“I’m sorry,” the man replied solemnly, his head hung low, exuding sympathy. “Sometimes, modern ways cannot solve our problems.” The man fished in his pocket and handed her a business card.

Audrey looked at the man curiously as she took the card. It was for a “traditional chinese medicine” shop on Ko Shing Street. Audrey had been to Ko Shing Street many times as a young girl. It was the epicenter of traditional Chinese medicine—TCM, as it was called—and her parents often went there to buy red sage, ginseng, and other herbs to treat their minor ailments. Audrey hadn’t been to Ko Shing herself in years, preferring the linear logic of Western medicine to the more abstract concepts, like qi, at the center of Eastern medicine.

Audrey was initially dismissive of the card, then noticed that it featured a clip-art image of a rhino head in the corner. Though wild animals had been used in TCM for millennia, China had banned trade in tiger and rhino parts in 1993 and officially barred them from use in TCM. But it was an open secret that many in China still believed in the old ways and maintained an underground trade in the endangered species for medicinal purposes. And though it was technically illegal, there was also the sense that the ban had been imposed because of American pressure as part of a Western agenda in a broader culture war between East and West.

Audrey inspected the card, uneasy at the implication. In her exhaustive research about her son’s condition, she had read that rhino horn was considered an ancient cure for cancer. She hadn’t put any more stock in the claims than in her parents treating ear infections with forsythia and coptis. But Western medicine was failing her son, and Audrey was growing desperate.

An angry nurse rushed over to interrupt the conversation. “Sir, you must leave the hospital at once!” she snapped. It was clear from her aggression that this wasn’t the first time she’d had to kick the man out of the pediatric cancer ward.

“I just want to help her son before it’s too late,” the old man said. Then he turned and departed without further protest.

The nurse apologized to Audrey, explaining that the man was one of several rhino horn touts who lurked in the city’s cancer wards, preying on families with sick loved ones and trying to exploit their grief.

Audrey thanked the nurse for the heads-up as she slid the old man’s card into her pocket.

CHAPTER 5
SIMON

massingir, mozambique

The T-shirt had been printed in late 2014, a good month before the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl. Over the coming months, it would find its way into a shipping container, which would find its way to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. Eventually, the shirt found its way onto the bony shoulders of the fifteen-year-old sitting on an upside-down bucket outside his family’s cinder block and thatch dwelling. “seattle seahawks 2015 super bowl champions,” the shirt declared erroneously.