The professor says that Kunming, Yunnan's capital, accounts for one-tenth of all UFO sightings in the province. There have been more than 400 reports since 1972 when a large group of people in Xishan district reported a "shiny brass bowl-like object", he said. Zhang was speaking at the Kunming UFO Forum which took place in the first two weeks of November.
While there are many critics, Zhang is insistent the aliens are amongst us. "Yunnan is a mysterious place, full of oddities," he said. "The aliens' intelligence is beyond us. They must have a good reason to choose to stay in Yunnan." He says they are no threat however. "I believe they are nice and they have no intention of attacking us," Zhang said, "Perhaps they are shape-shifters camouflaged as human beings or they have manufactured human-like robots to watch us."
Since joining the Kunming UFO Research Association in 1980 Zhang claims to have shared sightings with associations from other provinces. "Many people in China believe aliens exist," he said, "but only a few UFO lovers devote themselves to doing the research." The professor is not alone for his unorthodox beliefs. Zhang Zhousheng, 52, a former astronomer at the Yunnan Observatory, made a prediction in June 1981 that "We shall all see a UFO in late July." On July 24, 1981, millions of people in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan Province claimed to witness a flying luminous spiral-shaped body appear in the sky, according to Zhang, who left the Yunnan Observatory in 2005, though still takes a strong interest in astronomy and ufology.
There are countless eye witness accounts of UFOs seen over China. Some people even claim to have captured documentary proof. Perhaps the most well known is the footage alleged to have been shot in Nanjing in August 2006 [pictured above]. The video shows a disc shaped object apparently hovering above an apartment building. It moves slowly over the building before illuminating several lights along its edge before suddenly disappearing in a flash of light. Convincing as the video is, many have dismissed it as a hoax.
However the sightings of UFOs in Nanjing are not isolated. In early 2009 the Xinhua news agency reported that journalists aboard a Southern Airlines plane flying over Nanjing saw an unusual object in the sky. The luminous object apparently travelled adjacent to their own plane before shooting off at a tangent.
Wang Sichao, a researcher at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, who has been studying UFOs for more than 30 years, says there are often simple explanations for many UFOs. "They are usually natural phenomena or man-made objects," Wang says. However some sightings cannot be explained away so easily, he says. The researcher even suggests UFOs have been visiting Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu Province, every 5 to 10 years for the past three decades. There are reports of an orange V-shaped UFO with a long tail near to Jiangsu city on January 10, 2006 and in January 1999 a rod-shaped UFO appeared for nearly four hours in the skies of Nanjing according to the researcher.
Sun Shili, a retired foreign ministry official who is now president of the Beijing UFO Research Society, also concludes that waixingren (extraterrestrials) are living among us. Sun's first close encounter occurred in 1971, when he was sent to the remote countryside during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) to perform the grueling task of rice planting. One day while toiling in the field, his attention was diverted to a bright object in the sky, which rose and fell repeatedly. At first, Sun assumed the spectacle was some sort of Cold War intelligence monitoring device, however years later, after reading foreign material on UFO sightings, he knew he had experienced a close encounter.
While both Professor Zhang and astronomer Zhang Zhousheng are serious about their study, the UFO forum does attract some rather more eccentric individuals. One man attending this years event even claimed he had invented his own flying saucer. "Everyone come look! See? It can fly in all directions. Isn't my idea amazing?" said 40 year old Cheng Weiguo, as he showed a video on his laptop to members of the audience. "It's taken years of studying flying saucers, but I'll only sell for a good price," Cheng declared. "Please bring us a small model next time, then we will talk about it," said Professor Zhang.
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