In the heart of the Chinese Pangolin Chinese market market

Reading time: 13 min

This text was adapted from an extract from Poached: Inside The Dark World of Wildlife Trafficking by Rachel Love Nuwer.

We, human beings, adore wild animals.We love them in jewelry, hunting trophies, pets or to taste their flesh.Another great consumer is traditional Chinese medicine.

Even if the plants make up most of the ingredients in this medical belief old 3.000 years, she also uses components from some 1.500 different animals.Among the 112 most frequently used species, 22% are threatened and 51% are taking the path, according to Zhibin Meng, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

If the tigers and the rhinos are the most famous examples, the pangolins also appear on the list.Their scales - Still made up of keratin, the same material as that constituting our hair and nails - are considered a kind of universal remedy against all kinds of ills, ranging from simple panaris to the obstruction of fallopian fallopms.

In the past ten years, poaching has killed more than a million pangolins in Asia, depopulating most of the forests of these sweet and fearful creatures.To respond to the lack of pangolins in Asia, traffic has moved to Africa, where we now massacre up to 2.7 million per year, mainly to feed the Chinese and Vietnamese markets.

A baby pangolin at the Singapore zoo, June 30, 2017 |Roslan Rahman / AFP

Dismembered turtle and dehydrated frogs

The specialists told me that the scales of Pangolin were omnipresent on the Chinese black market, but I wanted to verify by myself the veracity of this assertion.

My taxi immediately knew where I wanted to go as soon as I opened my notebook to show it the ideograms of the Qingping market, epicenter of the traditional Chinese remedies in Canton.Under the address, I also asked someone to write to me "Pangolin scales" in Chinese, poor attempt to compensate for the fact that I do not speak a word of Chinese.I had first hoped to come and accompanied by a local expert in the company for the conservation of wild life, but due to a timetable problem, I found myself alone for the after-noon.I didn't know what I was going to find there, or if I was going to find something short.

As soon as I get off the taxi, I was greeted by the characteristic scent of traditional Chinese medicine.Odoring wooden smells, dried fish and mushrooms mingled with the spicy scents of plants in a real olfactory symphony.Visually, the scene was dominated by the very building of the market, the five floors of which occupied most of the house pâté.Like a headlight attracting night butterflies, this wholesale temple attracts all kinds of small resellers.Some officers in stalls the size of a small living room, others in a space not larger than a broom closet.

Part of the shops sold living animals - or which were still alive shortly before.In one of them, a man leaning above a container teeming with scorpions withdrew the dead animals one by one with chopsticks.Next to it, a woman was dismembering a turtle with scissors - the poor beast's head had, fortunately, already decided.

Most of the animals on the market, however, seemed to have been dead for a good time.The various plants and dried animals seemed to respond to a color code from the 1970s based on brown, beige, orange and yellow: chocolate chocolate mushrooms like frisbees, sea cucumbers resembling petrified pickles,Fish similar to giant used condoms, dehydrated frogs on the paws linked like prisoners of war, dried elm with strangely vaginal pace, caterpillars with an apparently very coveted parasitic mushroom which came out of their heads ... The nature of the goods of the goodsMost stalls, however, completely escaped me.There were twigs, sticks and roots of all sizes, yellow widles resembling small coils of thread, dumplings with old cream with cream and many other strangeness.

"Oh no, no, no, no, no!"»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Having really no idea what I was doing, I decided to go to the nearest shop to ask if they had pangolins scales.I felt like I was a young cameo entering a bong store to ask the saleswoman if she knows where to find crack.I entered smiling.The owner, a young woman, welcomes me in English by giving me my smile, which I took for a good sign.Her smile faded as soon as I was handing her my paper with "Pangolins scales" written above above.

- No, no!, She said.- In the area, if not?, I asked.- No!It’s forbidden!, She insisted, shaking her head.We no longer have the right to sell.- But I heard that there were special places where we could still get legally ...- Not here, no.We are not allowed to sell it, here.

She put an end to the conversation of a dry movement of the head.

A few doors below, an old woman saw me and handed me some dried goji berries.She quickly understood that it was not what I was looking for when I showed her my notebook.

"Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, she exclaimed, shaking her head and waving the hands from front to back.She paused to resume her breathing and dated in a salvo of "no, no, no, no, no, no, no!", History that things are very clear.

Given the reactions obtained until then, I was starting to tell myself that all of this led me to nothing.Then I remember that I had come all this way to see the temple of traditional medicine in Canton.I couldn't admit defeated without having at least taken a look inside the main market.

We circulate between the five floors of Qingping by borrowing creaky escalators - some do not work - or a filthy glass elevator located in the center of this large complex.During my visit, each floor was crowded with sellers offering their goods in large open bags, in pots or gathered in large batteries threatening to collapse.

Part of them and them were sitting behind their box, nose on their mobile phone or lunch.Others were preparing and packing their goods to send them, while others were busy meticulously removing imperfections from pieces of wood, or sorting caterpillars to bring them together in groups of ten in themendearing by the parasite exceeding their heads.

Sur le marché de Qingping à Canton (Chine), le 1^er mars 2018 | Fred Dufour / AFP

I noticed that most stalls were specialized in only one or two products.What's more, they seemed to be grouped together by themes within the same floor - which is alike assembled?The size of the whole was impressive.

A floor, for example, was almost entirely dedicated to deer woods.There were pots and whole buckets of deer wood cut into rings resembles hosts, deer wood chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, buckets of black hooves still attached to the long bones of the legs and the watered bambi, withA nice red knot around their lifeless little neck.

The stands of the mushroom section, in the same way, seemed to pride themselves on their extravagant mushroom shifts and lichens, while the floor of the birds of birds seemed to go in another direction, with more beautiful shops, moremodern and offering less goods, like luxurious fashion brands that only sell some models.

I climbed upstairs to see the part dedicated to hippocamples, which felt very strong brine and not fresh fish.The hippocamples stared at me with their empty and dry orbits, their mouth seemed frozen in an "oh!"of macabre surprise.

These delicate fish are among the most sold marine animals in the world, with more than five million individuals captured each year in Southeast Asia, to be legally offered on the international market.Some of the most caught species are considered to be extinction, but the trade in hippocamples, like all that I have seen on this market, is legal.

Pearl necklaces at the jackpot

After having explored five floors, by looking carefully at a pangolin image, a pangolin in plush or the Chinese ideogram of Pangolin –Fref, all that could have indicated that a shop was indulging in the black market -, I hadStill not found the slightest scales of Pangolin.I came back down the stairs by congratulating China for having done the job so well.

However, he turned out, unfortunately, that I just hadn't addressed good people: stupidly, I had consulted the medical ingredients stands.Quickly, my gaze was attracted by the sparkles of the pearls stalls installed near the entrance to Qingping.It was amazing to find this type of shop there.A little confused, I decided to make a leap to buy Christmas gifts in advance for my mother and sister ... and I fell without going to the Jackpot.

The shop was held by two beautifully preceded young women, with both a pearl necklace, a little woolen dress and ballerinas on the feet.The youngest spoke a little English and the two were very hard in business.After annoying negotiations, we agreed on a price much higher than I hoped to pay $ 300 [or nearly 265 euros] for three rows.

It was madness, but I was ready to do it.The only problem was that I did not have enough liquid on me and that my credit card did not work on their machine.The youngest of the two women proposed to accompany me to the only automatic distributor of the market, on a higher floor.

While, in an annoying silence, we went back to elevator towards the ground floor, I remember paper with written "Pangolin scales" that I had in my bag.I tell myself that it didn't cost anything to try.She looked at the paper, looked up to look at me, then looked at the paper again.

-You want this?, She asked me, slowly, with uncertainty.- Yes.- No ... not here ...

She dragged the sentence.I felt like she wanted to tell me more, but she dropped.I conclude that she couldn't find the right word to say "illegal".

Back at the shop, she said something to the other woman, who looked at me dubiously, as if to ask "her?!", Then took her phone and turned our backs on us.She began to speak in a low voice, facing the wall.Instinctively, I had the impression that she was talking about me, but unable to be sure, I just smiled stupidly trying to calculate how exactly I had them.

Once the transaction has been done, the youngest was individually wrapped the necklaces in velvet covers when the oldest turned around and lowered the phone for a moment to say something to his colleague.The youngest looked at me with a smile: "Yes, we have!"

"You have…?"I was not quite sure to know what she was talking about, even if I still had an idea."We have that!" She said to me, pointing to the notebook that protruded from my bag.She gave me the pearls and took me by the hand."I am taking you.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

To fry and reduce to powder

While we left the market, she made me understand that the other woman was her sister and that we were going to see the latter's boyfriend, who sold Pangolins scales.We took a street on the right, then another right to the right, each crossing leading us to an always narrower alley than the previous one.

Although always entirely dedicated to traditional medicine, stalls looked less professional - with more baroque arrangements, a more unwanted air.We stopped in a covered alley.Someone played Chinese music nearby, and children joyfully galloped between the stalls.

Sur le marché de Qingping à Canton (Chine), le 1^er mars 2018 | Fred Dufour / AFP

The shop in which we were looked like all of her neighbors, this detail that she was strangely empty, as if she served as a storefront for another kind of trade.Among the rare goods exposed were some cobras kept in jars with a yellow liquid, large pieces of mushrooms and a few boxes of tea.A man seated on the ground was sorting what looked like kinds of mushrooms or pieces of wood.

Upon entering the shop, I had discreetly lit the tape recorder of my mobile phone.Therefore, when I returned to New York, I was able to have the conversation between the man of the store and my pearl salesperson translated.

-How can I help you? "He asked in Cantonais.- She would like pangolin, replied the seller of pearls.- We don't have this kind of thing.- Mr. Hua told us that you had.And he came to get him.- Oh, it’s Mr. Hua who told you!

My translator in New York pointed out to me that the voice of the man seemed suspicious at the start, but that he had relaxed as soon as he had heard the name of Mr. Hua.

But at the time, I had no idea what they were saying.Sitting on a small stool, I asked the saleswoman if the man seated on the ground was his sister's boyfriend.She shook her head, released her phone and opened a translation application to communicate with me.She pianota on the screen with her turquoise nails, and a mechanical female voice pronounced very hard the translation of the words she had just type: "Wait a minute.Someone will look for the goods.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

I repressed a smile by thinking about the absurd turn taken by events this afternoon.We stayed a moment to converse thanks to the automatic translator of his phone.I decided to invent a story to justify my search for pangolin scales: I say to the pearl seller that they were intended for my sister, due to a breastfeeding problem. «C’est ma sœur, elle a des problèmes»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», expliquai-je en montrant du doigt ma propre poitrine.

«Ah!»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» Mon interlocutrice se replongea dans son téléphone pour me répondre."It is a very precious drug in our country.Many people use it, explained the mechanical voice.But not in the United States.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

- You tried it?, I asked him.-No, no!, She chore with her own voice.Too young!It turned out that she was only 21 years old.- Me 31, I lamented.So old!

About fifteen minutes later, a young man appeared on the other side of the aisle.He was holding a plastic bag in his hand with a somewhat embarrassed air that let me think that it was our man.It was rather round, in his twenties, dressed in jeans and a blue sweater without form. «Le petit ami de ma sœur»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», me confirma mon interlocutrice.

He came to us and quickly opened the bag so that I could see what it contained, like an exhibitionist in the metro.These were Pangolin scales.And there were many.It looked like small shells, in the shape of fans, the same brown-beige color as turtle scales.He put the bag on a scale to show me that he weighed 500 grams.He asked for $ 300 [around 265 euros].

Pangolin scales seized in Hanoi (Vietnam), September 28, 2018 |Vietnam News Agency / AFP

I did my best to hide my surprise and my nervousness.I wanted to ask a multitude of questions, but I was likely to reveal my status as a journalist/spy if I asked too much. «Comment ça s’utilise?»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» me sembla être un bon point de départ.

"You have to fry and make it powder, explained the boyfriend's with confidence, having the seller of pearls translated.No need to put them in the fridge, but you have to keep them dry.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»"But there, it is not powder, I noticed, playing the interested client.How do you reduce them to powder? "»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

He replied that he owned all the necessary material and that he could take care of it himself.Apartment, the service was included. «Combien vous en voulez?»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», me demanda-t-il.

A little bit short, I still invoked the story of my sister.I explained that I first had to know how much she wanted, but that at this time, it was the middle of the night in the United States.I was going to have to call her in the evening - the morning for her - to confirm the desired quantity."In fact," I added, it would be very practical if I could take a photo to show him.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

The young woman translated my answer and the man seemed perfectly satisfied with my explanation. «OK, OK»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», dit-il en ouvrant le sac, pour me permettre d’en prendre le contenu en photo avec mon téléphone.I asked him for his business card, which he held out with pleasure, and we hugged our hand to tell us goodbye.

As soon as we were separated, I jumped into a taxi to flee from there.Although I did not feel in danger at any time, I couldn't help but look a few times over my shoulder.