Hubei Province, China

"Chinese historical documents, and many city and town annals, contain abundant records of Wildman, which are given various names," states Zhou Guoxing of the Beijing Museum of Natural History. Two thousand years ago, the poet-statesman Qu Yuan made many references to Shangui (mountain ogres) in his verses. Li Yanshow, a historian who lived during the T'Ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), stated that the forests of Hubei province sheltered a band of wildmen. Wildmen also appeared in the writings of Li Shizhen, a pharmacologist of the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644). In the fifty first volume of his massive work on medical ingredients, he described several species of humanoid creatures, including one named Fei-fei.

Li wrote: "Fei-fei, which are called man bear, are also found in the mountainous areas in west Shu (part of Sichuan Province today) and Chu division, where people skin them and eat their palms. The You mountain of Sha county, Fujian province, sees the same ones, standing about one zhang (equal to 3.1 meters [just over 10 feet]) in height and smiling to the people they come across, and are called shandaren (men as big as mountains), wildmen, or shanxiao."

In the eighteenth century, the Chinese poet Yuan Mei made reference to strange creatures inhabiting the wild regions of Shanxi province, calling them "monkeylike, yet not monkeylike."

According to Zhou: "Even today, in the area of Fang County, Hubei Province, there are still legends about maoren (hairy men) or wildmen. A local chronicle, about 200 years old, says that 'the Fang mountain lying 40 li (2 li equals one kilometer [.62 mile]) south to the county town is precipitous and full of holes, where live many maoren, about one zhang high and hair-coated. They often come down to eat human beings and chickens and dogs, and seize those who fight with them.'"

A lantern on which there is an ornament of a maoren figure was unearthed in this area during an archaeological excavation. It has been dated at 2,000 years. There have been many other reports of wildmen from the Hubei province in central China.

In 1922, a militiaman is said to have captured a wildman, but there are no further records of this incident.

Source: Cremo, Michael A. & Richard L. Thompson, Forbidden Archeology, 1996, Los Angeles, USA: Bhaktivedanta Book Publishing.