Man visited by monkey he saved 4 years ago

Xiao Zhijian feeds the monkey family. [Photo/Guiyang Evening News]

Xiao Zhijian blows a whistle to call the monkeys. [Photo/Guiyang Evening News]

A man in southwest China's Guizhou province was visited recently by a monkey which he saved more than four years ago.

Fifty-two-year-old Xiao Zhijian lives in the Mayang River Nature Reserve of Yanhe County, Guizhou Province. On the morning of Nov. 20, 2014, Xiao was about to work outside when he saw several monkeys sitting on the stone in front of his house. An old Francois' langur, a type of rare monkey species, was looking at him. Xiao found out it was the monkey he saved more than four years ago and the other monkeys must be its children.

Xiao told the local Guiyang Evening News newspaper that he saved the monkey in March 2010. Xiao went to cut firewood in the hills one day and saw a monkey whose leg was caught in a trap placed by local hunters to capture wild boar. The ground was smeared with the monkey's blood. Seeing this, Xiao opened the trap and took the monkey home.

Xiao healed the monkey with herbs and fed and took care of it every day. Several months later, when Xiao saw the wild fruit in the mountains had ripened, he decided to take the monkey back to the mountains where it belonged.

Xiao recalled that the monkey cast its eye at him before going away. But when it had been gone for a hundred meters or so, it turned its head back and looked at Xiao again as if not willing to leave.

Seeing that the monkey had come back to visit him, Xiao embraced it like an old friend.

Xiao is the "monkey king" in the nature reserve. Whenever he blows a whistle, the monkeys come to him immediately from the mountains.

The number of Francois' langurs in the Mayang River Nature Reserve has reached 800, making the reserve the world's largest habitat for Francois' langurs.