Chinese Take Great Leap Into the Unknown
Asia: Erosion of Communist ideology has sent many seeking deeper meaning.
For some, the answer lies in paranormal phenomena, from UFOs to Bigfoot.
By HENRY CHU, Times Staff Writer
BEIJING--The truth is out there.
It's hiding in the Shennongjia forest, eluding capture with its loping
stride and superhuman strength--marks of its origin as half man, half beast,
says Yuan Zhenxin.
Or it's up in the sky, which Sun Shili scours for signs of life from
beyond. UFO buffs in China say their nation has become a popular destination
of late for interplanetary visitors, and Sun is determined to figure out how
they come here--and why.
"Previously, most UFO sightings were in developed countries, like the
U.S.," said Sun, an expert in foreign, if not extraterrestrial, trade. "Now
China is developing . . . so this may have aroused the interest of beings
from other worlds."
These are heady days for the millions of Chinese like Sun and Yuan who
claim an interest in the unexplained, the unexplored and the downright
weird.
As China sheds the shackles of its Marxist past, the old Communist
emphasis on strictly scientific, rational and atheistic thought is running
into robust competition from a host of unorthodox ideas and beliefs that
raise eyebrows in some instances and strain credulity to the breaking point
in others.
A cottage industry has sprung up here around investigations into
"X-Files"-type phenomena, ranging from the alleged existence of Bigfoot to a
hill in northern China that reportedly causes passing cars to flip over
without warning.
This explosion of interest in the paranormal follows 20 years of
bewildering social change, years that included the erosion of Communist
ideology and sent many Chinese on a quest for some deeper meaning, or at
least a little excitement and wonder, in their uncertain lives.
"Delving into the unknown is part of human nature," said Zeng Congjun,
deputy editor in chief of Mysteries, a national monthly magazine
(circulation 250,000) full of tales of lost civilizations, alien
visitations, the secrets of the Pyramids and the astonishing powers of
Siamese twins.
"In the past, Chinese people didn't dare air their [private] imaginings
in public," Zeng said. "Now, with the improvement of living standards,
people have more leisure time . . . and want to satisfy their spiritual
needs."
Such pursuits might once have been classified as feudal superstition or
deemed incompatible with rigid Marxism. Science fiction, for example, was
banned in the 1980s as a form of bourgeois "pseudoscience."
In today's freewheeling China, the Communist regime seems content to
leave such activities largely alone as long as they pose no direct threat to
the state. In sporadic cases, the government even sponsors them.
Take Sun, the Fox Mulder of China, who is convinced of the existence of
life on other planets.
Unlike the "X-Files" character, who spies government conspiracies to
hush up the truth around every corner, Sun counts party officials and
serious academics among his supporters, who see his research as both
scientifically valid and technologically valuable.
As head of the Chinese UFO Research Assn., Sun presides over a
nationwide network of government-approved UFO clubs that boast a combined
membership of 50,000. The group hosts national conferences to discuss
principles of jet propulsion as well as reports of sightings of flying
saucers. The Chinese air force even sent an officer to the most recent
convention, in 1998.
500 Reports of UFO Sightings a Year
To maintain an air of scientific respectability, the local Beijing UFO
chapter requires that members have college degrees--not an easy threshold to
meet considering that less than 3% of the population has received any form
of higher education.
"If we were less stringent, our numbers would be huge," said Sun, 63,
an affable, cardigan-wearing economics professor who once served as a
Spanish interpreter for Mao Tse-tung. "We figure that 50% of the total
population in China are UFO devotees."
Sun stays abreast of the latest in UFO happenings through foreign
periodicals and China's fast-growing Internet. He speaks at international
conferences and keeps in contact with aficionados around the world.
Sun receives up to 500 reports of UFO sightings a year. A rash of
alleged sightings came during the final months of last year, when thousands
of people across China reported seeing strangely glowing objects hovering in
the sky.
Official media rushed to cover the news, which made national headlines
and inspired a segment on China Central Television, the main state network.
"So many people have seen it, and there are even pictures of it. They
can't be lying," said Yang Tao, 37, a government worker and believer in
extraterrestrial life.
"The universe is so big," he added. "Who knows what exists in places
very far away from Earth?"
China also has its share of reports of alien abductions. A few months
ago, a Beijing man claimed to have been beamed aboard a spaceship in the
dead of night and made to supernaturally heal another captive earthling.
After interviewing the man and having him examined by a psychiatrist, Sun
concluded that the story was true.
Sun also puts stock in the account of a forestry worker who allegedly
was kidnapped by aliens in 1996, experimented on in unspeakable ways, then
entrusted with an important message to impart to the people back on Earth:
"Don't make war--and protect the environment."
"This is consistent with what's been heard in other places," said Sun,
whose only personal encounter of the UFO kind occurred 30 years ago, when he
saw a brightly shining object moving up and down in the night sky. At the
time, he says ruefully, he mistook it for a Soviet spy plane.
While Sun and his fellow enthusiasts scan the skies for signs of higher
intelligence, Yuan Zhenxin keeps his sights low to the ground for evidence
of a creature of lesser intelligence: Bigfoot.
Yuan is convinced that between 1,000 and 2,000 of the apelike creatures
roam the forests of central China, particularly the Shennongjia Nature
Reserve in Hubei province.
Like Sun, Yuan dabbles in stories of abduction, including those of two
farmers who say they were kidnapped by Bigfoot but escaped to tell the tale.
Another person claimed to have spent two hours in conversation with the
creature, who reportedly gesticulated and mimicked bird sounds.
"They're very clever," said Yuan, a silvering man in his 60s.
Yuan is no mean scholar. He is a retired paleoanthropologist and member
of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences. One of his mentors, he says,
was the late Pei Wenzhong, who discovered the skullcap of Peking man.
Yuan describes Bigfoot as more than 6 1/2 feet tall, with reddish brown
hair, long limbs and a rather nasty case of BO. It is smaller than the
Bigfoot creatures, the sasquatches, that some people say populate the
forests of the Pacific Northwest in the U.S.--accounts Yuan dismisses.
"Bigfoot in America is fake science. In China, it's true science," he
said.
Funding Is Dwindling for Bigfoot Expeditions
In 1976-77, the government sponsored a Bigfoot expedition to
Shennongjia consisting of 100 people, including army personnel.
That trip, and subsequent others, yielded numerous samples of what Yuan
maintains are the hair, footprints and feces of an undiscovered species,
probably descended from a giant ape whose fossilized teeth can still be
found in the region.
"They're a cousin of humans," he said of Bigfoot, known in Chinese as
"wild man."
But money for such study has dwindled, because fewer and fewer of
Yuan's fellow scientists are willing to approve funding without more
conclusive proof, in the form of a clear photograph and a DNA analysis.
Yuan and his supporters have been forced to dig into their own pockets
to keep three informal research centers operating. One of Yuan's colleagues
even has divorced his wife, sold his home and moved permanently to
Shennongjia to carry on the work.
They are wary of outside help, taking a proprietary--and somewhat
patriotic--approach to their research.
"In the past, many rare animals in China were discovered and named by
foreigners," Yuan said. "We don't want this kind of creature to be found
first by foreigners."
Such fascination with the undiscovered and the unknown, with the
strange and the mysterious, has flowered in China in response to the
ideological vacuum created by the deterioration of communism, analysts say.
Unorthodox ideas long suppressed or declared illegal are bubbling back to
the surface.
It is similar, some say, to the religious revival underway in China, a
renewal encompassing mainstream faiths, such as Buddhism, as well as local
folk religions, which mix ancient superstitions and mysticism, and such
quasi-religious groups as the outlawed Falun Gong meditation sect.
Like those interested in UFOs and other unsolved mysteries, many such
groups borrow scientific concepts and terminology to lend their beliefs a
veneer of legitimacy.
For example, masters of certain sects of qigong, the ancient practice
of deep breathing and slow movement, sprinkle their teachings with
references to black holes, gamma rays, antimatter and the like.
"Qigong masters have a firm command of this vocabulary," Sima Nan said.
Sima, China's answer to the Harry Houdini who exposed fraudulent
spiritualists, makes a living as a professional debunker of fantastic
claims. A fund he set up with an American donor offers $1.2 million to
anyone who can prove that he or she wields paranormal powers. Various qigong
gurus have claimed to be able to bend silverware, see into the future,
change the composition of matter or even put out forest fires from a great
distance by using only their mental powers.
One applicant for the reward, a middle school teacher, said he had been
kidnapped by flying aliens who subsist on a diet of mushrooms and mineral
water and live for thousands of years. The aliens come from a planet
directly above Beijing and make regular visits to the Chinese capital, the
man said.
"This guy thinks [Beijing] is the next big tourist destination" for
higher life forms, Sima said. "A lot of people take illusions or
hallucinations to be reality."
Scoffers note that scientific education in China is weak, making it
easier for people to fall prey to crackpot theories that wouldn't pass
muster in more educated societies. Sima also blames traditional Chinese
thinking for making people susceptible to the unscientific.
"Chinese thinking is different from Western thinking," he said.
"Westerners try to get at things very clearly, asking what, why and how
much. Chinese are more interested in dealing with things using metaphors or
intuitive comparisons."
Yet for true believers, there is simply too much evidence on their
side--scientific evidence, they insist--for their ideas to be dismissed so
readily.
"It's not a question of whether one believes in the existence of UFOs
or not. UFOs are an objective fact," declared Wang Yuming, editor of the
Journal of UFO Research, a magazine (circulation 240,000) put out by Gansu
Science & Technology Press, a state-owned publishing house.
"I can understand why people don't believe in UFOs, because modern
science can't explain them," Wang said. But "hundreds of years ago, who
could imagine metal objects--today's planes--flying through the air?"
Tara
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