In Zisiqiao Village, Deqing County, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province, there is a famous snake king Yang Hongchang, who single-handedly turned the entire village into a veritable "snake village", and the villagers followed him to raise snakes and make a lot of money.
By chance, he began to raise snakes
Yang Hongchang is an authentic farmer, born in the fifties of the last century, he has endured hardships and hard work since he was a child, when the whole village lived on a few acres of thin fields, although everyone was very diligent, but life was still bitter haha.
Yang Hongchang contracted ankylosing spondylitis before he was 30 years old, which left him in pain, and worst of all, he could no longer do heavy physical work, and the family was mainly supported by his wife and elderly parents.
Whenever he watched his wife and parents go out to work, while he could only take care of his two children under the age of three at home, Yang Hongchang was particularly disappointed.
Later, he chatted with an old man in the village, and the old man told him: "Drinking wine made by poisonous snakes can cure diseases, and we have snakes in the mountains after this, it depends on whether you dare to catch them." Yang Hongchang decided to catch a few snakes to try, and when his parents and wife heard that he was going to go into the mountains to catch snakes, they tried to dissuade him, they were afraid that he would not catch snakes, but took his life.
In the face of his family's dissuasion, Yang Hongchang did not flinch, he insisted on going up the mountain. Thankfully, he was lucky and managed to catch a few snakes.
Yang Hongchang
When he caught snakes, he also met some people who went into the mountains to catch snakes all year round, and they said that the snakes they caught could be sold as medicinal herbs, which made Yang Hongchang very happy, and since then he has gone up the mountain to catch snakes every three to five, and when he is lucky, he can catch more than a dozen a day and sell them for more than a dozen yuan, which can be regarded as a good income in those days.
Seeing the profits, many villagers also followed Yang Hongchang's example and went up the mountain to catch snakes, and gradually there were fewer and fewer snakes in the mountains.
If you can't catch the snake, the road to wealth is broken. At this time, the clever Yang Hongchang began to think of a new idea, he pondered whether he could bring the snake on the mountain to the house to hatch, that is, artificial breeding of snakes, if it can be successful, there is no need to go up the mountain to catch snakes, and it can develop for a long time.
Yang Hongchang went into the mountains to find a lot of snake eggs, and he used bricks at home to build square dry pools about half a person high, and put the snake eggs in the pond to raise them.
Many of the snakes on the back mountain of Zisiqiao Village are poisonous snakes, bamboo leaf green, cobras, and keeping such poisonous snakes at home, the villagers say that Yang Hongchang is crazy.
Although everyone talked a lot about it, even his wife and parents did not understand him, but Yang Hongchang was like a demon, and he wanted to go all the way to the dark.
A bumpy road to snake raising
Because of his inexperience, the snake eggs brought back by Yang Hongchang from the mountain did not hatch successfully. Is it really a whims? Yang Hongchang did not admit defeat, since the eggs on the mountain were not good, then go and buy some artificially bred snake eggs.
He took out most of his savings and asked people to buy 40,000 snake eggs, although it was bloody, but the technology did not improve, the hatchability rate of these snake eggs was only 25%, this time Yang Hongchang suffered heavy losses.
Realizing that he had a technical problem, he began to visit experienced farmers and invite people to his home for on-site guidance.
Under the guidance of professionals, Yang Hongchang bought a lot of foam boxes as a place for snake eggs to hatch, and he also strictly controlled the temperature and humidity according to the requirements. During that time, Yang Hongchang almost lived and slept with the snake, and he knew that he was desperate at this time.
After careful care, the new batch of snake eggs hatched very well, and he sold the young snakes and obtained a profit of hundreds of thousands, which was an extremely considerable income in those days.
"Yang Hongchang raised snakes and made a fortune!" The news quickly spread in the village, and villagers who had previously avoided him dared to visit his snake farm, and some of the more daring villagers offered to learn snake raising with Yang Hongchang.
For everyone's request, Yang Hongchang did not refuse, he taught himself the skills of raising snakes. Since then, the villagers of Zisiqiao Village have begun to raise snakes, a total of 170 households in the village, of which 150 households are raising snakes, at the peak of this small village of only 1 square kilometer actually has more than 3 million snakes, including more than 100,000 vipers, cobras and other poisonous snakes, Zisiqiao Village has become "China's first snake village", Yang Hongchang himself also has an annual income of nearly 10 million.
With the expansion of the scale of snake farming, Yang Hongchang began to study the deep processing of snake products, such as the development of snake-related drugs, the development of snake wine, etc., in addition to the establishment of the snake culture museum, more than 100,000 people come to visit the museum every year.
Snake keepers are not afraid of snakes
"I often walk by the river, where there are not wet shoes", being bitten by snakes in Zisiqiao Village is commonplace, and when snakes were first raised, some villagers even died because they were not treated in time.
Yang Hongchang said that when he first started raising snakes, there was no space, the snake box was placed in the yard, the houses in the countryside were not tightly closed, snakes often ran into the house, and when he woke up in the morning, he might find a snake coiled next to the pillow, and sometimes the snake would run into his shoes.
At first, he was scared to see this phenomenon, and his scalp was numb, but after a long time, he got used to it, and slowly became less afraid.
Yang Hongchang has been bitten by snakes many times, once a cobra had stomatitis, he went to apply medicine to the snake, in order to facilitate the operation, he did not wear gloves, I don't know if it was because he was sick and in a bad mood, or Yang Hongchang hurt it, the snake took advantage of Yang Hongchang's lack of attention and bit his tiger mouth fiercely. That time, Yang Hongchang did not seek medical treatment in time, I am afraid that he is fierce, and there are still traces of bites in his tiger's mouth.
Although he has been bitten many times, Yang Hongchang is not afraid of snakes, "If you want to eat this bowl of rice, you have to be bold!" "The villagers of Zisiqiao Village all understand this truth deeply. Children in the village, from 70 or 80 years old to 6 or 7 years old, dare to catch snakes with their bare hands, and some children even use snakes as toys.
Poison taker - a person who dares to seek poison in the mouth of a snake
In the eyes of the villagers of Zisiqiao Village, raising snakes is a common thing, and the real technical work is to obtain snake venom.
In recent years, the price of snake venom has been rising, taking the silver ring snake as an example, the price of snake venom per gram is 3000-5000 yuan, so people call snake venom "soft gold".
If you want to get snake venom, you must take poison from the mouth of the snake, this work must be manually operated, and the risk factor is extremely high. Just as the so-called "wealth is in danger", there are always some bold people who dare to seek skin in the mouth of the tiger, to be precise, they are "seeking poison in the mouth of the snake", they are poison collectors, Qian Wusong is one of them.
Talking about his work, Qian Wusong said: "To be a poison extractor, you must be bold and careful, and you must be extremely careful when taking poison, and if you are not careful, you may lose your life!" Qian Wusong has never drunk alcohol since he became a poison extractor, and he said that alcohol can make people paralyzed and dull, which is a taboo for poison collectors.
Every time the poison is taken hovering on the edge of life and death, when taking poison is a pool by pool, first put on boots to enter the snake pool, put the snake into the bag and then take the poison.
When taking poison, you must be quick and fast, grab the snake's head with your hand, close the snake's fangs to the measuring cup, gently squeeze the venom glands on both sides of the snake's head, and then wait for the snake to completely spit out the venom.
When Qian Wusong was busiest, he had to go out before dawn, and he didn't finish his work until 4:30 p.m., he could complete the poison collection of 500 pounds of snakes a day, and his income was almost 1,000 yuan a day.
Will the snake take revenge on people in the end
Some people say: "The snake is the animal with the strongest revenge mentality, it remembers the appearance of the enemy, and then waits for the opportunity to take revenge" Is this statement accurate?
The villagers of Zisiqiao Village are the most qualified to answer this question, they are all snake raising masters, they deal with snakes all year round, and they know the habits of snakes best.
"In fact, snakes cannot remember the appearance of their enemies, because snakes have very poor eyesight." This is the answer given by Yang Hongchang.
Most snakes belong to myopic eyes, they can only see things within 1 meter, snakes have no optic concaves behind their eyes, which is the most sensitive area for perceptual vision, so their visual sensitivity is also extremely low, so their eyes have a very poor ability to capture static objects.
Although snakes have poor eyesight, their heads are located between their eyes and nostrils but there is a concave fossa organ - buccal fossa, which can sense the thermal infrared wavelengths emitted by other animals, and snakes use these wavelengths to build a "portrait" of the animal in the brain, and then determine its shape, location, and size, so snakes can accurately capture prey even in the dark night.
Because of poor eyesight, snakes cannot see the appearance of the "enemy" at all, let alone carry out so-called revenge.
The snake's body is broken in two, can it be connected?
The rural saying goes: "Seeing a snake does not fight three sins, and hitting a snake does not die seven sins!" "Because people have an innate fear of snakes, they always want to kill them when they encounter them.
There are also people who are afraid that the snake will cruelly break the snake into several pieces when it comes back from the dead, but even so, the snake can magically connect the body again, is this a rumor or is there scientific reason?
The snake's ability to reconnect broken bodies is apparently unscientifically unfounded, and villagers in Zisiqiao say they have never seen such a phenomenon.
Snakes are vertebrates, the body can be divided into three parts: head, trunk and tail, like most vertebrates, once the snake's body is disconnected, there is no way to connect again.
The reason why there is this rumor is actually very related to the glass snake. Despite their name, the glass snake is actually a lizard that is mainly found in Asia, inhabiting branches or rock crevices, and preferring to move at night or after rain.
The glass snake is like a gecko, with the ability to regenerate its tail, when it is attacked, the body can be broken into several segments, and the head takes the opportunity to escape, this unique way of saving life, let it leave a line of life for itself, it is also known as "brittle snake" "glass snake". Soon after escape, it will grow a new torso.
The broken tail of the glass snake has led some people to mistakenly think that the snake can reconnect the broken body, which is actually misinformation.
Snakes do not actively attack people
Snakes are animals that have existed on Earth for about 130 million years. Most people will be creepy when they see snakes, and even some people want to get rid of them quickly, in fact, snakes do not take the initiative to attack people, unless it feels threatened, so we better stay away from snakes and don't hit them, so as not to get yourself into trouble.
Are you afraid of snakes? Do you think snakes take revenge on people? The snake body is broken, can it still be picked up? Welcome everyone to communicate and discuss together!