As the Cultural Revolution drew to an end in the mid-1970s, palaeoanthropologists turned their attention to proving the existence of a Chinese bigfoot called the Wildman. For two decades no effort was spared to capture a glimpse, a hair or a footprint of this legendary hairy creature. The book tells the story of a search that led a nation into a wilderness of fact and fiction. The Chinese are not alone in their fascination for creatures that dance on the boundary between the human and animal worlds; Maoist ideology had long criminalised interest in the superstitious or the paranormal, but as the era drew to a close that fascination resurfaced.