In 1977 China Sent 100 Soldiers Into the Mountains to Hunt Bigfoot. What They Found Terrified Them

In 1976, the Chinese government became convinced that Bigfoot was real. They didn't call it Bigfoot, of course. They called it the Yeren, which translates literally as “wild man.” And in the spring of 1977, the Chinese Academy of Sciences mounted what is, to this day, the largest state-funded cryptid expedition in history. Over a hundred personnel, paleoanthropologists, zoologists, biologists, photographers, and soldiers from the People's Liberation Army, were sent into the mountains of central China to find it. They spent a year searching. They came back with footprints up to thirty-eight centimeters long. They came back with hair samples that lab analysis couldn't classify. They came back with an eyewitness report from a farmer who stood face-to-face with one of these creatures for a full hour. What they didn't come back with is a body. And what happened in those mountains, between the soldiers, the scientists, and whatever was out there, has been almost completely buried in the West. This is the story of how the Chinese government hunted Bigfoot. And what they actually found.