Shennongjia, Home to the Wild Men?
Updated: 2007-06-15 08:47
When you visit them you can understand that animals of every size can hide easily in such places. Humans have difficulty penetrating a dense forest growing on karst. So Shennongjia is probably one of very few virgin temperate forest remaining in the world. Animals can hide easily in such places and many are recorded, such as the takin, a kind of big mountain goat, the golden monkey and the leopard.
Many botanist enjoyed seeing many interesting and beautiful alpine plants there, including a blue poppy that I thought only grew in the Himalayas. Pandas do not live here, but the bamboo on which they feed covers acres and acres of the mountain tops.
Not always, however. In fact, when you visited the place, such fields were covered with dead grey canes and only a few tender green shoots. Every five years this type of bamboo blooms and dies. It's the natural life cycle. This is one reason the pandas, that mostly feed on this plant, are sometimes starving. The grey shade of the dead bamboo, the karstic rocks and the alpine meadows covered with flowers give Shennongjia an unforgettable landscape. In fact, the place is like a sample of the mountains in the western part of China, for instance Sichuan.
Walking in the virgin forests is also an incredible experience for nature lovers. Dead trees are left where they fell. The humus layer is very thick and you can observe a wide range of interesting plants. Many of them were introduced into Western gardens at the turn of the 19th century. Explorers and adventurers like Father David, Kingdom-Ward or Farrer sent seeds of such plants that still thrive in European gardens. Roses, Philadelphus, Cotoneasters, only to name a few, grow wild here. Such great biodiversity allowed the Shennongjia Reserve to be part of the UNESCO MAB - Man and the Biosphere - network of Natural Parks.
What about the Yeren? A small exhibition tells of sightings. Unfortunately
the texts are only in Chinese but the naive paintings on glasses that illustrate
them increase the strangeness of the stories. Soldiers and peasants are depicted
watching hairy creatures appearing in the forest or among the rocks. Obviously,
nobody exactly see any Yeren, and whether they exist or not, nobody can tell.
The only thing you may certain about is that Shennongjia forest protects its
inhabitants - perhaps wild men among them. you could understand that in such a
strange place strange encounters in the forest can be turned into legends.
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