Fantastic beasts

MAO'S BESTIARYIS A REVISIONIST HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE ANIMAL DRUG INDUSTRY IN MAO'S CHINA THAT ALSO GIVES CONTEXT TO THE CURRENT DEBATES ON ZOONOSES AND THE USE OF WILD ANIMALS FOR HEALTH BENEFITS

- RAJAT GHAI

MAO'S BESTIARY: Medicinal Animals and Modern China by Liz P Y Chee was released in May 2021, while the COVID-19 pandemic was continuing its deadly run worldwide for the second consecutive year. There was palpable anger against China and the Chinese people since the new virus had seemingly emerged from the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, Hubei, in 2019, where all sorts of fauna were sold.

Chinese medicine has always advocated the use of animal parts. Bencao Gangmu, written by Ming period physician Li Shizhen in the 16th century, lists 400 animals that can be used as “medicine”. But this list of “medicinal animals” grew to 2,341 by 2013, says Chee, quoting the third edition of the state-sanctioned journal Zhongguo yao yong dong wu zhi (Medicinal fauna of China) released that year.

What changed? Well, that is the subject of this book.

Chee focusses on a hitherto a neglected period of China's history, as far as animals in Chinese medicine are concerned. From the start of the Communist government under Mao Zedong in 1949 to the end of the first decade of the country's economic reforms under its foremost leader Deng Xiaoping in 1989, Chinese medicine was pharmaceuticalised. These 40 years led to animals being used on an industrial scale, and the country producing and marketing medicine on an industrial level, within China as well as outside it.