Disclaimer: All images in this article are sourced from the internet. Their authenticity remains unverified—please take them with a grain of salt.
According to incomplete statistics, nearly 2,000 UFO sightings have been reported across China since 1978. Mysterious appearances have been observed in almost every province. The well-known domestic publication UFO Exploration magazine has published a large number of eyewitness reports, including several notable and representative cases.
The “7·24” Sighting Incident
At 10:30 PM on July 24, 1981, during a weather observation in Dachaidan Town, Qinghai Province, a joint expedition team from China and the Federal Republic of Germany—there to study the natural landscape of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau—witnessed a remarkable phenomenon. Dr. Tronia, a German meteorologist, along with Li Lie, a researcher from the Lanzhou Institute of Glaciology and Cryopedology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Huang Rongfu, a researcher from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Biology, simultaneously observed a glowing spiral-shaped object resembling a coil of incense.
This luminous object appeared to be a long cylindrical structure over 15 meters in length, with intense beams of light shooting from both ends. The visible length of these beams was estimated to be over 200 meters. The object was likely a UFO, as it was surrounded by a halo of light and remained visible for as long as 15 minutes before disappearing.
At the same time that evening, a sudden and unexplained power outage occurred at a power plant in Meng County, Ganzi Prefecture, Sichuan Province. Both the transformer and the earthquake precursor instruments were inexplicably damaged. In other parts of the country, severe weather such as sudden storms also appeared around the time the coil-shaped UFO was sighted—despite no prior forecasts from local meteorological stations.
Some eyewitnesses described the UFO as a glowing ring of alternating blue and white, with a vivid blue-white center. A few observers using telescopes reported that the core of the UFO appeared “butterfly-shaped” or even “dragon-shaped.” Approximately 20 reports also mentioned that the UFO demonstrated behavior such as hovering, changing direction, or altering speed during its flight.
Following the incident, the China UFO Research Organization (CURO) reported that within just three months, around 70 related articles were published or broadcast by 41 media outlets, including Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily. Tens of millions of people across vast regions of Southwest, Northwest, Central, and South China claimed to have witnessed the event. CURO and its regional branches received over a thousand eyewitness reports. The witnesses included aerospace scientists, newspaper journalists, PLA officers and soldiers, university faculty and students, engineers, amateur astronomers, as well as a wide range of workers and farmers—spanning 205 counties and cities across 13 provinces in China.
A UFO research institute in California, USA, also stated: “On opposite sides of the Earth, the same type of ‘flying saucer’ was observed in both Tibet, China, and California, USA, on the very same day.”
This event was officially named the “7·24 Sighting Incident,” marking the first time a UFO encounter was formally reported in China.
On June 18, 1982, at around 10:00 PM, the night skies over Daxing’anling and Nenjiang in Heilongjiang Province were calm and filled with stars. Suddenly, a bright “star” rapidly rose from the northern horizon, seemingly with a fiery “tail” trailing behind it. Shortly after, the “tail” disappeared, but the bright object continued to ascend and began to spin, gradually transforming into a small, glowing orb of orange-red or amber light.
Around 10:08 PM, the orb suddenly changed—within the blink of an eye, it turned into a dazzling white sphere of light.
The white sphere quickly expanded, becoming a perfect circular halo that was bright on the outside and dimmer on the inside, with the original “bright star” still visible at its center. As the halo rapidly grew across the sky, many eyewitnesses were stunned, describing the white light as sweeping across the sky in an overwhelming, all-encompassing wave. The halo maintained a nearly perfect circular shape and, by around 10:25 PM, had expanded to its maximum size—nearly covering half of the northern sky.
By approximately 10:15 PM, the central “bright star” had disappeared. As the halo continued to expand, its brightness gradually faded, allowing the background stars to once again become visible through its center.
The brightness of the halo continued to fade until it became a pale gray-white. The center of the glowing orb first rose rapidly, then slowly moved in a southeasterly direction. At the same time as the appearance of the orange-red or amber orb, a dim bluish-green, mushroom-shaped cloud appeared in the lower left portion of the sky. This cloud gradually stretched westward, expanding in size while its color faded to gray-white. By around 11:00 PM, it had transformed into a long, horse-tail-shaped cloud stretching across the northwestern horizon. At approximately 11:30 PM, the cloud faded from view, and the night sky returned to complete darkness.
This extraordinary celestial phenomenon was also witnessed by pilot Liu Shihui, who was conducting a night flight training mission over a military airport in North China, as well as by other pilots performing dual-aircraft formation training in nearby areas, ground control tower commanders, flight surgeons, and over 200 personnel at the airbase. Thousands of civilians across Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Anhui also reported seeing the event. Notably, Zheng Dechun from the Duerbert Mongol Autonomous County in Heilongjiang even succeeded in capturing photographs of the sighting.
Less than two years later, on the evenings of April 7, 9, 11, and 13 in 1984—at around 9:45 PM each night—unidentified luminous flying objects nearly identical to the previous phenomenon reappeared four times in succession. These sightings were widely observed throughout Northeast China. Notably, on April 13, within just a few minutes, three intersecting halos and three corresponding central bright points appeared in the sky. As the halos expanded, they gradually formed three slightly offset concentric circles—resembling “ripples in space.”
A radio operator aboard China Civil Aviation Flight 982 (San Francisco–Shanghai–Beijing) described the scene: “There was a bright point in the center, with mist-like surroundings, and it expanded in circles—just like a nuclear explosion.” The captain, Qian Yingming, confirmed: “The luminous body looked just like the halo you see in a movie when the camera pans across the sun.”
Similar incidents didn’t stop there. From August 25 to 31, 1988, at around 9:00 PM each night, a glowing halo-shaped object once again appeared in the northern night sky. Compared to the previous events, this time Ms. Wu Shuxian from Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province, succeeded in capturing a complete photographic sequence of the object’s flight path.
From the photographs, the luminous object initially appeared shuttle-shaped, moving towards the upper right. Subsequently, a bright mass emerged from its front, indicating a sudden transformation—specifically, the ejection and expulsion of matter. This luminous object continued to expand, suggesting its constituent material was gaseous.
The gaseous mass at the front displayed a spiral structure, distinctly separated from the rear gaseous mass. This spiral shape implies that a central entity was ejecting gaseous material while rotating, and the clear dividing line suggests these formations resulted from different processes. As both gaseous masses continued to expand, the frontal spiral structure became even more pronounced and significantly larger than the rear one, indicating the central object ejected material at different velocities during two distinct phases.
At this point, the spiral structure of the frontal gaseous mass was remarkably clear, with a V-shaped bright area beginning to appear at its center. As the spiral gaseous mass expanded further, its inner layer’s brightness diminished, making the central V-shaped bright area even more prominent. It appears the gaseous mass was ejected from a central entity located at the apex of this V-shaped region. The V-shaped wake also suggests the central object was rotating clockwise, which is consistent with the spiral trajectory. Finally, the inner rings of the frontal spiral gaseous mass grew progressively thinner and more transparent, with the luminous mass gradually transforming into a ring of light.
Unfortunately, this set of photographs lacks environmental references like trees or buildings, and the precise time of capture isn’t recorded. This prevents us from gathering more information to estimate the object’s flight parameters.
If we tentatively call it a “luminous mass-to-ring-shaped flying object,” the primary question facing Earthlings is: What is this flying object, and where did it come from? Speculations vary wildly: some suggest it’s the aurora borealis, others a geological arc light, some believe it’s an Earth-made aircraft, while still others propose it’s an extraterrestrial visit. The answers are numerous, and currently, there’s no definitive conclusion.
