Spending the days among mountains and monkeys
“October is mating season, so they could be a little restless,” the tour guide says.
She cautions us not to open our bag or stare the monkeys in the eye.
But there are monkeys everywhere as soon as we step foot in Wulongkou scenic spot in the northeast of central Henan province’s Jiyuan city — It’s home to the biggest troop of monkeys in northern China.
Some of them are sitting at rest on stone pillars, some scratching each other’s back, and some fighting each other for the limited food visitors are throwing at them.
Despite the tour guides warnings, some visitors are taking turns having their photos taken as monkeys climb all over them.
“Those monkeys are macaques, but they are unique as they have big double-lidded eyes,” the tour guide says.
“Their tails are 0.2 meters long when they are born, and they will grow thicker as they age, but they won’t grow any longer.”
Most of monkeys are 0.5 meters high and weigh 10 kilometers, with a life expectancy of about 40 years.
Wulongkou scenic spot was founded in 1982 for those monkeys, which are now under state protection, she says.
As we walk deeper into the scenic spot, more monkeys come into view, they all seem to following a man in red, as he throws a bunch of peanuts from time to time. “He’s Kuang San’ao, the king of all monkey kings here,” the tour guide says.
When Kuang rolled up his sleeves before us, I was taken aback by the long black hairs crawling all over his arms. “Perhaps I have stayed with the monkeys for too long, and their genes have rubbed off on me,” the man, who is in his 50s, says jokingly.
Kuang usually gets up at 6 am and then he will spend all day with the monkeys till 6 pm. It is his job to keep track of where the monkeys find their food and water, and where they live during the four seasons, and impact of climate change on their behavior.
“Interventions are needed in extreme cases,” Kuang says. “For example, when there is no food in winter, we will put food in places they’ve frequented,” he adds.
The scenic spot authority has also prepared tailored nutritious cuisines and medicines to help local monkeys thrive. No hunting is allowed in the Wulongkou neighborhood, and special residences have been built so the monkeys can shelter during storms and heavy snow.
With the efforts by Kuang and the scenic spot, the number of monkeys has grown from an initial 300 to more than 3,800 at the moment.
Kuang didn’t expect he would be a monkey guardian for more than two decades, since it was only a job for him to make money right at the beginning. “There were not a lot of ( job) opportunities for me back in the early 1990s, and I had to work away from home to raise my family,” he says.
He even wanted to quit after starting for a while. “It was in the depths of the mountain, and there was only the monkeys to keep me company at work,” he says. “There was no road, communications and electricity, and I had to walk the mountain roads alone on foot to survey the number of monkeys, and understand their living habits,” he says.
But the job has grown on him as the bond became closer between him and the monkeys. “They all know me after almost 30 years of time together,” he says affectionately. “We have simple communication. Whenever I am walking on the mountain road, they will call out to me as if saying hello.”
The monkeys have become as if Kuang’s babies, especially when he found that their IQ is equivalent to the three-or-four-year-old children.
“They copy us and can open a bottle of water or a canned beverage, and follow such simple orders as fetching things after training too,” Kuang explains. “It’s hilarious,” he says.
As the scenic spot is gaining increasing popularity, Kuang’s work and living conditions are improving as well. “It used to take dozens of hours for me to get daily necessities, but now everything is close at hand at the scenic spot,” he says. “The road in the mountain has been well paved, making my job much easier.”
But the thing that makes Kuang happiest has been the improving natural environment and friendly, caring tourists. “The trees have grown much lusher than before, which offers more edible things for monkeys to avoid starvation,” he explains.
And tourists are not simply coming for fun. “They are nice to the monkeys and make a point of learning more about them,” Kuang says.
The monkeys have long picked up on the tourists’ generosity, and they will come down to the area near the tourist center in the daytime, because they know tourists will give them food, he adds.
Speaking about his future plans, Kuang says he will keep doing the job as long as he can.
“It’s a joy for me to talk to tourists about the monkeys and tell them how to better protect them,” he says.
“I feel especially rewarded when some aren’t scared of the monkeys any more after I speak to them.”