Chinanews, Fuzhou, Jan. 12 – On Dongshan Island in Fujian, there is a snake doctor who has been treating snake wounds for local villagers for nearly half a century.

 

The snake doctor, called Fang Binghui, is 66 years old. He was born in a poor family. When he was 16, he quitted school and began to make a living by selling charcoals in Nanjing County in Zhangzhou City. In Nanjing, he got to know a hunter called Mr. Dong. The veteran hunter taught him how to identify herbs and make them into medicines to cure snake bites.

 

Since then, Fang has used these secret recipes to cure many local villagers bitten by poisonous snakes. He is called “She Xian,” or "magic doctor good at curing snake bites".

 

In treating snake wounds, Fang does not hurt the snakes, and this has become a principle for him to cure people. In the southern part of Fujian, many people keep a totemic boas culture, whereby, people who set off captured boas to the wild have done a good deed. Although Fang does not have much money, he often buys boas and releases them to nature.

 

Over the past ten years, Fang has bought and released altogether nine boas. Sometimes he also cooperates with staff workers from local forestry bureau or public security bureau, capturing those boas that accidentally went into local villagers’ houses and release them to the wild. When he finds some injured boas, he also treated the wounds for them.