From military school to a collectors' army

Although Xu Yuanhong graduated from a military academy, the 34-year-old has never served as an army officer. Despite his training, he followed in the footsteps of his father, a garbage collector, but surpassed him by starting AiFenLei, a WeChat miniprogram that uses the internet to facilitate trash sorting, collection and recycling.

When Xu's father arrived in Beijing in the 1990s, he worked on construction sites. However, as many people from his hometown of Xinyang, Henan province, were making more money by collecting garbage, he decided to join them.

As business boomed, Xu Sr. and some friends started a garbage-trading market in Dongxiaokou, a township in Changping district that was home to about 300,000 garbage collectors.