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“How do they extract the bile?” Hulan asked.
“Doctors surgically implant a tube into the gallbladder. This is held in place by a metal corset around the bear’s stomach. The bile is draining all the time. Some people even pay to drink the bile straight from the bear at milking time.”
“How can those places operate if they’re illegal?” David asked.
“You’re a foreigner, so you don’t understand China,” Du said sympathetically. “In our country, the government is very busy with other matters, so these hooligans can get away with it. In the remote provinces—Jilin, Yunnan, and Heilongjiang—anyone can go out, trap some bears, and start up a farm. Even if you go down to Chengdu in Sichuan, you can find maybe one hundred bear farms. We have over ten thousand bears living on illegal bear farms in China.”
“How do you know all this if the extraction process is such a secret and the police are looking the other way?” Hulan asked.
“I already told you, the government sends me out to different provinces. On some trips I have gone on raids.” He paused, then added, “Those places are very bad, but the masses are happy because they believe that the best medicine comes from the wild animal.”
“Why?”
“Because you take on the attributes of that animal—bear, tiger, monkey. You think you will become strong, potent, or wise tricksters. So most of the people don’t want farmed bear anyway. They want to see the wild bear with their own eyes.”
“But something like bear gall,” Hulan said, “how does it work? How do you use it?”
“Your mother and father are very knowledgeable about our medicine,” Dr. Du observed. “Did they forget to teach you?”
“I was away in America for many years,” she explained. “I forgot the old ways.”
Dr.
Du scratched at his sideburns, then shook his head in sorrow at what Hulan had lost in the far-off land. “Bear gall is bitter and cold. Bitter medicinals dispel heat, dry dampness, and purge the body. The cold attributes cool the blood and detoxify the body.”
“Which means you use it for what?”
“I don’t use it!”
“I understand that, but you would prescribe a bitter-cold medicine…”
“For jaundice, skin lesions, convulsions in babies, fever, ulcers, poor vision. For hemorrhoids, bacterial infections, cancer, burns, pain and redness in the eyes, asthma, sinus infections, tooth decay…”
“A little of everything,” Hulan said. Now her skepticism was showing. “Isn’t it just the placebo effect?”
“You come in here and say this to Dr. Du?” There was no mistaking his indignation this time. “Our medicine is many times older than Western medicine. It is not a placebo. This is why I am invited to speak at Harvard Medical School, and it is why our government lets me travel so freely.”
He threw his hands up over his head. He’d had it with these impertinent fools. “You go away now! I am tired of this!” Then he began shooing them out. At the door, he shook his finger at Hulan. “You show no respect. Your parents would be very disappointed in you.”
Downstairs, Peter was waiting for them. “How did it go?” he inquired as he pulled away from the institute.
“I think we insulted him,” Hulan said.
David snorted. “That’s an understatement.”
“But did you get useful information?” Peter asked.
Hulan and David looked at each other thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” Hulan said. “Maybe.”
“What I still don’t understand is, if the farms are illegal, how can they operate?” David asked.
“Our government says no to many things,” Hulan said. “Still, people want to make money. Some say they’ll open a ‘legal’ bear farm. They say they have a permit, but I bet all they have is a permit to open a business, not a bear farm.”
“Doesn’t anyone check?”
“I guess not,” Hulan said, sounding discouraged.
“I have good news,” Peter announced. “You were right, Inspector. Cao Hua’s refrigerator was filled with Panda Brand bear bile.”
