China's Expanding Middle Class Fuels Poaching, Decadence in Myanmar

Originally shared by Environmental Investigation Agency

China's Expanding Middle Class Fuels Poaching, Decadence in Myanmar

- In the remote jungle city of Mong La, endangered animals are sold as aphrodisiacs, traditional medicines, and gastronomic delicacies -

MONG LA, Myanmar—In this gaudy mecca of eroticism and greed on the eastern border with China, the cuisine isn't for the squeamish: Many items on the menu, including the drinks, are derived from poached endangered animals.

At one riverside bistro a tiger skeleton marinates in a dark alcoholic tonic in a 12-foot aquarium, its vacant eye sockets gazing down on patrons. The elixir is believed by its many aficionados to be a potent aphrodisiac that imparts the animal's muscular vitality.

The drink is just one of many enticements that lure hundreds of Chinese across the border every day to Myanmar's city of sin. As a taxi driver ferried us through the darkening jungle toward the neon-lit valley in the country also known as Burma, he summed up the destination's decadent attractions: "There's not much in Mong La. Just prostitutes, gambling, and rare animals."

Mong La is a smaller, seedier, anarchic version of Las Vegas—a collection of casinos and their associated vices in an unlikely, out-of-the-way place, though one where the rare animals are not for show, but for consumption. From humble market stalls to high-end boutiques, the town is a macabre menagerie where Chinese tourists can scoop up a bargain. A framed tiger tail goes for 30,000 yuan ($4,890), a tiger skin for 100,000 yuan ($16,300), and a prized rhino horn for 280,000 yuan ($45,640).

Read the full National Geographic article at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/special-features/2014/12/141205-myanmar-burma-poachers-endangered-animals/

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Image: In the kitchen of a popular wildlife restaurant, meat hangs on hooks. Outside, snakes, turtles, pangolins and other animals live in cages until they are turned into entrees, via nationalgeographic.com