Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings

This pic is of a row of Traditional Chinese Medicine shops at the Xi'an market. For the most part, the ingredients for TCM are plants and fungi. Animal parts make up a minority of treatments. The purpose of the visit here was to scope out the market and see if claims that endnagered animal parts are 'sold openly' via the TCM system were true.

We failed to find any evidence of such traffic. Albeit if you want to buy fake animal parts, this isn't such a bad location. One shop had some lovely pieces of bone on display, and a quick inspection made the mould lines of the resin-cast they used obvious. To mimic the appearance of marrow they'd stuffed lots of fine twigs in the middle. I have to say the covetous look the shop-owner got when I asked about the price was amusing. I assume that a lot of Chinese urban consumers aren't familiar with basic bone anatomy.