Chinese religions incorporate a considerable amount of what is regarded as superstition in the West. Chinese seek out fortunetellers in Buddhist temples and burn ghost money at Taoist temples to win the favor of gods that patronize certain professions. Feng shui—the Chinese technique of harnessing the powers of supernatural forces by making sure objects are in harmony with the universe—is used to position buildings, windows, beds, ancestors graves and even Christian churches.
Fortuneteller in 1901
Many Chinese are obsessed with lucky numbers, talisman and auspicious dates. Businessmen consult fortune tellers about important business decisions. Farmers make offerings to rice field gods before planting their crops. Families consult astrologers to fix wedding dates. Chinese with problems seek help from fortunetellers or monks rather than psychiatrists or counselors. Sometimes it seems like the only Chinese who do not embrace superstition are the Communists, who dismiss it as feudal and bourgeois.
The prevailing view is that Communism mitigated superstition in mainland Chinese China and the Chinese there are less superstitious than Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. But that may not necessarily be the case. After the Shanghai-based Want Want Co. ran an advertisement for snack with the slogan “If you eat this cracker you’ll get rich,” sales for the snack soared. The company was forced to pull the plug on the ads after people began complaining about losing their opportunity for riches if they didn’t eat the cracker.
According to one survey, 80 percent of Chinese visit fortunetellers, the majority of business people believe in the god of fortune, one sixth believe in the existence of gods and demons, and one twelfth said they had seen a ghost. Some critics have asserted that Chinese seek out superstitions as solutions to their troubles rather than facing their problems directly.
According to an old Chinese folk tale if you can peel the skin from an apple at midnight in one unbroken piece you can see the future in a mirror. If the peel breaks a ghost appears. American children used to be told if they dug a whole through the earth they would end up in China.
Good Websites and Sources: Chinatown Connection chinatownconnection.com ; Life 123life123.com ; Everyday Superstitions associatedcontent.com ; New York Times on Earthquake superstitions nytimes.com ; Old Book on Superstitions archive.org/ or Old Book PDF Fileus.archive.org/2/items ; Five Elements chinatownconnection ; I Ching Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; I Ching translation deoxy.org ; China Vista chinavista.com ;
Links in this Website: FOLK RELIGION IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; SYMBOLS AND LUCKY NUMBERS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; CHINESE LUNAR CALENDAR AND ZODIAC Factsanddetails.com/China ; FENG SHUI AND QI QONGFactsanddetails.com/China ; RELIGION, FOLK BELIEFS AND DEATH ( Main Page, Click Religion) Factsanddetails.com/China
Fortunetelling in China
Modern fortuneteller in Chengdu
Modern fortuneteller in ChengduTo offer advise, bring good luck and predict the future, fortunetellers in China use Chinese astrology (based on Chinese New Year signs and date and time of birth), palm and face readings, feng shui, name analysis, various kinds of divining coins and objects such as I Ching hexagrams.
Once banned by the Communists, fortunetellers are consulted today by brides searching for ideal marriage partners; by supervisors making hiring choices; and by store owners picking names of their business, the most auspicious time to open, and the best floor plan and orientation of the rooms.
Fortuneteller clients generally want advise on their love life or predictions on money, business or success in the future. After consulting a fortuneteller one restauranteur told the New York Times he decided to open his business in the slow season because the date was auspicious and to relocate his kitchen because rooms with fire should face south.
Often fortunetelling is regarded more as form of scholarship than mysticism and is often associated with Taoism. One fortuneteller told the Times of London, “Every country has astrologers, but in the West it is not based on a system of disciplines and the handing down of learning, but rather on inspiration.”
Mao is said to have often sought the advise of fortunetellers, usually asking them questions about his appointments, enemies and allies.
Fortunetellers in China
Fortunetellers sometimes are asked to analyze the Chinese characters in the names of a young men and women to see if they are suitable for marriage. Some modern fortunetellers stake out gynecology clinics, offering to provide the fortunes of future children using special computer programs.
Taoist fortunetellers display 100 varnished bamboo slivers and ask their customers to choose one. The fortunetellers then look up the numbers that appear on the slivers and read the corresponding fortunes, which are something like: “Everything you are doing is in harmony with the heavens. All the people you will meet are good.”
One Taoist fortunetller told the Times of London he began his studies at age 15 after a Taoist priest told his parents they better hand the boy over to him or something terrible would happen. The parents refused and the boy became ill and lost his sight. After starting his Taoist training his sight returned. Today the Taoist fortunetller is sought out by government officials and wealthy businessmen. “It’s a normal human need to want to know,” he said. The fortuneteller is a strong believer in the unalterability of fate, saying you can’t change the future, “You can only change the scale of events.”
”Physiognomists” are people who predict the future by reading faces and palms. Among the things they look for are big ear lobes, like those often found on statues of Confucius and Buddha, which connote wisdom and fame, and a gap between the teeth, which predicts wealth. Findings from these observation are usually described in conjunction with information about personality characteristics based on the year, date and hour of birth listed in ancient charts. Palm readers. Book: Vem>Chinese Palmistry by Henning Hai Lee Yang (Chrysalis Book, 2003).
Ancient Divinations in China
Oracle bone
Divination has been used for more than 3,000 years in China to predict events and seek heaven’s approval.
Priests from the Shang Dynasty (1700-1100 B.C.) practiced an unusual form of divination that involved placing heated rods in grooves carved into specially-prepared ox scapulae (shoulder bones) and turtle plastrons (part of their shells). The ensuing cracks were read for “auspicious” and “inauspicious signs” and messages from natural spirits or ancestors. The predictions, often made by the king rather than a diviner, and answers were engraved on the bones. Over 100,000 of these “oracle bones” have been found, mostly in storage pits in Xiaotun in Henan.
The prominence given oracle bones in the Shang dynasty gives the impression that superstition held a very high place in the everyday life of the ancient Chinese. Animism (the worship of natural spirits), fertility rites, cults and ancestor worship were also present in the Shang dynasty, and many of these practices still have enthusiastic followings in many parts of China today. Scientists and scholars have devoted a lot of time to the study of Taoism and Confucianism, but Chinese superstition and everyday spiritual life remain little studied.
Divination blocks are still used in many temples in Taiwan for spiritual guidance. Each crescent-shaped block has a flat and a rounded side. How a pair of the blocks falls is believed to determine the answer to a (typically yes or no) question one might ask.
I Ching
The I Ching (or “Book of Changes”) is a book of divination that first appeared during the Age of Philosophers (6th to 3rd centuries B.C.). It has been attributed to Confucius and is regarded as a Confucian text but in reality it predates Confucius and was incorporated into Confucianism when it became more mystical.
I Ching divinations involve reading 64 hexagrams made of divided lines (yin) and undivided lines (yang) in accordance with sticks thrown by a fortuneteller. The 64 hexagrams are created by combining two groups of trigrams—each composed of eight trigrams, which in turn are each composed of combinations of three divided lines and undivided lines. Each hexagram has a description and symbolic meaning, which are revealed using interpretations originally written hundreds of years before the Book of Changes appeared.
In the old days the solid lines meant yes and a broken lines meant no. These days the interpretations are not so black and white. Four broken lines over two solid lines can mean things like, “Approach has supreme success. Perseverance further. When the eighth month comes there will further misfortune.”
The I Ching is also regarded as a major treatise on the Chinese belief that philosophy and aesthetic theory are based on intuitive insight. The translation of the I Ching by Princeton University Press is 740 pages.
I Ching Reading
Describing an I Ching reading by a fortuneteller named Itoh, Rob Gilhooly wrote in the Japan Times; “Head bowed, eyes closed, silently intoning my birth date, Itoh shuffles and divides, shuffles and divides 50 long, thin bamboo sticks…With three bundles of eight sticks now separated and laid on a wooden stand in front of him, Itoh turns to a table on his left and moves around six rectangular blocks of wood while drawing short lines on a piece of paper, incessantly muttering to himself who knows what.”
“Then the procedure starts over again, as Itoh focuses on my prospects two years ahead.” Gilhooly wrote. “His head bowed, eyes closed, silently intoning, Itoh shuffles the sticks he’s holding upright in the palm of his left hand. Then he divides them, clasping bunches in either hand, raises his head and blows through them before setting one bunch back down on the table. Those he’s still holding he deftly separates into three groups of eight, laying the remainder on the table. Then it’s the blocks, the muttering and those little short lines.”
Superstitious Customs in China
House good luck symbol
Busy Chinese temples are smokey places crowded with Chinese lighting bouquets of smoking joss sticks, saying prayers, leaving behind jade orchid blossoms as offerings, throwing sheng bei (fortune-telling wooden blocks) and donating ghost money to a variety of ancient gods in return for things like good luck on the lottery, good scores for children on important exams and good business.
Temple goers burn fake money for longevity and set fire to paper cars and TV sets at funerals. In 1995, the Chinese government banned the practice of burning money during ancestor worship ceremonies because the custom was officially deemed a fire hazard and a superstition.
K’o t’ous (kowtows) are bows performed as acts of worship. Worshipers at local temples for the Dragon King bow three times before an image of the deity, place incense sticks before it, cast lots of numbered bamboo sticks and make donations. Pilgrims visiting temples sometimes line up and stop every few steps and bow.
Chinese Ghosts
Luo Ping ghost painting
On Chinese ghosts Yale historian and China expert Jonathan D. Spence, wrote in New York Review of Books, ‘The English word ‘ghost’ is not really adequate to catch the range of the Chinese term guithat it is meant to encompass demon, ogre, monster, and goblin, as well as the souls of the dead and their apparitions to the living.’
The Chinese generally recognize three kinds of ghosts: 1) “orphaned ghosts,” who left no descendants to make offerings to them; 2) “vengeful ghosts,” who have died in an accident or have been angered by some perceived injustice and need to be appeased; and 3) “hungry ghosts,” who have been condemned to their ghostly form for some misdeeds they have done. They usually have huge bellies but small mouths and are so named because they are perpetually hungry because they can never get enough food to satisfy them.
Most ghosts are regarded as women because women have traditionally been more likely to be mistreated during their lives on earth and want to seek revenge against the men that mistreated them from the otherworld after they are dead. Even today many suicidal women put on red underwear before they kill themselves because they believe it will help them seek justice from the otherworld.
Many Chinese believe that ghosts reside among the living. The writer Amy Tan wrote that her father’s ghost “sat at our dinner table and ate Chinese food. We laid out chopsticks, and a bowl for our unseen guest at every meal.” She said there were other ghosts. “I could sense them. My mother told me I could.”
Ghost Month in China
Luo Ping ghost painting
Ghost Month, or Hungry Ghost Month, begins on the full moon of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, usually around mid August, and lasts for 15 days to a month. It is a time when some Chinese believe spirits get a “summer vacation” from the other world and return to the mortal world to cause mischief and enjoy feasts, performances of Chinese opera and other activities. Firecrackers are set off to scare away dangerous ghosts while ancestors are welcomed with bonfire offerings and recitations of Buddhist scripture.
Chinese go out of their to be nice to ghosts and go about their activities with more caution than usual. Many people avoid traveling, moving into new homes, opening businesses, or getting married because ghosts associated with these endevours could cause mischief. People who die during Ghost Month are sometimes stored and buried when Ghost Month is over.
Businessmen dread Ghost Month because people are often reluctant to buy anything; partiers stay home; wives orders their husbands to come home straight form work; and tourists stay away from beach resorts out of fear of being captured by ghosts in the water. The ghost month in 2006 was particularly nasty because it was a calender year with two seventh months, when the gates of hell open and the dead walk among the living twice.
Spirits are placated with k’o t’ous (bows), prayers, offerings of chicken, pork, rice spirits and wine, and banquets and operas. Buddhists sutras are chanted to transfer merit to the dead and 2.5-meter candles are lit to honor them. After sunset many people make small fires and burn incense, paper televisions, paper Rolexes, paper cell phones, paper Mercedes Benzes and wads of “hell money” to appease the ghosts and encourage them to bring about good fortune. An old saying goes: “The bigger the flame, the better your luck will be.”
The offerings and burnings can take place at the graves of ancestors but are usually directed towards “soul tablets” of the deceased in homes and temples. Buddhist monks and Taoist priests are hired to conduct special rituals to placate “hungry ghosts.”
Operas featuring ghosts are fixtures of Ghost Month, especially in Hong Kong. Explaining the purpose of an opera for ghosts one Hong Kong theater owner told Reuters, “This show is for the gods and the ghosts, but humans can come and watch too…What we’re doing is telling the ghosts to leave us alone, not to create trouble or frighten our neighbors and kids.” Empty chairs are set out for ghosts.
Ghost Month is a Chinese holiday celebrated mostly by Chinese in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong although it is making a come back in China even though it has been denounced by the government as foolish superstition.
Renderings of Chinese Ghosts
Luo Ping ghost painting
Luo Ping was an 18th century Chinese artist who specialized in rendering ghosts. Spence wrote: ‘Luo Ping was not only innovative in ‘portraying’ his ghosts with such specificity, he kept the element of surprise constantly to the fore…In the third section of his Ghost Amusement portrayed an absorbed amorous couple in unmarred human form, gazing into each other’s eyes, while a man in the tall white hat of the underworld’s guardians prepared to lead the couple into the netherworld. The woman’s bared red shoes offered the viewer a signal that was, for the times, shockingly erotic. After four more panels of the magically displayed ghost figures, the eighth and final panel would have come with a startling force to the unprepared viewer—as two complete skeletons were portrayed standing tall and opposite each other in a clump of bare trees, dark rocks, and wild grasses. The precisely delineated specificity of these figures did not convey an auspicious message, but instead closed the scroll on a somber more than a mysterious note.’ [Source: Jonathan D. Spence, New York Review of Books, in connection with Eccentric Visions: The Worlds of Luo Ping (17331799): an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 6, 2009 January 10, 2010]
In one series of Luo Ping scrolls he art historian Yeewan Koon wrote: ‘Half naked with bald pates and small swollen stomachs, the two figures also recall the world of hungry ghosts, one of the Buddhist realms of existence. But the human emotions on the faces of Luo’s ghosts place them in a gray consciousness that lurks between the real and the otherworldly. In this painting, Luo has created an ethereal existence by making his ghosts both strikingly familiar, through their human pathos, and evocatively strange,through their physical deformities. “ [Ibid]
Koon wrote: ‘The second leaf is a contrast of types: a skinny, bare-chested ghost with an official’s hat follows a fat, bald ghost in tattered clothes against an empty background. The oscillation between specificity of types and ambiguity of situation allows room for a range of interpretations; some viewers were prompted to read this scene as phantasmagoric social commentary. [One scholar], for example, a Hanlin academician and playwright, described the figures in leaf 2 as a ‘slave ghost’ and his master, whom he then compared to corrupt Confucian officials. “
This ‘urge to rationalize the ghosts as allegories of human behavior,’ adds Koon, ‘is derived in part from the theatrical immediacy of the images,’ and in this sense the ghost paintings catch the tensions and contrasts that were coming to dominate this time in China’s history—as well as the layers of religious euphoria that lay behind the alternate reading of the scrolls title as a ‘realm of ghosts,’ a literalness of interpretation that Luo Ping deliberately fostered by his repeated claims that he had seen the ghosts in person on many occasions. This claim, writes Koon, was a part of Luo Ping’s ‘invented persona as an artist who saw and painted ghosts,’ a persona that ‘set him apart in a capital teeming with talent.”
Ghosts and Pearl S. Buck
Spirits of five planets
The writer and dissident Liao Yiwu met one man in prison who was there because he burned is wife alive, convinced he was possessed by an evil dragon. The man converted to Christianity and prayed everyday, “hoping that evil dragon will not come back and harm people again.”
Some villagers say that ghost no longer exist because Mao got rid of them in 1957. Even so, to hedge their bets perhaps, they wear charms with clusters of old coins. “The more coins the more you can avoid unclean ghosts,” one village women told the writer Amy Tan.
Many Chinese believe in animals spirits. The fox spirit is particularly well known. So too are the rabbit and snake. Some people protect their house from the fox’s influence with a circle incense.
Many Chinese believe that certain people have the ability ro see the spirit world. Clairvoyants are called mingbairen, “those who understand.” They were discouraged in the Mao era but have made a comeback in recent years.
Chinese Ghostbuster at Work
Describing a Chinese ghostbuster at work in Singapore, Philip Lim of AFP wrote: “The corner looked empty…’There’s an old woman standing there, wearing an old blue dress, and she has curly hair,’ professional exorcist Chew Hon Chin told his stunned client in the brightly-lit living room. ‘Let’s ignore her for now. Let me clear your house of dirty stuff first and I’ll move her out later,’ the 64-year-old Chew told housewife Zhang Qiao Zhu, who hurriedly led him to one of the flat’s bedrooms.” [Source: Philip Lim, Agence France-Presse, February 12, 2011]
“Inside, the stern-faced Chew produced a pair of metal rods bent at a 40-degree angle, stared at the black balls swaying gently at each end and finally pointed to a closed cupboard. ‘There is a blue towel with a striped pattern inside,’ Chew told Zhang in Mandarin. ‘Take it out and remove it from the room.’ Zhang, 56, complied meekly, not questioning Chew’s pronouncements or his apparent ability to peer through closed wardrobe doors to identify “tainted” objects within.”
“Chew exorcises ghosts and repels curses for a living, and the word “Ghostbusters” is spelled out in English in a red sign with gold lettering above the entrance to his shop. Zhang called him when she sensed there was something strange in her neighbourhood, or more specifically her house, after feeling someone — or something — choking her every night whenever she tried to sleep.”
“On a another house call, Chew used his metal rods to pinpoint what he said was the spirit’s location, then flung coarse salt into a small bronze urn filled with burning charcoal. A helper tossed in onion skins to produce an acrid burst of smoke. ‘Ghosts are afraid of this smell, when the salt crackles it’s like an explosion to ghosts and they will run,’ Chew said confidently.” Later he took his clients to a quiet clearing in suburban Singapore, where he lit a ring of fire around them and instructed them to step over it. After the ritual, the clients were soaked in a tub of herb-spiced water. ‘Fire burns away all the evil from your body, water cleanses the soul,’ Chew said.”
Luo Ping ghost painting
China Ghostbuster’s Story
“Chew—a BMW-driving former nightclub owner—said business was good in predominantly ethnic-Chinese Singapore, where religion and superstition remain deeply rooted despite mass affluence. Chew, who says he handles three to four cases a day, offers services from “luck enhancement” costing 88 Singapore dollars (68 US) to “deceased appeasement” at “100 dollars per soul” — although more difficult spirits command prices reaching into the thousands.” [Source: Philip Lim, Agence France-Presse, February 12, 2011]
“Chew said he acquired his skills after being cured of a curse placed by a vengeful former employee whom he had sacked. He vomited blood, mosquitoes and metal filings for more than 10 years, Chew claimed. After his recovery, Chew said the supreme Taoist deity known as the Jade Emperor visited him, made him a “godson” and told him the secrets of divining and exorcism, which entailed 108 days of meditation on a deserted island in neighbouring Indonesia.”
“Today he says has a kind of sixth sense. “I have the eye of the heavens — when you come into my office I can immediately see the bad things behind you,” the devout Taoist told an AFP reporter, pointing to the supposed location of a “third eye” on his forehead. Chew said this enhanced vision allows him to detect malevolent energy emanating from specific items which he describes in painstaking detail to customers visiting his shop.”
“Chew’s shop, situated in a shopping mall a 15-minute drive from the financial centre, also doubles as a ghostly jail, with sealed plastic “cells” containing objects discovered during his work lining a wall beside an elaborate altar to the Jade Emperor. Vials containing dark liquids, macabre finger-sized dolls and wooden carvings of faces beneath an ominous sign saying: ‘Nice to see, fun to touch. Once broken, more business for us!’”
Chew was sanguine about his close proximity to the spirit world, “As a policeman or soldier, I should not be afraid of criminals or war. As a ghostbuster, I should definitely not be afraid of ghosts, in fact ghosts should be afraid of me!”
Luo Ping ghost painting
Light Gray Life Solutions
Light Gray Life Solutions, situated in a basement in a historic district of Beijing, does brisk business selling “spirit bottles”— empty bottles with things like “Calmness,” “Passion and Patience” and “Meaningful Connection” printed on the bottle’s label— for $1.45 a piece. Purchasers are expected to put their problems in the bottle and draw confidence from them. The biggest sellers are “Courage to Change,” “Sense of Security,” “Tolerance,” “Unconditional Love” and “Great Wisdom.” The idea came from a Danish designer, Mags Hadstrom, who set up a “soul market” in Shanghai in 2007 to encourage people in China to treasure nonmaterial things.
On accusation that he was defrauding people, the owner of Light Gray Life Solutions told the Times of London, “We know there is nothing but air in the bottles and so do our customers. People can put their own problems into them. They can use the bottle to represent whatever they want. He said the shop sold about 100 bottles a day after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.
Abnormal Events in China
The opening up of China has resulted in an increase in the number of reports of abnormal phenomena there. Among the amazing things that have been reported are children who cut apples in half without touching them, youngsters who read Chinese characters on pieces of paper stuffed in their armpits, and psychic healers who X-ray people with their eyes and replace missing body parts. In northern China, it is said, there is a hill that causes cars to flip over without warning. At Peng Li Pagoda in the Peng Li islands, the legendary residence of the immortals, ghostly images reportedly have been captured on video tape. Mysteries, a magazine devoted to paranormal activities, has a circulation of 250,000.
There are said to be between 1,000 and 2,000 Chinese versions of Big Foot on the loose in the forest of central China, particularly in Shennongjia Nature Reserve in Hubei Province. One man who said he had two conversations with the creature, said it was about two meters tall, covered by reddish brown hair, had long limbs, emitted foul odors, and communicated with gestures and bird sounds. One Big Foot pursuer told the Los Angeles Times, “Bigfoot in America is fake science. In China, it is true science.” The military has participated in Bigfoot expeditions in Shennongjia that reportedly turned up hair, footprints, teeth and feces from the creature.
Paektu Mountain on the border of North Korea and China contains a deep crater lake, which is reportedly the home of a Chinese version of the Loch Ness monster. Many think the creature sighted was probably a black bear going for a swim. [Source: Lonely Planet]
Grainy video taken by a tourist that was shown on Chinese television in 2007 reportedly showed a dozen “monsters” swimming just below the surface in Lake Kanasi in the Heavenly Mountains in Xinjiang Province. Stories have been told for centuries of legendary beasts living in the depths of the lake that occasionally snatch cows, sheep and horses that come to the lake to drink. A study done on the 1980s concluded that the monsters are most likely large members of the salmon family.
UFOS in China
There have been thousands of reports of UFOs in China. Strange glowing objects in the sky seen by a hundred or more people make the front pages of newspapers and are reported on the main television networks. A magazine devoted to UFOs, UFO Research, boasts 400,000 readers. The UFO Research Association has branches un every province except Tibet. [Source: Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times]
Thousands of events have been documented by the UFO Research Association. Among them was the unexplained appearance of a large glowing ball on June 18, 1982 seen by millions of people across northern China. On December 11, 2000, a patch of golden light was spotted moving through the sky above Pusalu, a village near Beijing. The village secretary told AP, “Some say it was caused by an earthquake. Some say it was a UFO. Some say it was a ray of Buddha. I’m telling everyone to call it an auspicious sign.” Other unexplained events include a mysterious spiral of light observed in Sichuan and an unexplained “storm” that leveled a pine forest in Gizhou. A rocket scientist and honorary director of UFO Research said, “Some of sightings are real, some are fake, and with others it’s unclear.”
In 1999, A Beijing man claimed he was beamed aboard a space craft and forced to develop supernatural powers so he could cure other human beings. Another man, who claimed he was kidnaped by aliens in a forest in 1996, said he was experimented with in horrible ways and was told do deliver an important message: “Don’t make war—and protect the environment.”
The Journal of UFO Research is China’s premier publication devoted to investigating the paranormal. A typical issue is mostly made up of stories has anything to do with UFOs. The maincover feature of the issue that cam out in March 2009 is all about poltergeists while the second feature article is a translation of ‘The Top Ten Ways to Destroy the Earth’ by Sam Hughes, to which the magazine has added the subtitle ‘UFO Top Ten.’ None of the destruction methods is UFO-related. Most of the UFO content consisted of summaries of UFO reports in the Chinese media over the past few decades. [Source: Danwei.org, March 24, 2009]
Another man said he was abducted by aliens that lived on planet positioned directly over Beijing. The man said the aliens have learned to live to be over a thousand years old by consuming a diet of mushrooms and mineral water. Yet another man said he happened upon a spacecraft in the Red Flag Forest in Heolongjang province and was taken hostage by three-meter-tall aliens and forced to have sex with their women. He told UFO researchers, “They said they came to escape tragedy at home, collect sperm and survey the earth.”
Yeren, Chinese Bigfoot
The “Yeren,” or “Wild Man” is an ape-like Bigfoot creature said to live deep in the remote mountains in Hubei Province in Shennongjia Nature Reserve. More than 400 people have claimed to have seen it in the Shennongjia area but no hard evidence has been found to prove its existence. It is also referred to as ‘Bigfoot’ after the legendary North American ape-man.[Source: Xinhua, October 9, 2010]
According to witnesses, the creature, which walks upright, is described to be more than 2 meters tall as an adult and has a gray, red or black hairy body.
China organized three high-profile scientific expeditions to search for the Yeren the 1970s and 1980s. Researchers found hair, footprints, excrement and sleeping nests that were said to belong to it, but no hard evidence was reported. The hairs were sent to different research institutions and universities in several cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan for identification in the 1980s. All of them returned similar test results – the hair samples did not match either humans or any known animals. [Source: Xinhua, October 9, 2010]
Scientists blamed poor technological support and ‘unscientific searching methods’ for the failure of the previous searches. For example, mass mountain searches adopted in previous expeditions wasted a lot of time and energy, according to scientists, as the Shennongjia Nature Reserve has a total area of 3,200 square kilometers, which has hundreds of square kilometers of primeval forest that have not been visited by man before. [Ibid]
New Expedition to Search for the Yeren
In October 2010, Chinese scientists announced that they were considering launching a high-profile search for the Yeren in Hubei province, nearly 30 years after the last organized expedition to seek the legendary beast in the early 1980s. The expedition leader is Wang Shancai, a 75-year-old expert with the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the vice president of the Hubei Wild Man Research Association, an organization made up of more than 100 scientists and explorers set up in November 2009. [Source: Xinhua, October 9, 2010]
“Unlike expeditions three decades ago, the better technological support will help us get closer to solving the mystery,” Wang said. “We are now working together with the China Three Gorges University to develop long-time energy-supply devices to support cameras that will be installed in the ape man’s possible habitat.’ Wang is an archaeological anthropologist who has been studying the mysterious creature for more than 30 years.
The searching method will be different this time: scientists have already narrowed down the searching areas into specific targets — caves, as years of study show that the half-human, half-ape creatures are most likely to inhabit caves, said Luo Baosheng, also a vice president of the association. “We will have three expedition teams search every cave in three important regions in Shennongjia where the unidentified beast would be mostly likely to appear,’ Luo said.
Cults and Sects in China
Between 1996 and 1999, according to Beijing sources, 10,000 sects were disbanded and 10,000 leaders were imprisoned in Hunan Province alone.
Zhong Gong is qi gong-based movement somewhat similar to Falun Gong. It operates a network of schools and healing centers based on a particular brand of qi gong. Zhong Gong healers claim they can heal patients with brain tumors by pointing fingers at their head. Members claim they have paranormal powers and the ability to go without food for months. One hospital was shut down for practicing unlicensed medicine.
Zhong Gong leader, Zhang Hongbao, worked as farmer and as metallurgist for a gold mine. He studied qi gong in his spare time and opened his own qi gong school in 1987. In 2000, he sought asylum in the United States after being accused of fraud and raping female members and was a suspect in a murder investigation.
See Evangelical Protestants.
Image Sources: Univewrsity of Washington; United College in Hong Kong; Luo Ping ghost painting from the Met in New York, Nelson-Atking Museum, Ressel Fok collection
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
© 2008 Jeffrey Hays
Last updated July 2011
