China's 1977 Military Expedition Hunts the Yeren in Shenongjia

The Chinese government once treated the hunt for the Yeren as a state-level scientific emergency, and the details are absolutely wild. I just came across a fascinating video from The Weekly Strange that dives deep into one of the most overlooked chapters in cryptid research history. While most of us are familiar with North American investigations, this one takes us across the globe to China's Hubei province, where in 1977, the government didn't just acknowledge reports of an unknown 8-foot tall bipedal entity—they launched a full-scale military and scientific expedition to find it. The Yeren, often called China's version of Sasquatch, has been part of local folklore for centuries. Historical records from the Ming and Qing dynasties consistently describe encounters with what magistrates called the "Fay" or "Moren"—a giant, hairy, tailless primate that walked upright. The legendary Jue Dynasty poet Ku Yan even referenced mountain ogres inhabiting those exact high-altitude ridges. But folklore alone wouldn't have triggered a government response in a country that was actively suppressing such reports as counterrevolutionary superstition during the Cultural Revolution. What changed everything was May 14, 1976. Six highly-placed municipal officials, including the administrative chief of the Shennongjia Forestry District Committee, were driving through a remote mountain pass near Chunui Village around 1:00 AM when their headlights illuminated a large upright creature standing in the middle of the road. For over five minutes, they observed it under direct illumination. The entity stood roughly 1.9 meters tall, had a broad hominid face with a sloping forehead, heavy brow ridge, and was covered in dense reddish-brown hair. When one official opened the jeep door to get a closer look, the entity turned and scaled a steep dirt embankment with surprising ease, vanishing into the brush. Because these weren't isolated woodsmen—they were vetted government bureaucrats—their report couldn't be dismissed as peasant superstition. It bypassed regional bureaus and went straight to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. What followed was unprecedented. In spring 1977, the Great Yeren Expedition launched under the direction of eminent paleoanthropologist Professor Zhao Guojing. Over 100 scientific specialists, including mammalogists, botanists, and anatomical pathologists, were paired with elite military tracking units and canine teams from the People's Liberation Army. The Shennongjia reserve was divided into three grid-based tracking zones with permanent high-altitude base camps. The physical evidence they recovered over nearly two years remains some of the most compelling in existence: - Footprint tracks measuring 32-42 cm, showing a completely plantigrade foot structure (walking flat like a human), with no claw marks, distinct heel strike pattern, and an elongated non-divergent big toe - Hair samples that under electron microscopy showed a unique medullary index and cuticle pattern matching no known Asiatic bear, boar, or macaque species - Complex woven nest structures deep in bamboo thickets, created by intentionally twisting and interweaving living bamboo stalks at specific geometric angles—requiring manual dexterity and planning that exceeds any known non-hominid primate The Shennongjia Biosphere Reserve itself is a prehistoric refugium worth understanding. During the Pleistocene epoch, when glacial sheets decimated Asian biodiversity, this region was spared due to its unique geography—shielded by the Daba Mountains to the north and warmed by moisture from the Yangtze River gorges. Species that went extinct elsewhere survived here, including the golden snub-nosed monkey, Chinese giant salamander, and dawn redwood. From a Darwinian perspective, if a relic higher cryptid were to persist anywhere on the Asian continent, this isolated valley offers the highest mathematical probability. The video cuts off right as the hunt shifted from scientific survey to active military tracking operation in late autumn 1977, which is frustrating because that's exactly when things would have gotten really interesting. Definitely worth watching the full episode to see what happened next. It's a powerful reminder that not every government treats these phenomena with dismissal. China took it seriously enough to mobilize state resources on a massive scale—and the evidence they collected deserves a closer look from anyone interested in the broader picture of relic hominids worldwide.