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Indochinese Manbeasts: Batutut / Rock Ape / French Era & Vietnam War

ruffready

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Aug 6, 2002
Messages
2,366
I don't know why I never brought this up , but it just came to me while doing "google searches for crypto animals and such...My brother was "marine recon in Nam durning 67-69" saw alot of combat (he can be found on Yahoo-but I better not give his name , but if you know me anyway his first name is brad so you can type "brad --------, and see his picture and stories in "the Nam") anyway not long ago while over at his house we where exchangeing "war stories" and he told me one that sticks in my brain..he and a buddy went out in the jungle a ways to dump or bury some empty mri's (meals ready to eat) before standing down for the day, and came across the "weirdest creatures I've every seen!!" he said. "we found a place to ditch our trash and not fifty feet away there stood a couple of ' giant monkeys!!' we just stood there with our mouths hanging open (I ask right away did you shoot at them?) ..no..we just looked at each other and they were looking at us (how big were they?, I asked ) big!! he said, at least 6 feet!! (what did you do? I asked) we asked each other "what the f--k!! and they (the monkeys) turned and ran into the jungle!! we unslung our m-16's and ran back to camp!! we told the Gunny (sargent in charge) and he ask us if we've been smokin dope,,we said gunny they were two giant monkeys out there in the jungle and you know we don't smoke dope!! (my brother said him and garvel were hysterical and flaping their arms like they've seen a ghost (and this seemed real strange to the gunny as both of them had been in so much combat and such--and to be so excited and all so....) anyway after telling just about everybody for the rest of their tour of duty (they did run into others and locals that new of these creatures) they always both kept an eye and ear open about "the giant monkeys". My brother to this day swears this really happened that "out there " there are Giant unknow apes roaming around.
 
If you're not just spinning us a line...

Hey, Ruff! You kept that one to yourself. You should get the story, on tape (official like), from your brother. Better still, get him to put it down in writing himself.

'Cause, that's an excellent story!

:yeay:
 
Vietnam is a real gold-mine for crypto stuff - Karl Shuker has made volumes out of what's there.

This story reminds me a lot of the deLoys Ape saga: though this itself has become as dubious now in Crypto circles as the Patterson film, there are nonetheless reports of very big bipedal monkeys to this day.
 
I think the unknown hominid in Vietnam is called "Orang Dalam", possibly a larger relative of Orang Pendek.

======================
NOTE: The label "Orang Dalam" is not used for the Vietnam / Indochina sightings. It's an alternative label for the Orang Mawas of Malaysia.


In Malaysian folklore, the Orang Mawas or Mawas (also known as the Orang Dalam) is an entity reported to inhabit the jungle of Johor in Malaysia. It is described as being about 10 ft (2.4–3 m) tall, bipedal and covered in black fur, and has been reported feeding on fish and raiding orchards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orang_Mawas
======================


Karl Shuker's site (IIRC) has a lot of info on it, including reports of brown furred, white furred, and semi-hairless (more Almas-like) specimens. Will try and find the exact article - I think I found it while searching for info on "Zana" the captured Almas woman.

Can you get your brother to write up his report and send it to "It Happened To Me"?

The "sightings" section of http://www.cryptozoology.com is also a good place to send reports of cryptid sightings to.
 
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androman

no spin!! he told me that experience!! It just came up as a... "oh, and you know what was one of the most bizzare things I saw over there!!" this came up after telling me about an all-day and all night heavy engagement with a large force of NVA durning bad weather and "hard to get air support" type story. Its almost as if his brain clicked over to something that "was a lot more easier to talk about and to get his mind " back to a better place, a memory thats not as horrible" but unforgettible never the less. I've ask him a million times "hey, you should write a book, everybodyelse does" but he never gives a clear answer..the stuff I've read about him and "his buddies adventures and engagements, on the web, would make good reading. I'll talk to him about the " Monkey men" again and try to get more detail next time I see him. But the way I remember it now is "they walked and ran like people but were giant ape like "unknown" creatures., he did think that they might have been attracted to their "being there" for some reason..and I think he had mentioned something about them being seen at a previous "dumping place" outside of a "base camp" and reported as " a bunch of Large Monkeys, going through the garbage..I recall him saying something along those lines..
:confused: andro ..ck your PM for "more proof"
 
Have "bumped" this thread, in preference to starting a new one. I find material about "yeti / bigfoot-like" creatures from south-east Asia, especially intriguing; attention was caught by an item recently found by chance, via the site "bigfootforums.com". "Directions" to said item, below (I apologise for my poor computer skills making it likely that the below, will not work as a direct link).
http://khmer.cc/community/t.c?b=1&t=2668

This "khmer.cc etc." appears to be an English-language forum for Cambodians and people interested in Cambodia. The (long) piece directed to, seemingly several years old, speculates on the possible existence (perhaps still in present times) of a Bigfoot-like creature in Cambodia -- audaciously identified by the piece's author, as Gigantopithecus blacki (one of the favourite "candidates" for North America's Bigfoot). Some Malaysian material is featured also. Several posters provide anecdotes of encounters with such creatures in Cambodia, generally from their parents' time: the most pin-pointable time-wise of such, is said to have occurred during the 1979 Vietnamese invasion.

I'd known that there were reports from Vietnam / Laos of a mysterious giant hairy biped, the "Nguoi Rung" -- allegedly encountered occasionally in the Vietnam war, by both sides (though such reports seem to have ceased to show up, for the past couple of decades); but had had no idea till now, of any such from Cambodia. Interesting stuff here, I feel -- though only anecdotal; and even if such creatures existed hereabouts in the fairly recent past, I see grounds for doubting whether they still do today.
 
Interesting link. Might also be worth looking up Rock apes, which is what the U.S soldiers apparently called them, though this is disputed.

As an aside there's a post here somewhere by a soldier who encountered and shot at something strange whilst in Vietnam. It got posted in the wrong thread and caused some confusion.
 
There used to be (maybe will be once again, at some time in the future) a good deal of interesting “Indochina cryptid primate” material, in the archives of the site “bigfootforums.com” in its old form – said archives have been unavailable since the site briefly died and was then reborn, last year. We are told now and again, that in time the “old” archives will be restored; but the months go by... with “BFF” being a site whose posters are mostly American, there were some posts thereon from guys who served in Vietnam and experienced, first- or more-distant-than-first-hand, odd stuff there.

I seem to recall it being suggested in some of these posts, that (just to further confuse things) there may have been two different types of “unrecorded” primates in those parts, sometimes encountered by American forces. The “rock apes” mentioned, were supposedly approx. orang/ chimp-sized. The Nguoi Rung, less frequently met with, was allegedly more truly giant-like: reckoned in the 6ft / 7ft tall range.

The post linked to by yourself: a creepy story indeed, but tending to suggest to me, something supernatural rather than “f&b crypto”. There seem to be a number of accounts of Americans in Vietnam shooting at, and hitting, mystery primates which they ran into; but – predictably – never leading to successful recovery of a body. Of course, in that time and place, people had more urgent stuff to worry about...

Since my previous post, the name has emerged from the depths of memory, of Dr. Helmut Loofs-Wissowa; who in the absence of the BFF archives, seems to be the go-to guy re “mysterious big hairies” in Indochina. Googling him, turned up much interesting stuff.
 
French would seem to be a good language to search in for this topic, they might well have similar colonial era reports as was turned up for the Nandi bear.
 
Great bit of lateral thinking -- though I can make stuff out in French, this would never have occurred to me ! I'll have to let it wait for a few days: am about to go off for a short stay with relatives: situation, likely, of an Internet-less zone.
 
Picking up from the previous message: having attempted Google-wise -- in my best French -- several permutations-and-combinations of "Indochina / Ape-men / Wildmen", I seem basically to have come up with nothing from that part of the world, from French times, i.e. up to mid-1950s.

Various possible conclusions could be reached. Possibly, my Internet-searching skills suck. Possibly in the French colonial era, no-one French -- apart from a few individual oddballs -- was interested in "crypto" stuff and/or "white hunter" doings. The picture is got at times, that the French have tended to regard the British as a bunch of overgrown schoolboys, with childish preoccupations; with the British correspondingly seeing the French as rarefied over-cerebral intellectual snobs. Had there been a French-Asia equivalent of Captain Hichens, it could have been that nobody was interested in publishing his memoirs. Or possibly, re Indochina, the whole mystery-hairy-biped thing is (whatever way) twaddle. The longer time goes on, the less it seems we're likely ever to know for sure.
 
A few French language ones from a quick search using the French for ‘wild man beast Vietnam Cambodia Laos’, and a few English ones too.

http://centredetudeparanormal.e-monsite ... 64238.html

http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~vern/wildman.html

http://cryptozoologie.fr.gd/Hommes-sauvages.htm

http://www.strangeark.com/craig/MMPapers_Aust.pdf

http://initial.bipedalism.pagesperso-orange.fr/4.htm

One of them shows a problem for man beast believers, accounting for the sheer amount of areas where these reports come from including New Zealand and Guadalcanal.

The picture is got at times, that the French have tended to regard the British as a bunch of overgrown schoolboys, with childish preoccupations;

I think you're right there, I remember watching a documentary on spontaneous combustion featuring a French case, in which the attending pathologist sneered at the suggestion of any bizarre saying that 'only people in Britain and America believe that sort of thing'.
 
Thanks for "the previous". Clearly the fault is more with my poor "searching" abilities, than with French lack of interest in the subject concerned. Though "official France" does tend to pride itself on being extremely rational and scientific; one learns from a couple of items linked-to, that findings about MHB (mysterious hairly bipeds) in Indochina, were published during the era of French rule -- one book appeared in 1912. And -- some material in links, tallies with stuff recalled from the vanished "BigfootForums" archives.
oldrover said:
One of them shows a problem for man beast believers, accounting for the sheer amount of areas where these reports come from including New Zealand and Guadalcanal.
Said item, I take it, is from the "Strangeark" link -- the paper on "High Strangeness in Yowie Reports". My tentative conclusion about MHB pretty well worldwide, is that the least unlikely scenario of an unlikely bunch of same, is that the paranormal is involved in the phenomenon -- in a variety of ways, including the MHB not being physically "here", all of the time. A real "killer" for me, regarding postulated purely-flesh-and-blood ones in Oceania, is -- however did they get there?
 
oldrover said:
A few French language ones from a quick search using the French for ‘wild man beast Vietnam Cambodia Laos’, and a few English ones too.

http://centredetudeparanormal.e-monsite ... 64238.html

http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~vern/wildman.html

http://cryptozoologie.fr.gd/Hommes-sauvages.htm

http://www.strangeark.com/craig/MMPapers_Aust.pdf

http://initial.bipedalism.pagesperso-orange.fr/4.htm

One of them shows a problem for man beast believers, accounting for the sheer amount of areas where these reports come from including New Zealand and Guadalcanal.

The picture is got at times, that the French have tended to regard the British as a bunch of overgrown schoolboys, with childish preoccupations;

I think you're right there, I remember watching a documentary on spontaneous combustion featuring a French case, in which the attending pathologist sneered at the suggestion of any bizarre saying that 'only people in Britain and America believe that sort of thing'.

I concur. Although after the Along Bay sea serpents sightings, from multiple military witnesses, a number of French zoologists had come to support their existence in the early 20th century.
Relating to the links you post, I found no mention of reports in French Indochina. Personnaly, I am not aware of any. I read a book from cryptozoologist Jean-Jacques BARLOY, he spoke at lenght of man-beasts in various parts of the worlds, but again no mentions of reports in colonial Indochina. I don't remember that Heuvelmans (a Belgian) reported any cases either, but his books are not easy to find.
 
If I might break in -- the "strangeark" link -- "Myths and Monsters 2001 -- Conference Papers", in its paper "Would the real Orang-Utan...?", by Helmut Loofs-Wissowa, mentions a book (non-fiction), published 1912, "Les Jungles Moi" by one Hend Maitre; telling of reddish ape-men in the Vietnamese Highlands -- well-known to the local mountain tribesmen, to whom they were apparently more prey, than a source of terror. Also, the "coombs" link gives a brief Indochina account from 1947.

Heuvelmans -- whose book, "On the Track of Unknown Animals", I have -- said book is informative, but somewhat patchy as regards global coverage: he indeed does not mention Indochina in it. Ivan T. Sanderson's work "Abominable Snowmen" (originally published circa 1960) which I read long ago but do not possess, relayed if I recall correctly, accounts of "mysterious hairy bipeds" in varuous parts of continental south-east Asia, including Indochina. I have to admit to harbouring some doubts about Sanderson, who -- I get the impression -- was rather liable to believe "anything and everything" about cryptids, in a purely-flesh-and-blood context.
 
Les Jungles Moi, can be downloaded or viewed here;

http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/inde ... 1165241503

No good to me unfortunately I don't speak French.

Isn't there a Moi or a Loi mentioned in 'On the track...'

Analis am I right in thinking you are French, if so the fact that you can't find any references is a bit off putting. The French would have had lots more time than the Americans to encounter them. But then the Americans already had a cultural reference in Bigfoot to start with.

Another point would be to find out whether other nationalities in the later war such as S Koreans and Australians ever encountered anything. Saying that though even if there were, a lack of French reports is still very disheartening.

I have to admit to harbouring some doubts about Sanderson, who -- I get the impression -- was rather liable to believe "anything and everything" about cryptids, in a purely-flesh-and-blood context.

Agreed.
 
oldrover said:
Analis am I right in thinking you are French, if so the fact that you can't find any references is a bit off putting. The French would have had lots more time than the Americans to encounter them. But then the Americans already had a cultural reference in Bigfoot to start with.

Another point would be to find out whether other nationalities in the later war such as S Koreans and Australians ever encountered anything.
Some interesting stuff recently on “bigfootforum.com”, touching on “MHB in Indochina”, which prompted me to fetch this thread up in the first place. As mentioned in my post here of May 25th, some experiences of “our side” in the Vietnam war suggested the presence in those parts, then, of two different types of mysterious primates: what the soldiery called “rock apes” (approx. baboon-or chimp-size), and the bigger, less often encountered, Nguoi Rung. Quoting a post on “bigfootforums.com” concerning the “rock apes” (admittedly, by a chap who appears to be overall, on the credulous side):

“There were a heck of a lot of reports from GIs about these rock apes. They even killed some of them on occasion. Reports of a rock ape tied up on a US base, on and on. The GIs had no idea what they were and they’d never heard the native stories. The GIs thought they were ‘orangutans’. Korean soldiers reportedly captured a couple of them and took them back to Korea or whatever.”

I find the last sentence, not encouraging. Things seem so frustrating for people who want to research these matters – you just never catch a lucky break, all possible “leads” seem to fade away or sink without trace. South Korea is not somewhere “off the planet” – if homegoing Korean troops did thus take their “friends” with them, no chance that they might as a result, have become known to science – oh, no...

Saying that though even if there were, a lack of French reports is still very disheartening.
Perhaps desperately clutching at straws: I wonder whether great scarcity of reports from the French era may after all have to do with my "take", already indicated, about official bias / lack of interest. Possibly the French "establishment" essentially took no interest in what they regarded as stuff for kids and ignorant savages -- the material by Maitre (see upcoming post by me) got published against the odds.
 
oldrover said:
Les Jungles Moi, can be downloaded or viewed here;

http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/inde ... 1165241503

No good to me unfortunately I don't speak French.

Isn't there a Moi or a Loi mentioned in 'On the track...'
I get from the given link only a small amount of material, about rhinos (maybe I’m messing-up, here). However – thanks for mentioning Heuvelmans’s book. In his Nittaewo chapter, there is a long quote (which I’d totally forgotten, till running it to earth just now – was mistaken in thinking that Heuvelmans ignored Indochina) from the book “Les Jungles Moi” by Maître (Henri, not Hend). About his explorations at the beginning of the 20th century, in the mountain country in – if I have it rightly – the south rather than the north, of French Indochina. The quote follows:

“The natives say [these areas shelter] a...peculiar and...legendary beast: I refer to the ‘wild men’. It is not the first time that I have heard this curious legend of nomadic human creatures, living in mountainous forests, and having (according to the Moi) a tail like a monkey. They are almost unknown on the Darlac plateau where the gently undulating country is easy of access and covered with no more than grass and scrub, but were reported to me around the Great Lake and in all the hilly area of the Annam range. According to these local reports the “wild men” of Nam-Noung are small – less than five feet high – covered with a thick coat of reddish hair, and arms or legs which they cannot bend at all. The back of the forearm has a sharp membrane like the blade of a knife which they use for cutting away the bush to make a path through the forest. They cannot climb up trees, since they have neither knees nor elbows, so they sleep leaning against tree-trunks. They live on roots and stalks of plants, and do not know how to build huts, living the same wandering life as other beasts of the forest. The villagers used to run them down and eat them, but the “wild men” have become scarcer and are no longer found. But one sometimes still comes upon the footprints that they leave behind them, like those of other men, but smaller.

This description of ‘wild men’ is almost identical amoung all the villagers who believe in them, whether in the remote Nam-Noung district or in the heart of the Annam range. As I have already remarked they are almost unknown to the Radé of Central Darlac. One village on the plateau, however, not only knows them but even claims to be directly descended from one of them named Kjhat.”

Name a bit reminiscent of Khwit the half-Almas – presumably just a coincidence !

The account as here given, for sure seems fanciful (the anatomical improbabilities); and the creatures involved are small, not giant-like Ngoui Rung. Oddities of anatomy – one would reckon, at best, imaginative “embroidery” by the tribespeople, suggesting that it was likely a long time since the “wild men” had last been encountered. This is overall, I feel, a bit less promising a source, than we might have hoped for. I seem to get the “vibes” that Maître is passing on what he thinks an unlikely native tale; not suggesting that he believes in the “wild men” ’s existence.
 
http://www.archive.org/stream/grammaire ... g_djvu.txt

Try this one, I can't translate it using the translate options, and can't read it. It does seem to be enough for a whole book though.

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1714905 Or this one, it does seem to be out there, but most of the links are in French.

Korean soldiers reportedly captured a couple of them and took them back to Korea or whatever.

Again I agree it seems to be suggesting that what goes to Korea stays in Korea. As if it's some 'other' destination.

The detail about the arm blade thing, doesn't that come up somewhere else as well, like the back to front foot business which keeps popping up.
 
oldrover said:
http://www.archive.org/stream/grammairedelala00maspgoog/grammairedelala00maspgoog_djvu.txt

Try this one, I can't translate it using the translate options, and can't read it. It does seem to be enough for a whole book though.

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1714905 Or this one, it does seem to be out there, but most of the links are in French.
I continue to get "linking" problems; but I'm "the fool of the world" with computers. Will hold back re the matter, till I can get round to my dwelling, a helpful and computer-clever relative, who may be able to assist.

The detail about the arm blade thing, doesn't that come up somewhere else as well, like the back to front foot business which keeps popping up.
Yes -- a couple of pages after the Indochina wild men passage, Heuvelmans tells of a seemingly very close equivalent of same, in the Malay Peninsula: the "just plain" Sakai people told of a race of hairy pygmies, the "hantu Sakai" [="demon Sakai"], living retiringly in the deep forests. These creatures allegedly had "a sharp blade-like bone in their right forearm which they use in the felling of trees...[and for cutting off fruit-bearing high branches of trees]."

As you remark, these curious memes (if that is, correctly, the word that the clever folk use) seem to show up in --- sometimes widely -- separated places.
 
oldrover said:
It's the links not you. The second one seems to be a valid one but for Australians only.
Yes, that's what I found re the second link -- non-Aussies barred. The first link, appears to me (have not as yet ploughed right through it), to be to a grammar of the Cambodian language; with some input from Henri Maitre, but basic focus seemingly on linguistics, not on wild men.
I'm not sure how something like a forearm blade could get started, from observation of anything corporeal.
Heuvelmans does some elaborate musing on the "forearm blade" notion. Suggests misidentification involving gibbons; which have long forearms, and in one species white (looking from a distance, like shining silver?) hands, mistakeable for blade / extensions; or human jungle tribes carrying "bush knives" so habitually often, for the implements to be mistaken for a permanent part of the body.

I have to wonder whether such convoluted theorising, is over-thinking / wishful thinking. Less of a "stretch", perhaps, to suggest people just dreaming up scary tales, for various reasons which could be adduced; or, the involvement of "whatever", which in some sense exists or existed -- but being other than flesh-and-blood-purely-of-this-earth.
 
oldrover said:
Analis am I right in thinking you are French, if so the fact that you can't find any references is a bit off putting. The French would have had lots more time than the Americans to encounter them. But then the Americans already had a cultural reference in Bigfoot to start with.

I was not aware of Maître's book, not of the 1947 report. The fact that they are rarely mentioned shows that they are rare exceptions.
Besides, the description of the "wild men" of Nam-Noung is full of mythological elements. Their oddical anatomies, for example. Like the traditional description of the Yowie as having its feet turned backwards. This is more typical of fairie lore, something the cryptozoologists don't like much.
It might be interesting to see if there were reports from the Japanese during the Second World War.
 
Some of the more rabid believers just cannot credit this...

I heard a long time ago that in many circles that particular debate was prone to descend into to a slagging match.

Interesting to hear your perspective on the wild men of Indochina and the lack of reports among the french. As for Japanese reports I think that'd be the next step. Personally though I doubt we'd get anything.

France was a major colonial power, whose territories were similar to Britain, if there is a distinct lack of reports from colonial french areas as opposed to the British I think this would be very interesting.

Analis I was looking through an old thread yesterday on which you said something that I missed first time round so I'm going to bump it. Please if you get a chance to answer my query, it's on 'Monsters we missed'.
 
Some of the more rabid believers just cannot credit this...
oldrover said:
I heard a long time ago that in many circles that particular debate was prone to descend into to a slagging match.
Hom.sap.sap. is just plain quarrelsome -- not surprising that MHB, if they spend any significant amount of time on planet Earth, don't (per most reported material) want to have much to do with us.

oldrover said:
Interesting to hear your perspective on the wild men of Indochina and the lack of reports among the french. As for Japanese reports I think that'd be the next step. Personally though I doubt we'd get anything.
Any Japanese-language scholars around here, ready to trawl the Japanese "crypto" sites? (Would put a "smiley" in here, if I knew how.) I'd tend not to be hopeful re Japanese WW2 reports; their presence in the region was, per calendar, fairly brief; and in that time and place they were, shall we say, rather "focused". (As ever, would love to be wrong.)
oldrover said:
France was a major colonial power, whose territories were similar to Britain, if there is a distinct lack of reports from colonial french areas as opposed to the British I think this would be very interesting.
"France and us" over this -- I rather feel, anybody's guess -- respective national emphasis; or "what was or wasn't actually there"? -- Heuvelmans does come up with a certain amount of stuff from colonial French Equatorial Africa. The (meagre) more you hear, the less you feel you know.
 
I realise it isn't conclusive but without collaborative reports from the French, I feel this one is severely weakened.

As far as the squabbling is concerned I remember seeing a terrestrial TV (i.e. up on quality down on repeats) documentary some years ago which I seem to remember focused on the fact that many if not all of the 'grand old men' of Sasquatch research weren't speaking to each other. Don’t know whether it was true of course.
 
I've just realised how far off topic we've gone about French Indochina etc, this thread started off in the old British territory of Malaya.
 
About a month ago, I seemed to be starting numerous new threads on "Cryptozoology": it seemed more economical to "bump" this thread, to give some recently acquired Indochina info -- on the basis that "it's all South-East Asia".
 
oldrover said:
As far as the squabbling is concerned I remember seeing a terrestrial TV (i.e. up on quality down on repeats) documentary some years ago which I seem to remember focused on the fact that many if not all of the 'grand old men' of Sasquatch research weren't speaking to each other. Don’t know whether it was true of course.
I gather that it was a bit like that, a few years back. Seemingly nowadays, things sometimes a bit frosty between the revered veterans in this field, but it's not outright war. Maybe something to do with a couple of the stroppiest characters involved, having departed this life in recent years.

There is some dissension and strife surrounding Bob Gimlin -- one of the two guys present for certain, at the shooting of the controversial Patterson-Gimlin film in October 1967 in northern California; film supposedly showing a sequence of a female Sasquatch walking away from the camera. Patterson, who allegedly operated the camera, is long dead; Gimlin, now very well-stricken in years, avers strongly that the film is "for real" -- no funny business with hoaxing. Many aficionados regard Gimlin as a pretty well saintly character, and think it inconceivable that he could be lying; others are, well, not so sure.
 
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