Wildman in China
11 September
2006
In the popular
notion, Shennong (Divine Farmer 神农)
is Red
Emperor who established
agriculture industry and herbal medicine
business. According to Daoism,
Shennong is Divine King of Man, one of
three Divine Kings who ranks above the
five Legendary Emperors. In any case,
Shennong is an important figure in the
history of Chinese civilisation.
Yet ironically, a
geo park in China named after him has
everything to do with the opposite.
Four Seasons
in Shennongjia
Shennong Jia is a
nature reserve located between Daba
Mountain and Sacred Daoist Mt. Wudang at
the juncture of three provinces - Hunan,
Yunnan and Sichuan. It not only has the
wild landscape that is largely untamed by
the farming industry, but a wild
reputation of being the home to wild man.
Some Chinese
volunteers have been on the hot pursuit
of the giants for decades, and since
1976, several state-sponsored expeditions
by scientists and army personnel were
also carried out. The number of
eyewitnesses to the alleged wild men
mounts to hundreds, and some locals say
they also heard them roaring.
It is like a voice
from the remote past prior to the era of
the Divine Farmer – Shennong; in the
land named after him, some tribes might
well have fled the thrall of the Chinese
civilisation.
While continuingly
fiddling about with history, these
possibly existed wild men also keep
teasing the people who think they are the
only masters of the land. The mythical
beings make themselves visible only by
their invisibility, leaving a few giant
footprints here and there for scientists
to argue among themselves, but keeping
their true identity hazy in the distant
moonlight.
Mythical
wild man in Shennongjia
It seems a curtain
of obscurity shrouded on those who defy
the verdict of Shennong, the Divine
Farmer, will never been lifted.
Or perhaps not!
Dwelling in murky
corners of the modern world are not just
those who take refugee in Shennongjia.
According to some Chinese researchers, in
the deep forest bordering Burma and
Vietnam, there might be ten thousand of
tribe people living in a pre-agricultural
existence.
Due to the
persistent efforts of some elements in
Chinese society who try to perject the
past into the present for whatever
reasons, recently 76 tribesmen and women
walked out of their ancestral home of
warm and moist forest, and travelled
across the country to resettle in a cold
and dry northeast province.
They seemingly
possess exceptional
physical abilities
that normally reserved for highly
accomplished qigong or kungfu masters.
With bare foot they climb a ladder made
of knives, stomp on a blazing wood, or
dance in a pool full of glass shreds. And
their tongue can lick through the surface
of a scorching blade.
Southwest
tribeman in Northeast
Whether these
people should be called wild men are
questionable. They may just be those who
appear sure of their allegiance and sure
of their path therefore refuse to follow
the trend. But now as they have finally
left their ancestral land, so might be
their time-honoured way of life. An era
once lost may never again return.
China
stories are told at wenhousecrafts.com
Similar
Stories:
List
of All Stories
|
