CHINA DAILY Thursday, April 14, 2016
CHINA
7
GROUND LEVEL: PEOPLE
Breeder raises venomous snakes for market
Still, it is impossible to avoid
Farmer pulled family out of poverty by selling serpents to restaurants
the inevitable. In 2011, as Luo’s snake business started to show promising results, he was bitten.
By YANG JUN and ZENG JUN in Liping, Guizhou
- “I was once the owner of a
- “It felt worse than being
restaurant and guitar factory stung by a bee and that is the in Guangdong province, but first time I faced a life-or-
A farmer who swapped rais- the financial crisis in 2008 death situation,” Luo said. ing crops for breeding venom- took nearly everything from ous cobras and other less- me,” Luo said.
Even now, he has kept the incident from his parents and
- deadly snakes, lifting his
- Seeking another business, children. Only his wife is
family out of poverty in just a he learned that snakes are aware of what happened and few years, is eager to share his quite popular as food in “she’s been nagging at me ever skills with other villagers in Guangdong province and the since”, Luo said.
- Southwest China’s Guizhou Guangxi Zhuang autonomous
- “She’s fine with me breeding
province. region. Hunting wild snakes is snakes, since it’s profitable, In a peaceful courtyard in strictly prohibited in China, so but I have to get rid of the Liping county’s Niujiaowan the demand for farmed snakes deadly ones, such as the village, a neat row of bunga- is quite large. lows is home to thousands of To master the skills of snake cobras.” It costs about 80 yuan ($12) snakes, including the vibrant- handling and breeding, Luo to raise a snake that can be ly patterned kingsnakes that spent nearly a year as an sold for more than 130 yuan in useconstrictiontosubdueand apprenticeatvariousbreeding the current market, Luo said.
- kill their prey.
- bases across the country. In
- “Snakes are asleep most of
“Taming snakes is way hard- 2009, hereturnedtohishome- time, soittakeslesslaborcomer than raising regular animal town and opened his own pared with traditional animal
- species,” said 40-year-old Luo breeding base.
- husbandry, such as pig breed-
Luo Han grabs a kingsnake bred in his snake farm at Niujiaowan village, Liping county in Guizhou province.PHOTOS PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY
Han, who owns the breeding houses.
“The biggest concern was a ing,” he said.
- worry about snake bites and
- Luo’s company breeds more
- Luo wears special gloves the emergency care needed than 9,000 snakes
- a
- year,
and uses other equipment to should someone be bitten by a which brings in revenue of pull a snake out of its pit. He snake while taming it,” Luo about 1 million yuan. He is
- tightly presses on the snake’s said.
- looking to share his know-
head to ensure it won’t be able to attack anyone. As experienced as Luo is have, Luo built the breeding today, he didn’t start his career houses in an isolated area and people, like I used to be, to join as a snake farmer. added three fences to ensure the breeding business,” he Born and raised in the prov- safety. said. ince’s mountainous area, Luo’s “I always keep a first aid kit,
In order to assuage any wo- ledge and snake-farming skills rries his fellow villagers might with other villagers.
“I’d like to help more poor
family was poor during his as well as antivenoms, at my Zhao Kai contributed to this childhood, and he was forced office just in case,” Luo said, story. to drop out of school as a teen- adding that mastering those agertofindworkinthecoastal medical skills is fundamental Contact the writers at yang-
- regions.
- for every snake handler.
Cobras and their eggs at one of Luo’s snake-breeding houses.
Luo checks the condition of his snake eggs.
Around China
CHONGQING
- tried in vain for more than two
- in the restaurant and enter-
- police mediation. Wan met
- mobile phone sent out a text
- the knife, which destroyed any
years to wipe out his bad credit tainment business in Spain, record, which he claims result- decided to return to the mained from a bank error. Zhao Kai, land and settled down in Liu’s
- Tong’s wife online. The married reading “I miss you” for no
- fingerprint evidence. Fangshan
people’s court said Li had committed the crime of helping others destroy evidence.
Fisherman washed away by flood
A resident of Wuxi county is still missing after being
- couple have a 2-year-old child.
- apparent reason. He said he
was harassed and disturbed by the large volume of spam messages. Local experts said Yuan’s mobile phone number might have been cloned.
HUASHANG DAILY
CHINA YOUTH NEWS
27, found that he had a poor credit score in 2013 due to three loans he allegedly took out in 1996 and never paid back. “I was only seven then and could not borrow money,” Zhao said. However, despite repeated attempts, he still cannot obtain a credit card. village. A wedding ceremony was organized last year.
CHINA YOUTH NEWS
BEIJING TIMES
SHAANXI
washed away by a flood on April 3. The man was fishing in a river when he was hit by a flash flood caused by heavy rain the day before. Despite intensive search efforts, he has not yet been found.
Car with fake license plate seized
Man set 12 cars alight, damaged 25
Naked man lay in road to con a driver
A 53-year-old man in Chaoyang district set 12 cars on fire and damaged 25 more within a month. Police received numerous reports about early morning arson attacks in Shibalidian village, where the man, surnamed Wang, lived. He denied burning the cars, but was detained due to with a year reprieve for
Abducted son finds parents
On Monday a man in Wenling stripped off all his clothes and lay in front of an oncoming car in an apparent attempt to con a female driver out of compensation. Onlookers, who took several pictures and videos of the event, said the man slaughtering and cooking three protected sparrowhawks in Dazhu county. He was also fined 1,000 yuan by the county people’s court. Huang was detained and brought for trial after he sent photos of the dead birds to his QQ application in December. The photos raised concerns from the local public procurators about the slaughter of wild birds that are under the State’s protection.
CHONGQING EVENING NEWS
A man in Ziyang county who was abducted at the age of 3 has been reunited with his parents after 19 years. Accompanied by his adoptive father, 22-year-old Xiao Wei returned home on Monday. He was abducted from Henan province in March 1997 and sold to his adoptive father for 13,000 yuan, but his mother, surnamed Xiang, never stopped searching for him. A DNA test conducted in March proved that Xiao Wei was Xiang’s son.
HUASHANG DAILY
HUASHANG DAILY
ZHEJIANG
Expressway suicide attempt averted
A woman was talked down from an apparent suicide
Billionaire falls for village woman
A car with fake license plates copied from another vehicle has been seized by police after it was spotted by the original car’s owner. The man, surnamed Zhang, saw the car while out walking with his wife in a housing estate in Shangluo. The car with the fake license plate was the same make, model and color as Zhang’s car. refused to get up, insisting he had been knocked down. He was later removed from the scene by police. attempt after police reminded her that her child was waiting for her at school. At about 10:45 am on April 4, police were called to attend to the woman, who was threatening to throw herself off a bridge above an expressway. She was talked down after a three-hour standoff, when police told her that school had finished and her child was waiting for her.
CHONGQING EVENING NEWS
incriminating evidence. Investigations are ongoing.
BEIJING MORNING NEWS
TAIZHOU EVENING NEWS
Thieves tunneled into warehouse
HUAXI NEWS
Compensation paid for affair
A migrant worker, surnamed Tong, has received 2,000 yuan in compensation from a man who had an affair with his 19-year-old wife. Tong discovered the affair after he returned home to Jiaxing following the Qingming festival earlier this month. He asked the man, surnamed Wan, to pay him 3 million yuan compensation, which was negotiated down to 2,000 yuan with
Three men who stole 240 iPhones have been jailed for up to 12 years. The men, surnamed Chang, 30, Jiang, 38 and Lei, 36, stole the mobile phones by tunneling into a warehouse on the night of Dec 13, 2014. The stolen phones were valued at more than 2.4 million yuan. All three men have also been ordered to pay fines of between 110,000 yuan and 120,000 yuan.
BEIJING
A billionaire has given up all his property overseas to marry a village woman and become a farmer in Yunhe county. Yao Nanshan, a 57-year-old overseas Chinese from Spain, met his wife Liu Lijuan after he missed the last bus out of the village in July 2013, while
Wife washed murder weapon
Bank security staff stole cash
HUASHANG DAILY
A woman, surnamed Li, has been sentenced to four months house arrest with a six-month reprieve for helping her husband, surnamed Zhang, wash a knife he used to stab a man to death. Zhang killed the man and injured another after he quarreled with them a year ago. He then asked his wife to wash
A member of a bank’s security staff in Weinan used money from a wallet that had been handed in to buy a mobile phone and cigarettes. The woman who found the wallet called the police after handing it in on April 7, but when officers arrived at the bank they found the wallet was empty. The member of security staff confessed to spending the cash and was ordered to pay it back by the police.
Man harassed by mobile phone
A man in Xi’an sought police help after being asked “who are you?” more than 1,000 times in three days. Yuan, 23, said he started to receive the messages and calls after his
SHANGHAI
Homes used to store ashes
admiring the scenery. Liu
Burial plot prices have reached such a high in the city that some residents have taken to buying apartments to store the ashes of their loved ones. In February the price of a residential house was 37,000 yuan ($5,720) per square meter, while a grave measuring 1 sqm cost 100,000 yuan. In response, one group of residents reportedly bought a house for offered Yao lodgings and he immediately fell in love with her. Yao, who made his money
BEIJING TIMES
HUASHANG DAILY
GUANGXI
Woman hired to seduce man
300,000 yuan as a resting place for their dead relatives.
XINMIN EVENING NEWS
A woman who was hired to seduce a married man by his wife claims to have fallen in love with her target. Ah Xin, 32, met Ah Yi in 2014 after his 40-year-old wife Sang Jie employed her in an attempt to make him unfaithful. Sang said she hated her husband and wanted to divorce him, but Ah Xin claims she fell in love with Ah Yi. The husband, however, returned to his wife after he learned the truth of the affair.
HUBEI
Worker killed by falling glass
A migrant worker in Wuhan was killed after being hit by a falling pane of glass. Wang Hongmei, 44, from Henan province, was exiting a building after delivering food to a customer on April 4 when she was hit by the glass, which fell from a window on the 21st floor. Police are investigating.
WUHAN MORNING NEWS
NANGUO JINBAO NEWS
Being old
Three of more than 30 Beijing residents try to get the feeling of growing old by threading a needle while wearing a mask at an “experiencing seniors’ lives” event held by Dongsi community in Beijing’s Dongcheng district. Besides threading needles, participants also wore masks to read newspapers and carried heavy equipment to climb stairs to experience being old.
HAO FEI / XINHUA
SICHUAN
SHAANXI
Bird slaughterer and eater jailed
A man, surnamed Huang, was sentenced to a year in jail
Bank error ruined credit score
A man in Qishan county has
