Published by World Tibet Network News - Wednesday, January 03, 1996

by Patrick E. Tyler - The New York Times

Bianyang, China

It was market day here, and a crowd was gathering around the Tibetan medicine man, who was trafficking in dreams and other illegal substances.

Like a mystical apparition on the side of the dusty main street, the medicine man's show was spontaneous and played to the crowd.

No one knows exactly where he came from or why he picked this town in southwestern China on this day to present himself as an itinerant sage of folk medicine. And most people stayed away from his siren voice because they believed he was just a scoundrel in a blue felt hat.

"Why should I tell you anything?" he said with a cocked eye to an inquiring visitor: "You haven't given me any liquor."

Market day is magic for millions of Chinese peasants who see civilization only three or four times a month when they pack their bundles and their hopes and head for town.

They stream out of the mountains on bike or on foot or in packed horse carts, cheerfully suffering the burdens of their rice bags, pork shanks or spinach heaps. They travel for hours along bumpy roads, some just hoping to make a successful purchase of a needed farm tool, a well-woven basket or a hand-fitted wooden water pail to balance on a shoulder pole.

Some time around midmorning in the centre of Bianyang, the largest town in the farming region of Mashan, all the streams from all points of the compass came together in a fulminating collision of commerce.

Against the pastiche of vegetable stalls, dry goods stores and sidewalk carts loaded with tubers and eggplant, the medicine man stood out as a rebel against the familiar.

He regaled farmers just come down from the mountains with magic potions and elixirs, ever focused on cajoling a little money from their pockets.

His voice and accent were strange, and there was a gleam of mischief and larceny in his eye as he promised health and potency.

A throng of peasants pressed in where the medicine man was on his haunches, resplendent in his dark woolen coat with a bright red sash raked across the front. Small boys squirmed through the legs of the adults to get a glimpse and to listen to the medicine man's banter.

"Now you should put this in liquor and drink it every day." he said, wrapping up a small bundle of herbs and animal parts in a scrap of newspaper and handing it to a farmer, who gave the medicine man the equivalent of 75 cents.

"It is very good for your rheumatism," he added, "a very effective treatment as long as the bone is not swollen."

The medicine man displayed his wares on a red cloth laid on the ground before him. On porcelain saucers lay his herbal delights: red angel hair from a Tibetan flower, yellow sawdust from a medicinal tree. And in the centre of it all, the grizzled, amputated right foreleg of tiger and other equally grizzled parts of tiger anatomy valued by many as aphrodisiacs.

Some for the skin had been pulled back from the tiger leg to expose the bone, which the medicine man cuts into wafer-thin slices with a hacksaw. He had brought three extra blades. Enough skin and fur remained on the tiger bone, along with a single claw, to authenticate that the specimen was from a bona fide tiger.

Most countries, including China, have outlawed trade in tiger parts, but the medicine man was glib in fabricating an explanation of how the death of this tiger did not violate the law.

"It is true that tigers are disappearing, but in some places you can still find them, like Tibet," he said, "It is legal to shoot a tiger in Tibet," he asserted. "The only place you can't shoot tigers is in northeastern China and in Yunnan Province. These are special preservation areas."

A policeman in the crowd seemed equally uninterested in the illegal trade in tiger parts that was going on under his nose. And in the blink of an eye, the medicine man dismissed the whole subject by saying: "This is a Bangladeshi tiger. I didn't shoot it myself. I'm a medicine man.

"For generations, the men in my family have been medicine men," he said as he picked up the saw to prepare another mixture of herbs and tiger part slices.

"If you put this in liquor and drink it three times a day, you will have magic powers in bed," the medicine man said as he sawed off another slice of tiger anatomy while addressing a captivated farmer in a frayed blue coat.

The crowd guffawed, still riveted by the medicine man's ritual. The farmer who had committed to making a purchase said. "Give me a thicker slice," and the medicine man delighted the crowd by stopping his saw blade in midcut and looking up in mock amazement to say: "A thicker slice? How many wives do you have that you need a thicker slice?"

Proud of his performance, the medicine man cocked his eye again toward an American visitor and said, "Mundu, mundu," and gave the thumbs-up sign.

"How do you say that in English?" he suddenly asked. When he heard a reply in English of "Very good, very good," he reared back on his haunches and said, "It sounds like you're saying, 'Big stomach, big stomach.'"

The medicine man answered few of the questions put to him, and those he answered, he answered with riddles.

"Where have you been in China?"

"I have been to every place in China."

"Have you been to Beijing?"

"I have been to Tiananmen Square, but I haven't been to Beijing." The crowd laughed and the old medicine man began to saw off another slice of his magic.

Forwarded by: aa793@freenet.carleton.ca (Michael J. Wilson)