A Chinese man has reportedly been killed and eaten by six bears in Shulan, Jilin province.
Han Shigen earned a living by extracting bile from the gall bladders of his captive live bears, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
He was attacked on Monday morning while cleaning the animals’ cage, Xinhua said, quoting the Beijing News.
Xinhua said the animals were so enraged that two hours passed before it was deemed safe enough to remove his body.
Many parts of the bear, including the brain and spinal cord, have long been used in traditional Chinese medicine.
The most coveted part is the bile within the gall bladder, which can often be more expensive that the equivalent weight of narcotics.
Bear bile can fetch an estimated $1,000 per kilo in Asian markets.
The bile is extracted in an excruciatingly painful process which involves slicing into the animal’s flesh and “milking” the substance with a tube.
The bile is then used for everything from hair shampoo to wine, as well as medicinal treatments for various intestinal and cardiac-related complaints.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4331266.stm
Ten points to the person who comes up with the best non-picnic basket joke to compliment this story…
7 Comments
October 14, 2005 at 9:33 pm
Wow. I’m cheering for the bears.
October 14, 2005 at 11:45 pm
The crazy thing is that the sort of people who want to ingest the internal squeezings of bears will probably use this an excuse to abuse the bears more – pointing to the attacks as a sign of the bears’ virility.
October 16, 2005 at 1:43 am
A priest, a rabbi, and a Chinese guy walk into a bar. The Chinese guy orders a pint of gall bladder juice and is mauled to death by six bears.
October 16, 2005 at 4:33 pm
You are in the lead, Luke…but so far you have no competition.
October 18, 2005 at 6:18 pm
Han Shigen, whose name translates as “Dante”, complained that he “wasn’t even supposed to be here today” and that it was in fact his day off.
Unfortunately for the bears, the revenue from Shigen’s bile was not as expected.
Actually, it would have only taken three bears to kill Han Shigen, but the union demanded that all six get the work.
To be fair, the bears told him to leave their shit alone.
Afterwards the bears were horrified to learn the exact population of China, fearing that they were slightly outnumbered.
The bears were very frustrated, seeing their bile retrieval as dead end jobs.
Although six bears killed Han Shigen, one remained back. He insisted that although he didn’t “like” bile extraction, it was better than standing in line at the plasma center.
Great. First gas prices sky rocket, now my shampoo.
Poor Han Shigen, not only was he the bile extracter, but ALSO the cage cleaner??
At some point during the mauling Han Shigen surely thought “I knew an English major at UNCG wouldn’t get me far.”
I like your heading, but would have preferred “Dream Job Ends in Nightmare.”
It wasn’t the act that frustrated the bears so much, as being termed by Han Shigen as his “bile bitches.”
Think i’m done with these? Not by a bile.
Ok. Think I’m done.
October 20, 2005 at 11:30 pm
Wow.
All right. The winner is:
“Actually, it would have only taken three bears to kill Han Shigen, but the union demanded that all six get the work.”
Ten points to Mr. Masked and Anonymous.
October 25, 2005 at 4:15 pm
Hm, not my favorite…in fact my least favorite, but i’ll take the W any way I can.
love always,
hockey