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.
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