Pangolins, potions and patriarchy: A farewell toast to China’s scaly love concoction

China has said it will remove Guilingji, a traditional medicine containing bits of pangolin, from its official 2025 pharmacopoeia.

I don’t know what a pharmacopoeia is, but I imagine it’s some kind of menu. I don’t know what a pangolin is, either.

Sure, I’ve seen photos of scaly brutes that people claim are pangolins, but I have never seen one with my own eyes. I only trust things that I can see, touch and taste. Beer, for instance.

The Chinese should stick to that instead of fannying about with pangolins. I’m looking at a photo of a so-called pangolin right now. It’s like a mutant mongoose covered in plectrums.

Apparently they are one of the most trafficked animals in the world. Who’s behind this? Guitarists?

Also, Fox News says a pangolin sneezed into someone’s mouth and gave us Covid. Bass players and pangolins, man. Can’t trust ’em.

Pangolins are, like me, nocturnal, solitary beasts. Also like me, they meet females only to mate. If I had a tongue as long as a pangolin’s, my conquests might ask me to stick around.

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Pangolins raise their young for two years before losing interest and going off to the pub. I almost certainly have pangolin blood in me.

Guilingji, like the Chinese, has been around for a while. Comrade Ming from the Ming dynasty came up with it while mixing up a hearty broth of sea creatures, bones, meat and anything else that happened to be scurrying, slithering or hopping around at the time.

It was declared a confidential prescription in 1957. In other words, only the very communist of communists could access it.

Its ingredients include red ginseng, deer antler, seahorse and pangolin. These are the ones we’re allowed to know about.

The secret recipe also has 20 herbs and spices, nine more than KFC, so I can only imagine how yummy it must be.

But what’s really in it? My money’s on the pituitary glands of baby pandas and the eyeballs of juvenile sloths.

I don’t know about ginseng and deer antlers, but I’m rather partial to seahorse first thing in the morning. Crushed finely and fed through the nostrils, it’s straight to the brain and off to the disco for a spot of the old impregnating.

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Wait, what? Female seahorses slip their eggs into the male’s pocket when he isn’t looking and he somehow ejaculates into his own pocket and gives birth to the babies when they’re cooked?

And that, girls and boys, is how lady seahorses smashed the patriarchy. Best of all, there’s no wondering if the brats are really yours.

Anyway, as I was saying, China has removed Guilingji from the upcoming edition of the country’s pharmacopoeia, or, as the French would describe it, la carte du jour.

This isn’t a ban on the sale or production of the pangolin-flavoured cocktail, but its removal does make it harder to get.

In other words, you can’t just walk into a chemist and ask for a couple of grams over the counter but if you go around the back, where the bins are, you’ll get sorted.

Guilingji was among 19 traditional medicines cut from China’s national buffet. They’re not saying what the other 18 are, probably because it’s not a good look to have eaten, drunk or snorted entire species into extinction.

So, despite being not at all cute or even photogenic – and having shown a resistance to learning tricks – pangolins are now protected under the highest level of global conservation laws.

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It’s inexplicable. The Chinese can keep stuffing rhino horn and seal testicles up their noses in the belief that it will boost their libidos, but it’s pangolins who get the break?

February 15 was World Pangolin Day. In capitals around the world (not so much Beijing), pangolins gathered in groups of two, sometimes three if they were feeling particularly sociable, and held up little placards with messages that read: “Our scales are made from keratin, the same protein that makes up human hair and fingernails and we need them for protection from predators so stop killing us for them you idiot humans.”

Pangolins don’t understand punctuation, but their handwriting is tiny so they can fit a lot onto a placard.

You’d think Guilingji has been popular for centuries because it lifts the mood. Makes your eyes sparkle and gets you laughing and talking and having a great time, like some of the best old-school drugs still do.

What it does, though, is prevent ageing and erectile dysfunction, the two things we fear most of all. Well, maybe just one for the women.

The Chinese are known for their impressive longevity, some of them living for as long as 280 years. And there are 1.4 billion of them. That’s a lot of erections.

Fu*k the pangolin. Pass the Guilingji.

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