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China's X-files

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The following accounts are based on the claims of mainland and overseas UFO-watching groups.

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The day China saw its first UFO

UFOs were first seen over China during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 to 1945, when both sides suspected the strange objects they saw were bombers sent by their enemies.

What is believed to be the first UFO photograph taken in China emerged in mysterious circumstances in the occupied north of the country in 1942. The picture, showing a large cone-shaped craft flying over a street in Tientsien (now Tianjin), was found by Japanese student Masujiro Kiryu in his father's scrapbook.

When he asked his elderly father about it, he revealed the picture had been taken by a pavement photographer from whom he bought it soon after. He had no way of knowing if it was a forgery. A number of the earliest accounts of sightings of UFOs over China emerged in this period, supported by photographs of fighter-bombers travelling between China and Japan showing specks of light or unusual objects in the background.

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One of the most colourful early accounts of a UFO sighting came from Lin Yabo, a union official from Xiangxiang in Henan Province, who tells of how, as a child playing with friends in the countryside in 1948, he saw an extraordinary sight. 'I saw in the sky, not very high above, a round ball as big as the wheel of a 10-wheeled truck, rotating clockwise and flying past from east to west,' he says.

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