Friday, October 29, 2010

China does everything better (even Bigfoot)

October is "Monster Month" on Wisdom Quarterly

China's Yiren, "Wild Man," in Buddhist lore a Yakkha, "ogre," like the Himalayan Yeti

There's an expression about "giving the devil his due." China may be the devil in this case -- atrocities in Tibet and other ethnic provinces and getting ready to consume the consumer world -- and it deserves its due. It does everything better nowadays. It crushes the US economy (by our unpayable debt), rules exports, builds staggering supercomputers, dams, bullet trains, space programs, railroads in the Himalayas, and even accepts WalMart's penny pinching prices.

Now it undertakes a fame-making, legend-busting breakthrough -- proving that Bigfoot exists once and for all. Except in China Bigfoot is known as the Wild Man. [We maintain these creatures found around the world are yakkhas, ogres in Buddhist cosmology, a kind of intelligent ape, gorilla, simian somewhere between a human and a bonobo.] Recent discoveries of a new kind of monkey in Burma and a langur in Indonesia may be news to science, but it isn't news to the locals.

Inhabitants of mountains and forests know abominable Bigfoot creatures exist as guardians of the natural environment and possess intuition or a sixth sense that has allowed them to evade confirmed detection. Not that any proof short of many corpses and endless DNA samples, acceptance by "experts" and officials, will really convince anyone at this point. We don't really want to believe. And when we're forced to, we'll say we knew all along.

China to search for elusive "Bigfoot"

(Fox News) North America has its Sasquatch "Bigfoot," [Nepal has its Yeti, "Abominable Snowman"], and China has its [Yiren] "Wild Man."

A group of Chinese scientists are on the hunt for the Yeren, the Chinese equivalent of our Bigfoot. Scientists and international researchers refer to the Yeren as "Wild Man" and are on a renewed quest to find him.

Thirty years ago, China's Academy of Science sent three teams of researchers looking for the mysterious creature. Those teams turned up surprising results: hair, excrement, footprints, and a possible "Wild Man" sleeping nest. Alas, those findings weren't conclusive, so they areat it again.

This time around the members of the Hubei Wild Man Research Association are hoping to collect donations to help catch the legendary creature. They need $1.5 million to kick off the project.

This research is not without its merits. Over the years people have reported400 sightings of a reddish hair ape-like man that looks a lot like an Orangutan but stands nearly 7ft tall. Nicholas Redfern, one of the world's leading cryptozoologists, thinks this newest expedition in China is worthwhile because of the fossil record.

"A lot of monster stories can be traced back to myth and folk lore. What people don't know is that in this instance we actually have the fossil record of a large ape-like creature that lived in that area over 300,000 years ago," Redfern told FoxNews.com.

In fact, primatologists have jaw bones, teeth and other bones from a creature found in that area known as Gigantopithecus that would've measured nearly 9ft tall (but probably hunched like an ape). More>>

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