Excreted and Left Untreated? Human and Animal Waste: from Dunhuang to Laozi

What is it about?

What attitudes did the early Chinese display towards human and animal excreta? To what extent where excreta matter out of place? How did the early Chinese manage waste? This paper examines references to defecation and the management of excreta across a wide range of early Chinese sources, including bamboo hygiene sticks in Han period tombs, latrine culture and the role of the pig, as well as comments on the use of excreta and human night soil in early Chinese agricultural and calendrical texts. We show how defecation was intimately linked to the notion that waste can and should be used to regenerate. We also show how the process of excretion and the space of the latrine were believed to be subject to risk and danger, both moral and biological.

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