Young Chinese in big cities give new life to old objects through ‘stooping’

Stooping, the practice of hunting down and digging out discarded goods on city sidewalks, has taken off in big Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Shenzhen, where young people have taken to the new trend.

Luo Ergou looks through discarded goods on a sidewalk. (Beijing Youth Daily/Yuan Yi)

A young man nicknamed Luo Ergou recently rode a second-hand electric bike and prowled through hutongs, or narrow alleyways lined by courtyards in Beijing, in search of valuable goods that had been thrown to the curb.

Born in the 1990s, Luo is a “Beijing drifter”, a term that refers to someone who works in the capital city but does not have permanent residency there. "Old items and second-hand goods are OK for me, and I like to extend the value of these items," he said, noting that he had previously found valuable discarded goods in hutongs.

Luo first learned about stooping in July when he saw a post by a Shanghai-based vlogger nicknamed Boniu on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese lifestyle-oriented social media platform, who opened an account there dedicated to stooping.

Boniu, who studied in the UK, where she was introduced to stooping, brought the culture of stooping to China after she returned here. In Shanghai, she has taken home shelves, clothes hangers, and other items she has come across on sidewalks.

Luo Ergou takes a discarded box back home. (Beijing Youth Daily/Yuan Yi)

But she soon found that she didn't need all the discarded items she found, so she shared photos of them online, in the hope that someone would take them and give them a new home. Her account on Xiaohongshu has attracted over 20,000 followers. She has also managed several stooping-themed chat groups, where participants can buy and sell pre-loved items of all kinds.

"It piqued my interest," Luo said, adding that one person's trash is another person's treasure.

Some have criticized sidewalk stoopers like Luo and Boniu as being nothing more than attention seekers, but that does not upset them.

According to Luo, stooping is not a Western export. "It represents the older generations' traditions of hard work and plain living," he said, noting that many senior citizens recycle old items.

A skilled sidewalk sleuth knows where and when to hunt. Luo scouts in hutongs two or three days a week and focuses on garbage bins, street corners, or doorsteps of people who are moving house or decorating their homes.

On one recent trip, Luo spotted a wooden box and a large canvas bag in front of a residential house, where someone was loading goods onto a van.

"The family was obviously replacing old furniture. The wooden box and canvas bag had been discarded," Luo said, noting that as he gains more experience, he can detect unwanted stuff from local residents’ properties.

He noted that some elderly residents in hutongs usually leave their chairs outside when they go home. If he sees a chair with a cushion on it or a group of chairs next to each other, he knows that they are unavailable.

Luo explained that street cleaners and some elderly residents in hutongs also get hold of good discards. To avoid competing with them, Luo usually goes on curb-mining excursions between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. when elderly residents in hutongs are at home and city cleaners are off work.

Luo stressed that stoopers should share photos of sidewalk finds they come across along with addresses online so that fellow stoopers can pick up the finds.

Stoopers also tend to transform street finds into things they need. Luo intended to turn the wooden box he recently spotted into a storage box and the large canvas bag into several storage bags. He has also transformed a headboard he recycled into a cat toilet.

Luo said the transformation of sidewalk finds gives him a sense of achievement, adding that he has bought tools such as saws and pliers for this purpose.

For stoopers who are also renters, before they bring a good discard home, they need to figure out whether they actually need it.

"As a renter, I got some sidewalk finds for free. So when I move out of my old apartment, I will leave the stuff I no longer want in the house for the next renter. I can transform my new apartment with new sidewalk finds," Boniu said.