The start-up costs are minimal — Wang bought only eggs, a run-down abandoned chicken coop and the roofing tile. Notoriously hearty, roaches aren’t susceptible to the same diseases as farm animals. As for feeding them, cockroaches are omnivores, though they favor rotten vegetables. Wang feeds his brood with potato and pumpkin peelings discarded from nearby restaurants.

Killing them is easy too: Just scoop or vacuum them out of their nests and dunk them in a big vat of boiling water. Then they’re dried in the sun like chile peppers.

Perhaps understandably, the cockroach business (“special farming,” as it is euphemistically called) is a fairly secretive industry. Wang’s farm, for instance, operates in an agribusiness industrial park under an elevated highway. The sign at the front gate simply reads Jinan Hualu Feed Co.