A farmer named Zhou Zhenglong came home with a reporter on the afternoon of October 19 to show his negatives from pictures of a South China tiger taken by the farmer several days ago near a cliff in Zhenping County, Shaanxi Province, according to the Shanghai Morning Post.

Zhou asked for 800 yuan to display his negatives. He took the photographic plates from a small plastic bag, but he did not unwind all of them. The farmer pointed to the negatives while describing what the tiger looked like. The negatives were entirely black. Zhou said that they contained photographic images of a South China tiger, an endangered tiger subspecies believed to have been extinct in the wild for more than 30 years.

"No one can doubt these photos of the tiger," Zhou said. Pictures of this endangered species have sparked controversy as long as they have been released. Some people suspect that many of the released pictures had been tampered with using digital technologies and photographic experts have been asked to identify these photos in order to reach a more authoritative conclusion.

The farmer hoped that his negatives would bring him a fortune. "I will decorate my house if I earn a lot of money," Zhou said. He also confirmed that he would like to let people know his phone number in order to sell the negatives. Zhou has been awarded 20,000 yuan (US$2,666) as a reward for finding the tiger by the Shaanxi forestry authorities.

(China.org.cn, by Yang Xi, October 22, 2007)