Liz P. Y. Chee – Mao’s Bestiary

Describe your book

Mao’s Bestiary: Medicinal Animals and Modern China is a history of how animals entered the state medicine of Communist-period China.  It was not inevitable that the historic practice of using animal tissue as drugs would be modernized (a process I call “faunal medicalization”) and certainly not in the expansive way it was.  The book challenges the argument made by many contemporary actors (such as pharmaceutical company owners) involved in medicinal animal farming that such exploitation was always part of Chinese medical tradition. I’ve demonstrated that historical documents show otherwise.  

Why did you decide to publish it with a university press?

I’m an academic and it is important that I publish my first book with a university press. University presses also allow for a full display of sources, and that’s important with a topic as controversial as mine.  But I hope to reach an audience that also extends beyond the academy.

Do you enjoy the writing process?

Absolutely! There was nothing I wanted more than to write about this topic and I’m glad it’s complete. 

What is the last thing you read not for research/work? 

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I love novels and believe that what we do as historians is not too different from what novelists also set out to do. Like novelists, we write about life, except that we need to rely on documents and be sincere and committed to the truth. But historians also have to exercise ‘scholarly imagination’ in seeing patterns that emerge from their evidence, as the best novelists also look for patterns in the life around them.  

What is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given to you?

That to do anything you have to have “stick-to-itiveness”. 

What piece of advice might you give to young academics looking to follow in your footsteps?

Write your dissertation like you’re writing a book for publication. 

Who inspires you?

The Buddha 

What’s next?

I’m currently applying for a grant to further my research on medicalization of wildlife. There’s so much more to understand, particularly about the relation of Chinese state medicine (and the medicinal animal trade) with the rest of Asia and the world.  The process I describe as faunal medicalization is still continuing, voraciously, despite treaties and other legal restrictions.  Now zoonotic disease is recognized as one result of our assault on wildlife, something not understood in the period I write about, but which 20th century processes contributed to.

Liz P. Y. Chee is Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute and Lecturer at Tembusu College, both at the National University of Singapore.