China ‘Snakeaholic’ dedicates life to studying, protecting snakes despite losing finger
After an IUCN listing, black-market prices for the viper soared past US$150,000 each, but Chen refused all offers to sell them
Despite being bitten nine times and losing a finger to its venom, 77-year-old “Snake Doctor” Chen Yuanhui remains on the front lines of researching and protecting the Mangshan pit viper, the rare species he discovered 37 years ago.
Originally from southern China’s Guangdong province, Chen graduated from a clinical college in central China’s Hunan province at the age of 19 and worked at a snakebite research centre.
The centre was discontinued in 1982, but Chen chose not to pursue a conventional career in the city. Instead, he settled as a snakebite doctor deep in the Mangshan mountain.
In 1984, Chen treated a forestry worker bitten by a strange venomous snake. Nicknamed by locals as the “little green dragon,” the snake was described as “yellow and green all over, with a white tail and patterns that look like squares when viewed from above and triangles from the side.”