Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

serve), China. Also reported in Guizhou, Yunnan,
Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Gansu, Fujian, and
Anhui Provinces.
Significant sightings: Biologist Wang Zelin
saw a Wildman that was killed by hunters near
Niangniangba, Gansu Province, in 1940. It was
a female covered with grayish-brown hair and
stood about 6 feet tall. Its face was overgrown
with hair. Its teats were reddish, suggesting it
had been breast-feeding a young one recently.
On two separate days, geologist Fan Jingquan
watched two Wildmen, a female and a young
one, as they were picking wild chestnuts near
Baoji, Shaanxi Province, in the early 1950s. The
smaller one was about 5 feet tall and bold
enough to approach closely.
In 1961, a Ye-rén was reportedly killed by
road workers in the Xishuangbanna Nature Preserve
area, Yunnan Province. The Chinese
Academy of Sciences conducted an investigation
and failed to obtain any direct evidence, though
sightings persist in the area.
Yin Hongfa encountered a Ye-rén in a
forested area east of Dahei Mountain, Yunnan
Province, on May 1, 1974. It stretched out its
arms to grab Yin, but he grabbed it by its headhair
and hacked its left arm with a machete. It
ran away into the forest, leaving twenty to thirty
strands of hair in Yin’s hand.
Six officials traveling by jeep encountered a
Wildman near Chunshuya village in the Shennongjia
Forest, Hubei Province, at 1:00 A.M.on
May 14, 1976. They got out and started to surround
it, but it slipped away into the woods.
On June 6, 1977, Pang Gensheng was approached
by a hairy man 7 feet 6 inches tall in
the Qinling-Taibaishan Reserve, Shaanxi
Province. They confronted each other for an
hour until Pang hit it in the chest with a stone,
whereupon it went down a gully muttering “goro,
go-ro.”
In 1977, the Chinese Academy of Sciences
conducted a survey of Fang County and the
Shennongjia Forest Reserve and turned up a few
footprints, head-hair, and feces. A revived investigation
in 1979 and 1980 turned up the skeleton
of a “monkey child” in neighboring Sichuan
Province, though it most likely was a deformed
human.
606 YE-REN
On October 23, 1984, a small, hairy “wildman”
threw sand and stones at two young
women of Shuitou village near Rulin in western
Hunan Province. The next day, thirty-two peasants
and eleven hunting dogs tracked down and
netted the creature in a neighboring county but
not before it clawed the ear off one of its captors.
The animal was exhibited in several cities
before it was turned over to the Chinese Wildman
Research Institute and identified as a Rhesus
monkey (Macaca mulatta).
Another scientific expedition to Shennongjia
Forest from April to July 1995, headed by
Wang Fangchen, recovered more hair samples,
while a further search in June 1997 turned up
hundreds of large footprints.
In August 1999, Chinese officials investigating
Ye-rén sightings found giant footprints in
the Shennongjia Reserve.
Present status: In October 1994, the Chinese
government set up a scientific committee to
study Ye-rén evidence. Since 1995, the China
Travel Service in Hubei Province has offered a
large reward for a specimen, dead or alive, with
lesser prizes for photographs, hair, or feces.
Possible explanations:
(1) The Stump-tailed macaque (Macaca
arctoides) is found from Bhutan to Vietnam.
In China, it is known to be present in
Jiangxi, Anhui, and Qinghai Provinces. It
has dark-brown hair and a hairless, red face.
A diurnal quadruped that prefers rocky
mountain environments, it often raids crops
for potatoes and rice. An outsize variety or
subspecies could account for some sightings.
See RÉN-XIÓNG.
(2) The Golden snub-nosed monkey
(Rhinopithecus roxellana) has a thick, darkbrown
coat and light-colored hair on its
underside, ranging from orange to buff. It
has a human-looking face. The head and
body is 2 feet 6 inches long, with a tail of
roughly equal length. It lives in Tibet and
the Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, northern
Guizhou, and Hubei Provinces of China at
altitudes up to 11,000 feet. It is present in
the Shennongjia Forest. Some alleged Yerén
hairs probably come from this monkey.
(3) The Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) was