring me
wealth," said Zou Hui, 40, who quit her job at a knitting factory in 2008
after seeing a television program about raising cockroaches.
It's not exactly a fortune,
but the $10,000 she brings in annually selling cockroaches is decent money for
her hometown in rural Sichuan province, and won her an award last year from
local government as an "Expert in Getting Wealthy."
"Now I'm teaching four
other families," Zou said. "They want to get rich like me."
At least five
pharmaceutical companies are using cockroaches for traditional Chinese
medicine. Research is underway in China (and South Korea) on the use of
pulverized cockroaches for treating baldness, AIDS and cancer and as a vitamin
supplement. South Korea's Jeonnam Province Agricultural Research Institute and
China's Dali University College of Pharmacy have published papers on the
anti-carcinogenic properties of the cockroach.
Li Shunan, a 78-year-old
professor of traditional medicine from the south-western province of Yunnan who
is considered the godfather of cockroach research, said he discovered in the
1960s that ethnic minorities near the Vietnamese border were using a cockroach
paste to treat bone tuberculosis.
"Cockroaches are
survivors," Li said. "We want to know what makes them so strong — why
they can even resist nuclear effects."
In Jinan, Wang Fuming and
his wife, who run the farm together, seem genuinely fond of their cockroaches
and a little hurt that others don't feel affection.
"What is disgusting
about them?" Li Wanrong, Wang's wife, asked as a roach scurried around her
black leather pumps. "Look how beautiful they are. So shiny!"
Over lunch at a restaurant
down the block from his farm, Wang placed a plate of fried cockroaches seasoned
with salt on the table along with more conventional cuisine, and proceeded to
nibble a few with his chopsticks. He expressed disapproval that visiting
journalists refused to sample the roaches.
On saying goodbye at the
end of the day, he added a final rejoinder.
"You will regret your
whole life not trying them."
Wonders will never end
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