Events

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Greg Clancey, Asia Research Institute, and Department of History, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In this book, I have traced an aspect of Chinese medicine and pharmacology that has been surprisingly neglected despite its controversial character, or maybe because of it. Although the book went to press just at the onset of COVID-19, and does not deal directly with zoonotic disease, it helps fill the gap in our knowledge of how and why “medicinal animals” have proliferated in the modern period, arguing that the early Communist period is an overlooked watershed. My main argument is that while animals (alongside plants and minerals) were accorded medicinal value from ancient times in China, their use expanded and transformed as they became a resource for state medicine in the Mao period. What the book calls faunal medicalization was a process that, by the current century, would contribute to the endangerment and extinction of animals as far afield as Africa and South America, but had roots in Sino-Soviet relations, The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and other phases of the first few decades of Communist rule. One of its aspects was the institutionalized “farming” of formally wild-caught animals for their parts and tissues, partly to fuel increased overseas exports which survived despite trade embargos. Farming also increased the number of species marketed as medicine. Even for ‘traditional’ medicinal species, the logic of production sometimes meant infusing even more body parts with curative powers. The Tokay Gecko, for example, was first farmed for its re-growable tail, but is today sold as a whole body on a stick. Scientific studies also expanded treatment regimes and delivery methods, and labs worked on substituting the tissue of more common animals for those facing extinction through medicalization (e.g. water buffalo horn used to replace rhino horn). Faunal medicine made the transition to capitalism under Deng’s reforms, when bear bile farming – a technology likely pioneered in North Korea – becoming the signature and most controversial of all faunal drug industries.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Liz P.Y. Chee is Research Fellow in the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Cluster of the Asia Research Institute (ARI) and Fellow of Tembusu College, both at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She was the first graduate of the University of Edinburgh – NUS Joint PhD Program (History and STS), and completed her dissertation under the supervision of Prof Francesca Bray. She has an undergraduate degree in Japanese Studies and a MA in East Asian History, and briefly worked for the Singapore bureau of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper before returning to academe. She completed most of the research for this book at the Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine. Since joining ARI in 2015, Liz has published articles on such topics as cultural boundaries between food and drugs, shark-fin eating in China, and Chinese research on proteomics. Liz is trained as both an historian and anthropologist. A forthcoming book chapter, “Discovering ‘New Drugs’ within ‘Traditional’ Chinese Medicine: Inside Guangzhou Huahai Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd.” is based on a three-year ethnographic study of a Chinese pharmaceutical company. An article on the history of the Singapore kitchen is also under review.

REGISTRATION

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