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The Yeren, or “Wildman” have persisted in stories from the central and
southern regions of China for hundreds of years. The creature is said to
average six and a half feet tall, covered in thick brown or red hair, it is
bi-pedal and is described as having a large abdominal region as well as an
ape-like snout, large ears and eyes like that of a human. The Yeren leaves
behind large footprints, up to sixteen inches long, with five toes, four small
toes held close together and a larger toe that points outward slightly.

A Yeren was supposedly killed in 1940 in the Gansu area, witnessed by
biologist Wang Tselin. Tselin stated that it was female, approximately six and
a half feet tall and covered with grayish brown hair, and a face that mingled
together the features of man and ape so that it reminded him of renderings of
primitive man. The first official investigation was began in 1961, after the
supposed killing of a female Yeren by road builders in the Xishuang Banna
area. But by the time scientists arrived, the body was gone and they
concluded that it had probably been a gibbon. However, two decades later,
Zhou Guoxing, a anthropologist, interviewed a local journalist who had taken
part in the investigation. The journalist stated that the animal killed was not a
gibbon, but something unknown that was shaped like a human.

In 1976, on May 14th, six local bureaucrats who were on their way home
from a meeting, witnessed a “strange tailless creature with reddish fur” on a
highway near Chunshuya, in the Hubei province. Turning the headlights to
high beam, the driver followed the animal and it tried to climb up an
embankment. The animal slipped and landed, almost landing on the jeep. The
passengers jumped from the vehicle and surrounded the animal, which was
now on all fours and was staring into the headlights. The witnesses were
afraid to get too close to the Yeren, so Zhou Zhongyi, one of the witnesses,
threw a rock at the Yeren’s butt, causing the animal to stand and successfully
climb up the embankment. During the next year, in 1977, the Chinese
Academy of Sciences sent over one hundred investigators into the Hubei
forest area, Shennongjia. The Shennongjia region is a vast network of steep
mountains and deep valleys where several rare species live, including the
Giant Panda. Although the Academy researchers did not see any Yeren
themselves, they interviewed witnesses and found supposed Yeren footprints,
hair and feces. Zhou Guoxing, one of the team leaders, speculated that there
appeared to be two distinct types of Yeren. One is about two meters in height,
the other about one meter in height, each type having a different kind of
footprint, the larger is the man like foot, the smaller appears to be like that of
a monkey. In 1981 Guoxing traveled to the Zhejiang province, where a small
Yeren was killed in 1957. A biology teacher had preserved the hands and feet
of the Yeren. After studying the specimens, Guoxing determined that they
belonged to a large monkey, unknown to science. He tentatively identified the
monkey as a stump tailed macaque. Shortly there-after one of the
monkeys/Yeren in question was captured and taken to the Hefei Zoo. It was
said to be primarily a ground dwelling animal, growing to heights of one
meter and being powerfully built. While the small Yeren has been somewhat
officially cataloged and identified as a rare macaque, the larger one still
evades identification. Samples of the large Yeren’s hair have been examined
in laboratories and have had surprising results. One such examination
consisted in comparing hairs from the Yeren, humans, apes, goats and pigs.
The report determined that the Yeren hairs were somewhat in between that of
humans and apes, or bears. A study of the Iron to Zinc ratio in Yeren hair
show that the ratio is 50 times higher than the human ratio, and 7 times
higher than the primate ratio, lending itself to the idea that the Yeren is some
form of higher primate. Electron microscope results were basically the same,
the Yeren hair was determined to be neither human or known primate, but
was somewhere in between with a structure close to that of humans.

Modern sightings of the Yeren occur today, at possibly a higher rate than
previous decades, with Chinese scientists taking an active stance in
researching the phenomenon. In May of 1995 scientists from the Chinese
Academy of Science, Beijing University and Beijing Normal University joined
forces to search for the Yeren, following up an advance team that began in
March of the same year. The scientists began their search in the Shennongjia
Nature Reserve in central China. The search involved night-scopes, satellite
orientation equipment and infra-red detectors. Although the scientists were
well armed with technology, and devoted to their cause, their search yielded
no results.

Its interesting to note that in China, some three hundred thousand years ago,
a creature know as GIGANTOPITHECUS supposedly became extinct, after
nearly eight million years of evolution. The GIGANTOPITHECUS is
theorized to have been a bipedal primate, a giant by any means, being eight
feet tall and weighing five hundred pounds, and living in the same area and
habitat as the modern Yeren. Some consider the giganto to be answer to the
Yeren question, and the answer to bigfoot in general. Its possible that the
Giganto never became extinct, and is living on today as the Yeren, and
possibly even as the other giant bigfoot creatures.