Wasps frighten most people. A single wasp sting can result in hours of itching and aching, or sometimes even death for those allergic to the insect's sting.

However, there is a young man in Shenzhen who enjoys removing wasp nests and eating wasps. His wasp-removal skills have made him a celebrity in the city — his stories appeared in major newspapers and have even featured in a documentary by the biggest TV network in China, CCTV.

"To me, removing a wasps' nest is like picking a pumpkin and catching wasps is like catching flies," said 30-year-old Zhong Zhisheng who came to Shenzhen six years ago. Zhong has removed over 100 wasps' nests almost barehandedly in Shenzhen in the past year. The biggest one weighed nearly 10 kilograms.

Last week alone, he removed two wasps' nests: one at the Party School of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the CPC and the other at the Futian Social Welfare Center.

The wasps' nest at the Party school hung under the eave of a 12-floor building, full of at least 2,000 wasps. It had been there for several months but no one dared to touch it. Zhong removed it within five minutes, with only a plastic bag and a bamboo stick. His method was simple: First, tie the bag to an end of the stick, then extend the stick until the bag covered the nest before finally removing the nest.

In most cases, Zhong would choke the wasps with smoke before he removes the nest, like the way he dealt with a wasps' nest at the Futian Social Welfare Center on Wednesday.

A yellow nest the size of a basketball, hidden in a shrubbery, had worried the welfare center's managers a great deal. They were concerned that wasps might hurt people, especially senior citizens. And so Zhong was invited to help.

He made a small smoke bomb with saltpeter powder and a fuse, edged toward the nest to examine it, ignited the fuse and stabbed the smoke bomb into the nest's mouth.

On-lookers held their breath, fearing that wasps might fly out. But Zhong quickly covered it with a plastic bag and took it away before any could get out.

"The most important thing is to locate the mouth of the nest," said Zhong. A wasps' nest usually has one to four mouths. Once the smoke enters, wasps are unlikely to fly out, because they would be overwhelmed in six to seven seconds.

Zhong once used alcohol to catch ground wasps, and got the biggest catch in his life on an autumn night of 1996.

His method sounds simple: First, block all but one mouth of the nest with mud. Then use a transparent pipe to connect a bottle filled with alcohol to the remaining mouth. Then heat the nest and shine the transparent pipe with an electric torch. The wasps, driven by the heat and attracted by the light, would all fly into the bottle and get drunk. Zhong said the nest weighed 25 kilograms.

Although Zhong deals with wasps using a number of methods, he never does it during the day, because wasps are much less active at night.

Despite his skills, Zhong was once stung badly when he tried to destroy a wasps' nest behind his junior middle school together with one of his classmates.

His classmate had located the nest during an earlier search but failed to find it again. Stumbling in the darkness, Zhong stepped onto a mouth of the nest. Wasps swarmed out, and scars from their stings remain on his leg until today.

Zhong learned how to deal with wasps from his grandpa when he was 11 years old. Back then he never thought that he would become famous removing wasps in Shenzhen.

"When I came to Shenzhen six years ago, I thought such a big city would not have wasps,"  said Zhong, who is from Shaoguan City in northern Guangdong. Wasps usually stay in places with which have a lot of trees, he said.

Last November, he read a piece of news about a wasps' nest in Yitiancun housing estate in Futian District. Over 100 people, including professional insect killers, firefighters and policemen, were mobilized, but none of them dared to remove it.

Zhong stunned everybody when he dealt with the nest within several minutes. Since then his fame spread. On his busiest day, he removed six wasps' nests. His biggest catch in Shenzhen was on Wutong Mountain, where he removed a wasps' nest weighing almost 10 kilograms.

Now more than 20 nests await his attention but he is working for a hotel and has to leave the easier ones to others.

Zhong prefer to deal with bigger wasps' nests, where he can get more wasps, which he regards as delicacy.

"Wasps are rich in protein and can cure rheumatism. Some women like to eat wasp powder, which has beautifying functions," said Zhong, who does not charge money for removing the wasp nests but would ask to take away the nests.

Zhong likes to eat fried wasps and drink alcohol that contains wasps and pupae. He said it is much more complicated getting the insects out of the nest than removing the nest. It involves hours' work, and wasps might come out during the long process.

Once Zhong hangs a bag of nests outside his house and the next day, he found the nests empty. All wasps had fled.

"Imagine the scene if thousands of wasps flew out from my bag on a bus. That would be big news in the city," said Zhong. So he usually uses a thickly-weaved wire bag to accommodate the nests on his way home.

Once he is back home, Zhong uses hot water to kill the wasps, takes out dead wasps, fries them, and puts them into alcohol. The alcohol can be drunk after one month if the wasps have been fried, and three months if the wasps have been preserved alive.

"Alcohol with live wasps cannot be drunk within three months, because wasp toxin might remain there," Zhong said.

(Shenzhen Daily September 28, 2005)