From: "Nicky Molloy" 
Subject: IUFO: 'Aliens' light up sky for UFO watchers in China
Date: 3 Jan 2000 03:37:33 -0500
To: "IUFO" , "The Eagle Net" 


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'Aliens' light up sky for UFO watchers
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.scmp.com/News/China/Article/FullText_asp_ArticleID-20000103033821
985.asp

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Poor farmers on Beijing's barren hills saw it: an object swathed in coloured
light that some say must have been a UFO.
They are not alone. People in 12 other cities reported unidentified flying
object sightings last month. UFO researchers, meanwhile, were busy looking
into claims of an alien abduction in Beijing.

At the cusp of the new millennium, the mainland is astir with alleged
sightings of other-world visitors. And for a country usually straitjacketed
by its rulers, alien sightings are getting serious treatment.

The mainland has a twice monthly magazine - circulation 400,000 - devoted to
UFO research. The conservative state-run media reports UFO sightings. UFO
buffs claim support from eminent scientists and liaisons with the secretive
military, giving their work a scientific sheen of respectability.

"Some of these sightings are real, some are fake and with others it's
unclear," said Shen Shituan, a rocket scientist, president of Beijing
Aerospace University and honorary director of the China UFO Research
Association. "All these phenomena are worth researching."

For thousands of years, people have looked to the skies for portents of
change on Earth.

While the mainland is passing through its first millennium using the West's
Gregorian calendar, the traditional lunar calendar is ushering in the Year
of the Dragon, regarded as a time of tumultuous change.

"All of that sort of millennial fear and trepidation fits in so nicely with
Chinese cosmology - and also the Hollywood propaganda that everybody's been
lapping up," said Geremie Barme, a Chiness culture analyst at Australia
National University.

In Pusalu, a patch of struggling corn and bean farms 48km from Beijing,
villagers believe cosmic forces were at play on December 11. As they tell
it, an object the size of a person shimmering with golden light moved slowly
up into the sky from the surrounding arid mountains.

"Some say it was caused by an earthquake. Some say it was a UFO. Some say it
was a ray of Buddha. I'm telling everyone to call it an auspicious sign,"
said Chen Jianwen, village secretary for the Communist Party.

What "it" was remains a topic of debate. Many villagers are fervent
Buddhists. But local leaders want to play down any religious overtones,
fearing that government censure may spoil plans to attract tourism to
Pusalu.

"It was so beautiful, sort of yellow," villager Wang Cunqiao said. "It was
like someone flying up to heaven."

State media ignored religious interpretations and labelled the celestial
events in Pusalu, Beijing, Shanghai and 10 other cities in December as
possible UFOs. But UFO researchers have largely dismissed the sightings as
aircraft trails catching the low sun.

"If the military didn't chase it, it's because they knew it wasn't a UFO.
They were probably testing a new aircraft," said Chen Yanchun, a shipping
company executive who helps manage the China UFO Research Resource Centre.

Operating from a dingy three-room flat in a Beijing apartment block, the
centre keeps a version of the X-Files: 140 dictionary sized boxes of fading
newspaper clippings and eyewitness accounts of sightings.

Mr Chen Yanchun said the centre had 500 reported UFO sightings in 1999, but,
after investigation, confirmed cases will probably number 200 or so.



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