China's Multi-Province Shape-Changing Object

Summer 2002 was a restless season in China's skies. In April, four spiralling yellow lights were reported over Beijing, then linked by a follow-up report to restaurant searchlights reflecting from low clouds. By July, the Shanghai Star was writing about a wave of sightings across the country. One night stood out.

Sunday, 30 June 2002. Around 10 p.m. Beijing time. In Chengdu, readers of the Tianfu Morning Post saw "an orange and white ray of light" in the sky. It moved slowly from east to west for about 3 minutes. "The illuminated object was about the size of a desk." As it flew, it kept changing shape, from a crescent to a fan. Witnesses were at Moziqiao, Qinglongchang and Huayang.

In Henan, the City Morning Post put the time at 10:30. "An object resembling a flaming arrow appeared in the night sky. Then the tail of the fiery arrow opened up like a fan, which emitted bright light." The glowing part became a crescent. In Jiangsu, the Yangzi Evening Post heard of "an object that looked like the morning sun" in the northwestern sky. It "resembled a searchlight making a fan-shaped pattern". After about 10 minutes the light slowly disappeared.

Photographer Chen Shiwen was watching too. "I saw a brightly lit object with a tail flying slowly from east to west." It spiralled for about 10 seconds. Then it re-formed into the shape of a yuanbao, the ingot, and slowly vanished. In Chongqing, Tian Xianyuan, assistant manager of the city's Astronomy Center, was among the witnesses. People also posted about it on forums from Baotou in Inner Mongolia and Daqing in Heilongjiang.

Then there was the pilot. A Sichuan newspaper reported that a pilot from a local air force camp flew next to the object and mistook it for an enemy fighter. No name. No base. One line in the record.

On 1 July, Wang Sichao of Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing gave the Yangzi Evening Post his view. He had studied UFOs since 1971. He called it "a dimensional flying machine". He believed it was intelligently controlled, but he left open whether it was human or extraterrestrial. He rejected natural explanations.

On 28 August 2002, it happened again. Another nationwide sighting. Wang told the Huashang Bao that both were the same type of "space vehicle", at least 300 km up. People had seen material the craft ejected to change its flight state. It looked dense and bright at first. Then it spread into mist.

The Sichuan provincial weather bureau reportedly pointed to air masses after rain. Others looked much higher. Liu Yan, Wang's colleague at Purple Mountain, has argued that spiral UFOs above 100 km "tend to simply be caused by high-altitude man-made aircraft" and by rocket fuel dumps. A fan of light that spreads, spirals and fades into mist fits that pattern, and this one was seen at the same moment in places more than 2,000 km apart. But no launch on 30 June 2002 has ever been identified.

In English, the case survives almost entirely through one summary on Patrick Gross's site. "The various witnesses' reports of the shape, size, time duration, and flight path of the UFO were very similar," it noted. The Yangzi Evening Post printed a photograph on 1 July 2002. Chen Shiwen is said to have taken pictures too. Neither has surfaced online. The pilot remains unnamed. The launch, if there was one, remains unknown.