Woman gets rich raising cockroaches, sun-dried ones sell for 400 yuan per jin

In Siqian Town, Xinhui District, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, pharmacy employee Yuan Meixia has become famous for raising 100,000 "Xiaoqiang" cockroaches. The "Xiaoqiang" that Yuan Meixia raises is scientifically called "Periplaneta americana" (American cockroach) and has certain medicinal value. After the cockroaches grow up, Yuan Meixia puts these adults into a stainless steel bucket, drowns them in clean water, then sun-dries them, packs them into plastic bags, and sells them to a pharmaceutical factory in Anhui. One jin of the sun-dried ones can sell for three to four hundred yuan.

In the movie "Flirting Scholar", a brilliant performance by Stephen Chow made audiences remember that cockroach named "Xiaoqiang". In Siqian Town, Xinhui District, because she raised 100,000 "Xiaoqiang", pharmacy employee Yuan Meixia became a local celebrity, drawing many villagers to marvel. "These are all my children, my treasures." Yesterday, Yuan Meixia led a Southern Metropolis Daily reporter to explore her "Xiaoqiang base".

"Xiaoqiang" needs to drink glucose, mesh screen used as the door

Yuan Meixia is from Linbian Village, Yuanbian Village Committee, Siqian Town. Although she bought an apartment in town, she has an old house in Linbian Village that had been idle for many years, and this is her "Xiaoqiang base". Walking into the living room, there is a bag of glucose on the table. "This is for the larvae to eat. Just like children, they need nutritional supplements." Yuan Meixia said with a smile.

The room behind the living room uses mesh screen as its door, with a zipper in the middle that allows people to pass in and out and prevents the cockroaches from escaping. Yuan Meixia said, "The cockroaches you usually see are called German cockroaches (Blattella germanica), while the cockroaches here are called American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana). They like to eat starch and sweets." Entering the "base", the Southern Metropolis Daily reporter saw that on the three-tier shelves on both sides were placed several slices of Hami melon, as well as apples and rice bran. Seeing someone come in, the densely packed "Xiaoqiang" scattered in all directions and burrowed between the wooden boards to hide.

The gaps in the ceiling and walls of the base were all sealed shut with cement. In hot weather, Yuan Meixia sprinkles water on the walls to cool them down. "If the weather is too cold, I burn a stove to heat them." "They are most active at night, foraging and mating." Every day at 18:00, Yuan Meixia comes to feed the cockroaches once. Larvae and adults are kept separate, living respectively in egg cartons and between wooden boards.

"When they are full, they mate. One time takes 2 hours, and they can lay several eggs. One egg can hatch more than 10 larvae." Yuan Meixia picked up an egg that looked very much like a red bean and said that after mating is completed, the male and female cockroaches reach the end of their lives. Each ootheca of the American cockroach contains 14-16 eggs. In the warm south, it takes only one month to hatch in spring.

Raising cockroaches as a side business, selling to pharmaceutical factories outside the province

Yuan Meixia is 37 years old this year and is an employee of a pharmacy in Siqian Town. Why does she raise cockroaches? The story has to start from last year. "I saw on a science and education channel program that someone in Anhui raises this kind of cockroach, saying they can be eaten and used as medicine. So I took tens of thousands of yuan to learn for a week, spent more than 10,000 yuan to buy 20 kilograms of seedlings and brought them back to raise. Now there are almost 100,000 here. They are all my children, my treasures." Yuan Meixia treats raising cockroaches as a side business.

After the cockroaches grow up, Yuan Meixia puts these adults into a stainless steel bucket, drowns them in clean water, then sun-dries them, packs them into plastic bags, and sells them to a pharmaceutical factory in Anhui. "Sun-dried American cockroaches have anti-cancer medicinal effects." Yuan Meixia said that one jin of the sun-dried ones can sell for three to four hundred yuan. They can be harvested once every two months, and 10 to 20 kilograms can be sun-dried.

Included in folk remedies, has certain medicinal value

"The American cockroach has not been included in traditional Chinese medicine, but it has entered folk remedies and has certain medicinal effects." said a traditional Chinese medicine physician at Wuyi Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Not long ago, researchers from the Department of Gastroenterology at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University published a paper stating that "Periplaneta americana and its different extracts have a protective effect on liver function in mice with acute immune liver injury induced by concanavalin A (Con A)".

The Southern Metropolis Daily reporter found that quite a few people in Shandong, Anhui and other places in China raise American cockroaches, but very few raise them locally. "The American cockroach has certain medicinal value, and artificial breeding technology is relatively mature, but at present very few people locally raise them. If raising them, attention must be paid to protective measures, preventing the spread of pathogens and preventing them from escaping and causing ecological damage." said Ke Chuangyao, director of the Jianghai District Animal Health Inspection Institute.

Interesting stories about breeding

One Hami melon must be fed every day、

3 jin of apples, 3 jin of rice bran

"Raising chickens, ducks or pigs would all be fine, so why raise cockroaches?" At first, the villagers were very curious. "Raising chickens and ducks can lead to illness, but they have strong vitality, so there is basically no need to worry about disease." Yuan Meixia discovered interesting things while raising American cockroaches. "Every day I have to clean up the feces and also collect the eggs. If they are not collected in time, they will be eaten by the cockroaches themselves. They eat one Hami melon, 3 jin of apples and 3 jin of rice bran a day. In addition, the American cockroach can reproduce asexually. When there are no males, females can produce unfertilized oothecae, and some hatch female larvae." Yuan Meixia also discovered this interesting phenomenon: "From January to May, there are more females; from June to October, there are more males."