Delta, has less to do with limited resources, dire necessity, and ancient traditions than with booming commerce and relatively recent fashions in conspicuous consumption. Close observers of Chinese culture call it the Era of Wild Flavor.
One of those observers is Karl Taro Greenfeld, who served as editor of Time Asia in Hong Kong during 2003, oversaw the magazine’s coverage of SARS, and soon afterward wrote a book about it, China Syndrome. Before his editing role, Greenfeld had covered “the new Asia” as a journalist for some years, giving him opportunity to see what people were putting in their stomachs. According to him:
Southern Chinese have always noshed more widely through the animal kingdom than virtually any other peoples on earth. During the Era of Wild Flavor, the range, scope, and amount of wild animal cuisine consumed would increase to include virtually every species on land, sea, or air.
Wild Flavor (yewei in Mandarin) was considered a way of gaining “face,” prosperity, and good luck. Eating wild, Greenfeld explained, was only one aspect of these new ostentations in upscale consumption, which might also involve patronizing a brothel where a thousand women stood on offer behind a glass wall. But the food vogue arose easily from earlier traditions in fancy cuisine, natural pharmaceuticals, and exotic aphrodisiacs (such as tiger penis), and went beyond them. One official told Greenfeld that two thousand Wild Flavor restaurants were now operating within the city of Guangzhou alone. Four more received licenses during the hour Greenfeld spent in the man’s office.
These eateries drew their supplies from the “wet markets” of Guangdong province, vast bazaars filled with row after row of stalls purveying live animals for food, such as the Chatou Wildlife Market in Guangzhou and the Dongmen Market in Shenzhen. Chatou began operating in 1998 and within five years had become one of the largest wild-animal markets in China, especially for mammals, birds, frogs, turtles, and snakes. Between late 2000 and early 2003, a team of researchers based in Hong Kong conducted an ongoing survey of wild animals on sale at Chatou, Dongmen, and two other big Guangdong markets. Compared to an earlier survey done in 1993–1994, the team found some changes and new trends.
First, the sheer volume of the wild-animal trade seemed to have increased. Second, there was more cross-border commerce, legal or covert, drawing wildlife from other Southeast Asian countries into southern China. Meaty but precious individuals of endangered species, such as the Bornean river turtle and the Burmese star tortoise, were turning up. Third, greater numbers of captive-bred animals had become available from commercial breeders. Certain kinds of frogs and turtles were being farmed. Snakes, according to rumor, were being farmed. Small-scale civet farms, operating in central Guangdong and southern Jiangxi (an adjacent province), helped supply the demand for that animal. In fact, much of the trade in three popular wild mammals—the Chinese ferret badger and the hog badger in addition to the masked palm civet—seemed to come from farm breeding and rearing. Evidence for this supposition, made by the survey team, was that the animals appeared relatively well fed, uninjured, and tame. Caught from the wild, they would more likely show trap wounds and other signs of desperation and abuse.
But even if they arrived healthy and robust from the farm, conditions in the markets weren’t salubrious. “The animals are packed in tiny spaces and often in close contact with other wild and/or domesticated animals such as dogs and cats,” the survey team wrote. “Many are either sick or with open wounds and without basic care. Animals are often slaughtered inside the markets in several stalls specialising in this.” Open wire cages, stacked vertically, allowed wastes from one animal to rain down onto another. It was zoological bedlam. “The markets also provide a conducive environment,” the team noted, almost passingly, “for animal diseases to jump hosts and spread to humans.”
Guan Yi, the intrepid microbiologist from Hong Kong University, waded into these conditions at Dongmen Market, in Shenzhen, and persuaded sellers to let him take swab samples and blood from some of their animals. Exactly how he persuaded them is still mystifying—force of personality? eloquent arguments? clear explication of scientific urgency?—although holding a thick wad of Hong Kong dollars in his hand apparently helped. He anaesthetized twenty-five animals one by one, swabbed for mucus, swabbed for feces, drew blood, and then took the samples back to Hong Kong for analysis. The hog badgers were clean. The Chinese hares were clean. The Eurasian beavers were clean. The domestic