The ancient world is full of grand tales about emperors, silk roads, and monumental architecture, but hidden beneath the silk and jade are some truly revolting customs. In this roundup we dive into the 10 truly disgusting habits that ordinary people in ancient China actually lived by, from bizarre culinary experiments to unsettling medical tricks.
10 Truly Disgusting Facts Uncovered
Ready to have your stomach turn and your eyebrows raise? Let’s count down the most stomach‑churning, nose‑wrinkling practices that made daily life in ancient China a lesson in endurance.
10 They Ate Eggs Soaked In A Little Boy’s Urine
Ancient Chinese medicine was ahead of its time in many ways, yet some of its early remedies would make modern diners gag. One such dish was tongzi dan, literally “boy‑urine eggs,” where dozens of eggs were boiled in a pot brimming with the fresh urine of pre‑pubescent boys. The ideal urine came from lads no older than ten, believed to be the most potent.
This odd preparation became a cultural staple in Dongyang, even earning official recognition as intangible cultural heritage. Legend says the practice began during a famine when people needed a cheap way to preserve eggs; elsewhere, tea was used, but Dongyang’s residents opted for the more pungent method.
Today, the dish is still touted as a medicinal food. Vendors in Dongyang even set up collection buckets at primary schools to harvest children’s urine, and some doctors still prescribe the concoction for its supposed health‑boosting properties.
Whether the claims hold any truth, most of us would rather stick to a hard‑boiled egg than risk a sip of boy‑scented broth.
9 Foreplay Started With A Woman’s Mutilated Feet
Foot‑binding was a painful fashion statement that turned a woman’s feet into a tiny, crushed mound of flesh known as a “lotus foot.” The goal was to keep the foot under four inches long, a process so severe that it left the foot permanently deformed. At its height, nearly every upper‑class woman—and half of lower‑class women—had bound feet.
For ancient Chinese men, these misshapen feet were the ultimate aphrodisiac. Sexual manuals from the Qing Dynasty even listed 48 distinct techniques for caressing a bound foot during foreplay, turning the practice into a deliberate erotic ritual.
Foot‑binding was so ingrained that early erotic literature would showcase every part of a woman’s body—except her feet. Women would tease with their bindings, hinting at a reveal that never came, because a bare lotus foot was considered too scandalous even for print.
Disturbingly, some modern reports suggest the tradition is experiencing a nostalgic resurgence in isolated regions.
8 The Everyday Battle Against Your Own Stench
In ancient China, foul odor was seen as a sign of barbarism, so the elite spared no expense to stay fragrant. Women carried scented sachets at their waists, and anyone who stood before the emperor was required to chew cloves to mask bad breath. The cost of personal hygiene was so high that it earned the nickname “subsidy for clothing and hair washing.”
The common folk, lacking such luxuries, turned to desperate measures. One physician advised that everyone should scrub their armpits with urine at least once a year, believing the ammonia would neutralize odor.
In the colder northern regions, many avoided bathing altogether during winter, fearing that exposure to water would cause illness. Taoist monks took this to an extreme, shunning regular washing altogether, convinced that water spread disease, while neighboring cultures like Korea bathed twice daily.
7 . . . And In Medicinal Uses Of Human Feces
Chinese innovators didn’t stop at urine‑based remedies. By the fourth century BC they were already experimenting with stool transplants—centuries before the West caught on. Their version, a concoction called “yellow soup,” mixed water with fermented human feces from a healthy donor.
Patients suffering from severe diarrhea were given the broth and instructed to drink every last drop. The idea was that beneficial bacteria from the donor stool would outcompete the harmful microbes causing the ailment.
Modern medicine now uses a similar principle to treat C. diff infections, but back then the notion of sipping liquid poop was enough to make many patients consider simply enduring the sickness instead.
6 People Ate Their Own Lice
When a whole nation shuns regular bathing, infestations become inevitable. Ancient China was no exception—lice were everywhere, and physicians even used their presence as a diagnostic tool. A heavy infestation signaled a patient’s likelihood of survival, while a rapid exodus of lice foretold death.
For the impoverished, lice became an accidental snack. Many would pluck the parasites from their hair and swallow them out of sheer habit. The practice became so common that physicians wrote remedies for those who over‑indulged, prescribing ash‑laden broth brewed from old combs to “balance” the belly.
Imagine the scene: a desperate peasant, after a hard day’s work, sitting down to a bowl of boiled lice and ash, hoping it would stave off hunger.
5 Men Eagerly Castrated Themselves
Poverty in ancient China could be brutal, and for many the only ticket to a better life was to become a eunuch. Some peasants would even slice off their own genitals in the hopes of securing a coveted palace position.
While many families castrated newborn sons, there were also countless adult volunteers who performed the gruesome operation on themselves. The Ming Dynasty saw the height of this phenomenon, with roughly 100,000 eunuchs serving the imperial court.
The demand grew so intense that the government instituted a formal application system: for 200 copper coins, a hopeful could place his name on a list; only 250 would be chosen to serve the emperor, leaving thousands to wander the streets, castrated and jobless.
4 They Pooped Into A Pigpen
Ancient Chinese farmers were masters of resourcefulness, even when it came to waste. Some rural households built outhouses directly over pig pens, allowing excrement to drop straight into the pigs’ troughs—turning a farmer’s bathroom into an accidental feast for the livestock.
By the tenth century, public latrines had become common, and a whole cottage industry sprang up around “nightsoil” collection. Rural laborers would travel to cities, scoop up the used toilet water, and haul it back to the countryside as cheap, nitrogen‑rich fertilizer.
The trade was lucrative enough to spawn a proverb: “Treasure nightsoil as if it were gold,” underscoring how valuable human waste had become in the agrarian economy.
3 They Were Pioneers In Medicinal Uses Of Human Urine
Chinese physicians made groundbreaking strides in what we now call endocrinology, a field that wouldn’t emerge in the West until the twentieth century. Their secret? Human urine.
Practitioners would gather a massive cauldron of roughly 150 gallons of male urine, boil it down, and harvest the crystallized residue they dubbed “autumn mineral.” In essence, they were extracting concentrated urine crystals.
Since injections weren’t an option, patients swallowed the pills made from these crystals—typically five to seven pills taken with warm wine or soup before breakfast. Remarkably, the treatment was considered effective, showcasing how ancient Chinese doctors turned bodily waste into a therapeutic gold mine.
2 Children Ate Smallpox Scabs
China pioneered the first small‑pox inoculation centuries before the West caught on. By 1548, medical manuals described a method that involved using the scabs from infected patients to immunize the healthy.
Eager parents, desperate for protection, would crush the dried scabs into a powder and feed them directly to their children, hoping the exposure would spark immunity. Some practitioners took it a step further, pulverizing the scabs and blowing the dust up the patients’ nostrils.
While the technique carried a roughly two‑percent mortality risk, it was still a better gamble than facing an uncontrolled epidemic, leading many families across China to adopt the practice.
1 They Disgusted The World By Inventing Toilet Paper
Around the year 600, Chinese innovators introduced the world’s first toilet paper. While today it feels mundane, the invention was once considered the height of revulsion.
Records from 1393 reveal that the imperial court ordered a staggering 720,000 sheets in a single year. The used remnants were piled so high that locals nicknamed the mound “Elephant Mountain.”
Early references suggest the paper was initially prized for its literary content—one scholar noted he dared not use a sheet covered in quotations from the Five Classics for wiping. An Arabic traveler, witnessing the practice, wrote in disgust that the Chinese “are not careful about cleanliness… they only wipe themselves with paper.”
Thus, while we now take toilet paper for granted, its invention once earned the label of the most disgusting habit on this list.