The Shennongjia Wildman: Forestry Officials Meet the Yeren at Chunshuya, 1976

Shennongjia is a mountain forestry district in Hubei province, China. In 1976, a report from its own senior officials sent scientists and soldiers into its forests after a creature called the Yeren. The wildman.

May 14, 1976. Before dawn. Six people were driving back to Shennongjia after a meeting in Shiyan. Chen Liansheng, 29, of the district party office. Revolutionary committee deputy directors Ren Xinyou and Su Jiaguo. She Quanqin, of the finance and trade political department. Zhou Zhongyi, head of the agriculture bureau. And the driver, Cai Xinzhi.

At Chunshuya, a pass at about 1,700 metres where Fang County meets Shennongjia, the driver saw a strange animal on the road. It was hunched over, walking toward them. "Look, there's a wild goat ahead!" It was not a wild goat at all. The officials got out and surrounded it, the headlamps still on the creature. One threw a stone at its rump.

Chen described what stood in the light. A big fellow about 1.9 metres tall, red hair all over, walking upright. Its ears stood up above the top of its head. Its face was like a donkey's. Its eyes were like a person's. The arms were short, with long hair. The lower body was long and stout, like the hind legs of an ox. No hair on its buttocks. No tail.

The standoff lasted 20 seconds or more. The creature grabbed the thorny brush on the bank to climb. It failed twice. Then it turned, stepped over the roadside ditch and fled into the bushes. Another account says it broke through the circle and vanished up the slope into dense forest.

Red hairs were reportedly collected at the site. On May 17, an 884-character telegram asked for experts. Sources differ on whether it went to the People's Daily or the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1977 the academy and Hubei province launched the Northwest Hubei Strange Animal Scientific Expedition. It had 110 members from 16 institutions, including 56 scouts from the Wuhan Military Region. Zhou Guoxing of the Beijing Natural History Museum headed its data group. The team found hundreds of hairs and footprints, the largest 42 cm long. No direct evidence of wild men was found. The expedition did lead to the Shennongjia Nature Reserve.

The hunt went on. In 1980 and 1981, expedition leader Meng Qingbao reported 1,000 footprints stretching for about a mile. In 1981 the China Wildman Research Society offered ¥10,000 for a live Yeren. A 1995 expedition led by Jia Lanpo found nothing conclusive.

A forensic unit at a Wuhan hospital once suggested the hair could belong to "an as yet unknown higher primate." Later analyses found human hair dyed red, bear hair and fungus. Footprints proved to be human prints that had slid on slopes. Zhou Guoxing came to see the wildman as an illusion caused by known animals such as brown bears and stump-tailed macaques. No account accuses the six officials of inventing what they saw. Still, the academic consensus of the 21st century is blunt. There is no wildman in Shennongjia.

Believers remain. Wang Shancai, founder of the Hubei Wild-men Investigation Institute, insists: "Many people have seen it… I believe this strange being exists." Paleoanthropologist Zhao Lingxia replies that "we need bones to verify the existence of a species." Today a statue of a female Yeren with child stands in the reserve. It all began with a jeep, a mountain road and 20 seconds in the headlights.