The Cangzhou Air Force Intercept

Cangzhou lies in Hebei Province, northern China. Its airfield housed a flight test and training centre of the People's Liberation Army Air Force. Qing County, part of Cangzhou, sits just north of the city.

Monday 19 October 1998. About 23:00. Radar No. 1 sounded an alarm. Then three more. A flying body was moving directly above the airfield, heading rapidly northeast.

Ground crew saw a bright point that looked like a star. Then it became two "stars", one red, one white, rotating ceaselessly. As it seemed to come lower, its outline grew into a short-stemmed mushroom. Underneath there seemed to be many lights. One larger light kept shining down at the ground.

At 23:30 radar showed the object hovering over Qing County at 1,500 m. An armed JJ-6 trainer took off, flown by deputy regiment commander Liu Ming and flight group commander Hu Shaoheng. They saw a round outline with an arched top and a flat bottom. Rows of lights underneath. Beams pointing down. A red light at the edge. The whole thing shaped like a giant straw hat.

When the jet came within about 4,000 m, the object shot upward. By the time the jet reached 3,000 m, it was directly above them. The pilots dived as if leaving. It followed them down. They looped to get above it, and failed. When the jet reached 12,000 m, the target was already at 20,000 m.

Liu took the trigger safety off and radioed: "Commander, let's take it out!" Ground control refused. Then the fuel alarm sounded and the jet returned to base. As two newer fighters prepared to launch, the object vanished like a ghost from every radar screen.

Local authorities counted about 160 civilian witnesses. Air traffic control said no civil aircraft had been passing, and a neighbouring unit's night flying had ended half an hour earlier. The Hebei Daily reported the event on 30 October 1998.

In March 1999, reporter Shen Yingjia of Science and Technology Daily interviewed base commander Li Suolin, who had been on duty that night. Li described a ring of green lights beneath the disc, one of them red, and two beams that did not spread like ordinary light. They stuck out like two glowing solid rods and stopped abruptly at a certain length. "At least today," he said, "humanity has not mastered technology to control light like this."

No conventional explanation has been put forward for this case. No official conclusion from the PLA or the government has ever been published, and it remains recorded as unidentified. In January 2000 the Associated Press quoted sceptics who blamed Chinese sightings of the era on airplane trails catching the low sun and on military aircraft testing. Chen Yanchun of the China UFO Research Resource Center added: "If the military didn't chase it, it's because they knew it wasn't a UFO."

It is often called China's first UFO case confirmed by official media. English retellings often place it at Changzhou, a different city in Jiangsu Province. They also turned a 2,000 m height gap into an approach "as close as 2 km". Online the object has a second life as the Qing Xian Flying Jellyfish.