A digger tests his high-pressure water gun before using it to help clear lotus roots. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

Heavy rubber waterproof coveralls are the standard uniforms. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

Chen Yiming carefully pulls some plants out checking to make sure they are not broken. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

After a hard day's digging for lotus roots comes the nightly entertainment - watching DVD in the dormitory. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

Diggers celebrate with bowls of baijiu (white liquor) after work to warm up and relax. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

Lotus roots have a special place in Chinese culture. They are a nutritious food, an important ingredient in Traditional Chinese Medicine and a symbol of purity. The texture of the root changes with each season making it a perennial plant that can be enjoyed the year round. It grows in the mud in lakes and ponds and, come winter, the men and women who dig up the roots find themselves laboring in icy cold water and mud to retrieve the food for others.

Xi Renbo has been working as a lotus root digger for 20 years. "The colder it gets, the more demand there is for lotus roots so I make more money when the temperature drops. We never stop working even when it snows," the 59-year-old from Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province told the Global Times. "Like many jobs, the pay increases when the work is harder."

Xi is working with a team of 10, digging up lotus roots in a 6.7-hectare lake in Jinshan district. Most of the team are aged over 50 and they have worked together for a long time. While winter is their busiest period they work the year round, only taking a month off in June.

Diggers can earn between 0.6 yuan (1 cent) to 0.8 yuan for a kilogram of lotus roots depending on the season and the market price. Xi makes about 300 yuan a day digging up lotus roots which sell in city shops for between 3 and 7 yuan a kilogram. "This is not easy money - I have to stand in icy water for more than eight hours every day. Because I have been working constantly in cold and wet conditions for years, my joints ache from time to time."

Diggers need to be physically strong and have patience along with the skill of being able to dig roots up swiftly without damaging them. Before they go to work in a lake, the water in the area where they are working is pumped out so they have access to the roots. Xi said they looked for plants with whose stems had not withered or dried out.

"Experienced diggers know the shape and size of the lotus roots in the mud, so that they can carefully remove the mud around them. We try to dig out the complete root without breaking it - damaged roots don't fetch good money."

Diggers carefully scoop the mud from around the roots, one by one, only pulling the plant out when it can be removed without breaking.

High-tech help is also on hand these days with diggers using high-pressure water guns to clear the mud from around the plants. Another digger, 63-year-old Chen Yiming explained, "It not only speeds up the process of digging, but makes it less strenuous. It about doubles the number of roots we can collect compared to the number that can be dug out by hand."

Even though the work is not as arduous as it used to be, thanks to the water guns, few young people want to take up the work. "It's a hard job with low pay - younger people don't want to do this."