Grim pickings

AN ENORMOUS turtle hangs as a good-luck charm from the wall of a traditional medicine shop in a Chinese part of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s commercial hub. Traders who line both sides of the street, tending shops filled with fungi and fragrant bark, insist that they have no such ornaments for sale. One youth says he has heard a neighbour might have stocks of tiger glue, a tonic supposedly made from boiling up big cats. But he warns that the rancid gloop is very pricey—and also probably fake.

Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party looks increasingly embarrassed by the country’s reputation as one of Asia’s worst wildlife-trafficking hubs. On November 17th and 18th it will advertise its efforts to quash the industry at an international wildlife conference in Hanoi, the capital, which will be attended by representatives from about 40 countries. But while the sale of exotic animal parts in Vietnam’s big cities is gradually growing less blatant, it may not be getting rarer: the trade still flourishes, online and underground.