Their trip will continue throughout August, and the researchers will collect
data on the 1,000 or so different types of animals that live in Shennongjia,
including the Golden snub-nosed monkey and a white-furred bear that is only
found in the reserve.
If the researchers manage to find concrete evidence of the Wild Man, they will
have succeeded where two major previous expeditions, one in 1974 to 1981 and
one in 2010, failed.
“I simply want to put an end to the argument that it exists,” said
Wang Shancai, at the Hubei Relics and Archaeology Institute, when he set out
in 2010.
In 2005, Zhang Jiahong, a shepherd in Muyu, near the forest, told the Chinese
state media he had seen two of the creatures, with “hairy faces, eyes
like black holes, prominent noses and dishevelled hair, with faces that
resembled both a man’s and a monkey’s.
Another explorer, Zhang Jinxing, spent years living as a hermit in the
Shennongjia forest, and said he had seen footprints on 19 separate
occasions, without ever finding the beast.
However, Zhou Guoxing, a former director of the Beijing Museum of Natural
History and a paleontologist, has poured scorn on the idea that there may be
a Chinese Bigfoot.
“There is no Wild Man in this world,” he said, earlier this year.
“I’ve visited every place where the Wild Man was reported in China.
“I’ve studied everything related to the Wild Man including hair, skulls
and specimens. All of them are dyed human hair or come from monkeys and
bears.”
He claimed the local government in Hubei is simply trying to drum up tourist
revenue. And indeed the Shennongjia Nature Reserve has recently signed
agreements with Beijing to help promote package holidays to the area for
nature lovers and yeti hunters.
The name of the nature reserve comes from the Emperor Shennong and the word
jia, meaning ladder. The emperor was said to use the ladder to climb up the
area’s mountains, and it subsequently transformed into a lush forest.
Related posts:
Views: 0