Original headline: "China's 'Bigfoot' seen again, agency reports"

BEIJING, CHINA(AP) — China's version of Bigfoot has been spotted again, and this time it may have left a urine sample.

Six people, one a radio reporter, say they saw the "mythical ape-like animal" in central China's Shennongjia Nature Reserve, the official Xinhua News Agency said today. Xinhua referred to it as a "Bigfoot," after the legendary North American ape-man.

More than 100 sightings of the creature have been reported in Shennongjia in the forested mountains of Hubei province about 1,200 kilometres southwest of Beijing.

The latest witnesses were in a Jeep on a mountain road yesterday when they saw the grey creature moving quickly away from the road, Xinhua reported. It said the creature was about 1.65 metres tall and had shoulder-length black hair.

The witnesses found several footprints 30 centimetres long, freshly broken branches and a "three-metre-long patch of foul-smelling urine-like liquid," Xinhua said.

The sighting was reported to authorities and "an investigation is in full swing," the report said. It said one of the witnesses was Shang Zhengmin, a reporter for a local radio station. The others were residents.

At least three scientific expeditions in Shennongjia have searched for evidence of the creature's existence. Researchers said they found hair that didn't match either humans or known animals, but no other evidence has been reported.

Sightings of a similar creature have been reported in Tibet, although its existence hasn't been proven either.

Story originally published by The Star, Toronto / ON - June 30.03

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -> Additional story published by Fortean Times (FT175), October 2003.

Yeti urine sample
China's yeren (wildman) has again been spotted, and this time he may have left a urine sample, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Six people say they saw the "mythical apelike animal" on 29 June in Shennongjia Nature Reserve, in the forested mountains of central China's Hubei province, where there have been scores of reported sightings over the centuries.

Five local residents and Shang Zhengmin, a reporter for a local radio station, were in a jeep on a mountain road a when they turned a corner and saw the grey creature moving quickly away from the road. It was about 5 feet 5 inches (1.65m) tall with crooked arms, crooked back and shoulder length black hair. By the time the jeep had stopped, the animal had disappeared. Several 1 foot (30cm) footprints were found, along with freshly broken branches and a 10 feet (3m long ) "patch of foul-smelling urine-like liquid".


<-- Dr. Zhou Guoxing on a wild man hunt in Shennongjia in 1977

Scientific expeditions to Shennongjia in 1976 - 77, 1980, 1982 and 1988 searched for evidence of the yeren's existence.

Hair samples studied in 1993-94 at the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, indicated an unrecorded primate, closer to humans than to the great apes, although further incontrovertible evidence was lacking.

Speculation that the creature could be a descendant of Gigantopithecus, a large herbivorous primate, arose after the fossilised Gigantopithecus teeth were found in the area.

The Shennongjia mountains, after all, are home to all sorts of "living fossils", plants and animals unique to the region.

A major expedition in 1995 mounted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Bejing University failed to find any yeren evidence after hunting for four months, and the 30 scientists involved declared that supposed sightings were the result of misidentifications of monkeys, bears and other creatures. However, many saw this announcement as a means of reducing the flood of visitors to Shennongjia Nature Reserve, which threatened to cause ecological damage. Local tourism officials had offered a sliding scale of rewards for living or dead yeren specimens, photographs, video footage, hair or faeces. In 1997, hundreds of alleged yeren footprints were found in the area.

"I'm firmly of the opinion that the yeren is real," said Dai Min, deputy director of the Committee for Rare and Strange Fauna, who claimed to have had a sighting in September 1993. "Around 20 metres (66 feet) away I saw one large and two smaller wildmen. I believe it was a family. They crossed the road and climbed up an incline. They walked upright, their heads were flatter than humans, and they had long arms. They were hairy and had no tails."

This is probably the same sighting as the one made by railway surveyors in the Shennongjia region on 3 September that year. The three yeren were described as being between 5 feet 1inches (1.56m) and 5 feet 7 inches (1.7m) tall, with long dishevelled red hair, slightly rounded eyes, broad foreheads and protruding chins. Three engineers gave chase, coming within 90 feet (27m) as the creatures fled into dense forest. They gave up when they saw their quarry ploughing through the undergrowth "with superhuman speed and strength".

Later investigators found hair samples, 20 inches (50cm) footprints and droppings, analysis of which suggested the yeren were herbivorous. Around the same time, a local rumour that the son of a yeren and a shy human mother lived in seclusion in the mountains tumed out to have been based solely on a videotape of a naked microcephalic man (a "pinhead") eating a banana.

© Fortean Times (FT175), October 2003

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