Wildmen of China

We take another trip today into the wild terrain of China to take a look around for the wildman said to reside there.

Reports are rare from China; the political policy of the country may be partly to blame. But we do have records of wild men going back a long way.

Li Yanshow, a 9th Century historian, talked of a band of wild men residing in the forests of Hubei. The 18th Century poet, Yuan Mei, wrote about a creature found in the wild regions of Shanxi province. He called them "monkey-like, yet not monkey-like".

In 1940, Wang Zelin, was a graduate of the biology department of Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. He claimed to have seen a corpse of the creature. He was driving to Tianshui in Gansu Province when he heard gunfire. Driving on a little further, he came upon a group of soldiers standing around a strange body. It appeared to be a female, human-like, about 6'6" tall, and covered with a coat of thick greyish-red hair about 1 1/4 inches long. The hair on its head was about 12" long but the hair on its face, was shorter. The cheekbones were prominent and the lips jutted out.

In 1957, a middle-school teacher in biology out of Zhejiang Province claimed to have obtained the hands and feet of a "man-bear" that had been killed by local peasants. The appendages were believed to belong to a primate since they looked like the hands of an ape or large monkey. It was finally decided that they might possibly belong to an enormous monkey of some unknown kind.

In June. 1977, Xinhua News Agency of China issued a report to the worldwide media.

Hundreds of very large footprints, like a man's but much larger, had been seen in the forests of Shennongjia National Park, a mountainous region in central Hubei Province. The report came from Wang Fanychen, head of the privately run Committee for Research on Strange and Rare Creatures. The preliminary conclusion was that the prints were made by two animals walking on two legs.

The biggest footprint was 15 in. long, similar to a man's but larger. They were different from bears or other known animals. It was believed the creature making the prints weighed about 440 lbs. Wang led a team of 30 scientists through the park the previous summer and had found nothing. He vowed to continue to search for the fabled 6'6", red-haired, human-like creatures that are part of the local folklore. Last winter, he had found similar footprints left by two other creatures in the park.

Wang urged caution and warned researchers not to jump to swift conclusions without having hard scientific evidence. His theories included: an unknown primate; maybe a bear; or a monkey; or a missing evolutionary link between apes and humans.

In May of 2000, Xinhua News Agency decided to use the American term of bigfoot instead of the term Yeren.

Guided tours were to be given along the periphery of Shennongjia Nature Reserve. Tourists would be able to visit the roads where the local residents claimed to see bigfoot, but the tourists would not be permitted to go further into the Reserve. Guided tours were part of the Yangtze Three Gorges International Tourism Festival in Yichang City, September 30 to October 30, 2000.

In October of that year, a team of paleoanthropologists from Beijing along with local researchers and reporters discovered 16" long footprints; some long, brown hair; and chewed corn cobs in Shennongjia. The possibility of a bear was ruled out by Yuan Zhenxin, a paleoanthropologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Pan Wenshi, Life Sciences Professor from Beijing University visited the Nature Reserve. He believed that it was not an ideal living environment for primates with four hands because of the frequent human activities and a shortage of broad-leaved trees and berries in the forest.

Wang Fanchen, scientist and head of the Committee for the Search for Rare Animals and Plants, said that repeated attempts to find bigfoot were disappointing. However, a few scientists do believe in the possibility that such a half-man, half-ape creature still exists in the forests of China. Reported sightings of bigfoot in the Tibet autonomous region in southwest China are still made.

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Nancy

This Post By TCC Team Member Nancy Marietta. Nancy has had a lifelong interest in the paranormal and cryptids. Nancy is also a published author and her book, The Price of war, has been met with great reviews.

[Please Note: Sadly Nancy passed away at the first of January, 2022. We will continue to honor her and her research by sharing her work. RIP Nancy. -Thomas]

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