Bad Medicine

The best loot is hidden in the back, past the seahorse skeletons and powdered pangolin. From inside a rusted safe, shopkeeper Zhu fishes out a bundle of cloth and unwraps a precious amber-streaked crescent. “Rhino horn,” he whispers. “Straight from Africa.”

For centuries, China has mined the faraway continent for its treasures. Zheng He himself loaded his ships with ambergris, elephant tusk and rhino horn. Despite Kenya’s shoot-to-kill order for wildlife poachers, much of the ivory and rhino horn leaves Africa by air from its capital, Nairobi, or by sea from the nation’s largest port, Mombasa. As much as 40% of the contraband ultimately ends up in China, where it is used for medicinal purposes and as a natural Viagra. “Little man eat rhino,” says Zhu, in his best English, “little man become very big man.”

In the poshest shops in Beijing, a pair of black rhino horns sells for $60,000. No wonder there are only 2,500 of the shy creatures left in the wild. More than 80% of all ivory, which commands an impressive $300 per kg in China, comes from illegally poached animals, according to environmental group Save the Elephants. Although token efforts have been made — so far this year, officials at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport have confiscated 1,533 tusks or ivory products — many customs authorities quietly take a cut of the profits and let the contraband through. “There is no sense that these animals should be saved,” says a Beijing-born conservationist. “Africa is just seen as one big marketplace.”

Shopkeeper Zhu’s father began his exotic-animal trade 40 years ago and passed it on to his son. But at the present rate of carnage, there will be little left when Zhu’s 11-year-old son takes over the business. For one thing, there may be no black rhinos remaining in the wild to give up their precious horns.