Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard McLain Smith here, not the impostor you've
Speaker 1: been listening to on the podcasts, the real one. Join
Speaker 1: me for Unexplained TV at YouTube dot com forward Slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained pod. In seventeen ninety two, in ching Dinnasty, China,
Speaker 1: a philosopher, politician, and writer named che Lun wrote an
Speaker 1: unusual book. Notes of the Thatched Abode of Close Observations
Speaker 1: is a collection of over one hundred stories, thought to
Speaker 1: be a series of satirical portraits of people and society
Speaker 1: at the time. Cleverly concealed within intricate plot lines, ghost
Speaker 1: tales co mingle with history and fantasy in a way
Speaker 1: that makes it difficult to separate truth from figs. One
Speaker 1: of the stories relates the events surrounding an eighty year
Speaker 1: old man living in what today is the city of
Speaker 1: Laijo in Shangdong Province. One day, the elderly man, who
Speaker 1: is somewhat forgetful and unable to walk, is sitting outside alone.
Speaker 1: He asks a family member to bring him something from
Speaker 1: the house, but when they return, the old man and
Speaker 1: the chair he was sitting on are gone. The family
Speaker 1: look high and low for their elder without success. After
Speaker 1: a few days, a neighbor and friend of the family
Speaker 1: returns home to Liaijo from a trip to ching Dao,
Speaker 1: another town located about one hundred miles away. On his arrival,
Speaker 1: he hurries straight to the missing man's son at his
Speaker 1: home and asks him if he's still looking for his father.
Speaker 1: When the Sun, still desperate with worry, replies that he is,
Speaker 1: his neighbor tells him with delight that his is safe
Speaker 1: and well and staying in ching Taut. Though disbelieving it
Speaker 1: at first, the Sun immediately dispatches some servants to ching
Speaker 1: Dau to look for him. Sure enough, the old man
Speaker 1: is soon located in the distant town and promptly returned
Speaker 1: safely to his home. When the Sun asks him how
Speaker 1: on earth he got to ching Dau, the old man
Speaker 1: explains that he was quietly minding his own business when
Speaker 1: suddenly two mysterious figures appeared out of nowhere. Without saying
Speaker 1: so much as a word, the men picked him up
Speaker 1: in his chair, then flew him up to the sky
Speaker 1: and all the way to the town. It is, of course,
Speaker 1: a fantastic fable with no possible foundation in truth. Or
Speaker 1: is it you're listening to unexplained, and I'm Richard mc
Speaker 1: lean smith. It was some time around ten PM when
Speaker 1: twenty one year old farmer Huang yang Cho collapsed into
Speaker 1: his bed after a long day toiling in the fields.
Speaker 1: That night of July twenty seventh, nineteen seventy seven in
Speaker 1: Dongbei Cao, a remote rural village in the Herbei Province
Speaker 1: of northern China, was a hot one. Although most of
Speaker 1: rural China at the time was gripped by extreme poverty
Speaker 1: and the continuing effects of the Cultural Revolution, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: Huang was doing quite well for himself. He'd also recently
Speaker 1: become engaged and was excited for the wedding due to
Speaker 1: take place at the end of the autumn harvest. Some
Speaker 1: of his neighbors even told him that he was living
Speaker 1: a dream of millet, a Chinese proverb meaning his life
Speaker 1: was like a fanciful dream, but the saying also had
Speaker 1: an alto alternative meaning, sometimes interpreted as your hopes will
Speaker 1: ultimately come to nothing. That night, in the thick, humid
Speaker 1: air of peak monsoon season, as the chirp of crickets
Speaker 1: pulsated all around, the exhausted Huang drifted off to sleep.
Speaker 1: The following morning, Huang failed to turn up at the
Speaker 1: rice farm where he worked. Since he was an ordinarily
Speaker 1: reliable and punctual employee, a colleague contacted his family and
Speaker 1: asked if they could check in on him. A short
Speaker 1: time later, a relative of Huang's arrived at the young
Speaker 1: farmer's home and knocked on its door. No Huang's bike,
Speaker 1: his only mode of transport, was still leaning against the
Speaker 1: side of the house. There was no response from inside.
Speaker 1: Feeling a little perturbed by the silence, the relative let
Speaker 1: themselves into the property, where inside they found Huang's clothes
Speaker 1: for the work day ahead neatly laid out in his room,
Speaker 1: but no sign of Huang. In a panic, its family
Speaker 1: and neighbors immediately began to search around the village and
Speaker 1: surrounding fields, which were at least thirty miles away from
Speaker 1: the nearest railway station, But after days of fruitless searching
Speaker 1: for the missing farmer, Huang was still nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 1: It was some ten days later, on August sixth, when
Speaker 1: a telegram was received by the village committee. It had
Speaker 1: been sent from Shanghai, a city located six hundred miles
Speaker 1: away to the south. It said incredibly that Huang was
Speaker 1: being held there in a detention center, and that he
Speaker 1: needed a member of family to confirm his identity so
Speaker 1: they could allow him to return home. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: the strangest thing. The telegram had apparently been delayed on
Speaker 1: its way to the village, having originally been sent to
Speaker 1: the wrong address. But more than that, it appeared to
Speaker 1: have been written at nine a m. On July twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: less than twelve hours after Huang had gone to bed.
Speaker 1: When Huang finally arrived back home two weeks after he
Speaker 1: had gone missing, he was naturally subjected to intense questioning
Speaker 1: by his family and neighbors. The story he had to
Speaker 1: tell was utterly out of this world, as Huang is
Speaker 1: said to have recounted it. Having gone to bed on
Speaker 1: the evening of July twenty seventh, Huang had enjoyed a
Speaker 1: solid night of sleep when sometime around six a m.
Speaker 1: Seemingly on the verge of waking, he drifted in and
Speaker 1: doubt of what he first assumed was a lucid dream.
Speaker 1: All around him, he heard the cocoffhon any of busy
Speaker 1: traffic replete with honking horns, and the trundling of trucks.
Speaker 1: Then slowly images came to him of a busy street scene,
Speaker 1: as if he were standing right in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: Looking around, he saw shops, restaurants, and street science that
Speaker 1: all proclaimed he was in the metropolis of Nanching. Then
Speaker 1: Huang had the sudden, horrifying realization that he wasn't in
Speaker 1: a dream at all. He was really there. Somehow, it
Speaker 1: appeared he'd managed to travel four hundred and eighty five
Speaker 1: miles in the dead of night with no luggage, no money,
Speaker 1: and no memory of the journey. At least that's what
Speaker 1: he's said to have told the two strange men who
Speaker 1: apparently approached him moments later. The men, who Huang is
Speaker 1: said to have thought were traffic police, had little sympathy
Speaker 1: for the amused young man and demanded to see his
Speaker 1: Nuanjing residency permit. When he failed to produce it, Huang
Speaker 1: was promptly arrested and escorted to the local railway station.
Speaker 1: The officers handed him a ticket to Shanghai and ordered
Speaker 1: him to travel there immediately, where he would be taken
Speaker 1: to a repatriation camp until they could confirm his identity.
Speaker 1: Huang boarded the train and Julie set off for Shanghai,
Speaker 1: located two hundred miles away to the east. When the
Speaker 1: train finally pulled into Shanghai station, Huang was staggered to
Speaker 1: see the same two police officers patiently waiting for him
Speaker 1: on the platform, despite the fact that he was almost
Speaker 1: certain they hadn't boarded the train with him. The officers
Speaker 1: then escorted the bemused young man to the Ninth Repatriation
Speaker 1: Camp a short walk away. There he was taken in
Speaker 1: by a People's Liberation Army soldier named Blu qing Tang, who,
Speaker 1: as it turned out, had relatives in dong Bai Ko,
Speaker 1: where Huang lived. Qing Tang felt sorry for the young
Speaker 1: farmer and immediately dispatched the telegram that would eventually make
Speaker 1: its way to Huang's family and secure his release. By September,
Speaker 1: everything in Huang's life seemed to have settled back to normal.
Speaker 1: On the eighth of that month, the village committee held
Speaker 1: a meeting about how to increase their productivity. Huang was
Speaker 1: assigned a job to deliver manure to the fields first
Speaker 1: thing the next day, and advised to go to bed
Speaker 1: early by some of the village elders, and so the
Speaker 1: young man duly obliged. The following morning, he was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. It said that when Huang went missing
Speaker 1: for the second time, a co worker was sent to
Speaker 1: look for him. Once again, Huang was not in his house.
Speaker 1: He appeared to have left a message behind. Scrawled across
Speaker 1: his bedroom wall was the name of a distant province
Speaker 1: in China, Shangdong, the names of two people unknown to
Speaker 1: every one in the village, Kao Deng Min and Kao
Speaker 1: yan Chin, and the single word relax. Three days later,
Speaker 1: on September eleventh, Huang miraculously reappeared with an even more
Speaker 1: bizarre tale to tell. Early in the morning of the ninth,
Speaker 1: he said he felt a cold breeze tugging at his
Speaker 1: sleep wear and heard a loud clock strike two. Somewhere
Speaker 1: in the distance. He realized he was once again back
Speaker 1: in Shanghai, at the railway station that he'd apparently been
Speaker 1: sent to on his first mysterious trip. But this type,
Speaker 1: the normally busy station, was eerily quiet, and the air
Speaker 1: was thick and heavy, while ominous dark clouds swirled above.
Speaker 1: Moments later, a loud crack of thunder erupted, followed by
Speaker 1: a torrent of rain, drenching the hapless Shang. He wept
Speaker 1: with frustration and despair until he remembered Lou Qing Tang,
Speaker 1: the soldier who'd taken him in at the repatriation camp
Speaker 1: during his previous misadventure. Then he heard a voice saying, hello,
Speaker 1: you must be Huang yang Cho. Huang was astounded to
Speaker 1: see what he was certain were the same two men
Speaker 1: who'd picked him up last time and taken him to
Speaker 1: the detention center, only this time they were wearing military uniforms.
Speaker 1: The men claimed to have orders to pick him up
Speaker 1: and deliver him to lu Qing Tang. Yuang claimed. He
Speaker 1: then followed the troopers to Lose Artillery Division, located on
Speaker 1: the outskirts of what is now the Pu Dong District
Speaker 1: of Shanghai. Despite the compound being heavily armed, Huang and
Speaker 1: the two men were waved straight in by the seemingly
Speaker 1: unconcerned guards at the front gate. Since Liu qing Tang
Speaker 1: was at a meeting on their arrival, his son lu
Speaker 1: Hai Sheng was summoned to meet the visitor instead. Lu
Speaker 1: Junior is said to have been confused by the two
Speaker 1: men accompanying Huang. It was mostly the clothes they were wearing.
Speaker 1: Their uniforms seemed odd, as if they'd been borrowed, and
Speaker 1: their footwear was all wrong, But when Huang turned around
Speaker 1: to introduce them, the men had completely vanished. When the
Speaker 1: guards were later questioned as to why Huang had been
Speaker 1: granted access to the facility, none of them recalled Eva,
Speaker 1: and seeing him enter once again, telegrams were exchanged, this
Speaker 1: time between the camp commandant and the head of Huang's village,
Speaker 1: asking again to verify Huan's identity. Huang was then threatened
Speaker 1: with arrest if he ever came back again, and was
Speaker 1: promptly sent home. When Huang returned home for the second time,
Speaker 1: he claimed to have no idea who'd left the writing
Speaker 1: on his bedroom wall, but that was the least of
Speaker 1: his worries. Where at first many in the village had
Speaker 1: been intrigued by the story, now they felt a great unease.
Speaker 1: Rumors spread that Huang had been possessed by evil spirits,
Speaker 1: and his fiancee broke up with him, just like the
Speaker 1: Chinese proverb about the millet. It seemed Huang's hopes and
Speaker 1: dreams were beginning to crumble. A week later, on September twentieth,
Speaker 1: a disconsolate Huang was heading home from another day of
Speaker 1: work when he later said, he was suddenly overtaken by
Speaker 1: dizziness and passed out. When he woke up, he apparently
Speaker 1: found himself in an unfamiliar hotel room, sat in front
Speaker 1: of him with those same two men whom he'd apparently
Speaker 1: previously encountered on his strange journeys. They said they were
Speaker 1: two brothers named Kao Deng Min and Ko yang Jin,
Speaker 1: the names that were found written on Huang's bedroom wall.
Speaker 1: The brothers were twenty six and twenty five and apparently
Speaker 1: hailed from Shangdong Province. According to Huan, the men only
Speaker 1: then admitted that they were responsible for all his strange disappearances,
Speaker 1: and now they'd brought him to lan Cho in Gansu Province,
Speaker 1: over seven hundred miles from his home. The men took
Speaker 1: Huang for dinner, then together they spent the night in
Speaker 1: the hotel. The following morning, the two brothers as said
Speaker 1: to have led Huang outside and told him to brace himself. Then,
Speaker 1: just like that, the brothers lifted Huang straight into the air,
Speaker 1: with each taking it in turns to carry him on
Speaker 1: their backs, as like Neo from the matrix, They flew
Speaker 1: through the sky, according to Juan, in just one hour,
Speaker 1: flying low above the land. The men arrived at the
Speaker 1: capital Beijing. There he was taken to Chung'en Grand Theater,
Speaker 1: where they watched an opera. Next, they traveled to Chianniman Square,
Speaker 1: landing in front of a tank before checking into a
Speaker 1: nearby hotel for the night. The following day, they flew
Speaker 1: to Tianjin and snuck into a movie theater and watched
Speaker 1: a film, then traveled to the city of Harpin. Huang
Speaker 1: described how they strolled through a shopping mall before taking
Speaker 1: off again at dusk toward the city of chang Chun,
Speaker 1: followed by shen Yang, Fujo and Nan Ching six hundred
Speaker 1: miles to the north, all on the same day. According
Speaker 1: to Huang, each trip between cities lasted only an hour.
Speaker 1: Not only were the men able to fly, but according
Speaker 1: to Huang, the brothers also had the ability to speak
Speaker 1: local dialects wherever they went, and always had enough money
Speaker 1: to pay for meals and accommodation. Other than that, the
Speaker 1: two men apparently ate and slept like normal human beings.
Speaker 1: And insisted that Huang not take any photographs or keep
Speaker 1: any souvenirs from their travels. Finally, on the twenty eighth
Speaker 1: of September nineteen seventy seven, Huang said that the mysterious
Speaker 1: cow brothers finally returned him to his back yard, where
Speaker 1: they left him under a jujub tree. He never saw
Speaker 1: them or made any lengthy journeys at inexplicable speeds. Again, naturally,
Speaker 1: Huang's accounts of his strange travels were hard for his
Speaker 1: family and friends to take seriously, but as his story spread,
Speaker 1: the authorities felt they had little choice but to investigate. First,
Speaker 1: the local police and propaganda bureaus are said to have
Speaker 1: interrogated him, followed by a local division of the armed forces.
Speaker 1: The thinking among these various agencies was that Huang yang
Speaker 1: Cho was deliberately sabotaging the village's reputation. He was pronounced
Speaker 1: a class enemy, and yet, as the story goes, during
Speaker 1: repeated questioning, Huang's behavior appeared perfectly normal, and other than
Speaker 1: insisting that his fantastical flying travels were true, he showed
Speaker 1: no signs of mental illness or cognitive disorder. In the end,
Speaker 1: it said that the authorities simply gave up and let
Speaker 1: him return to his normal life, and for over twenty
Speaker 1: five years his story subsided into relative obscurity, except that
Speaker 1: it is among members of the ufology community. Some of
Speaker 1: them believe Huang's story to be a clear case of
Speaker 1: a close encounter of the fifth kind. The close encounter
Speaker 1: terminology refers to a system drawn up by the astronomer
Speaker 1: and UFO researcher J. Allen Heinich published in his nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two book The UFO Experience, a Scientific Inquiry. In it,
Speaker 1: he proposed a quasi scientific classification he believed were the
Speaker 1: six levels of extra terrestrial encounter. One, the most common type,
Speaker 1: involves a distant sighting at night, or, as he put it,
Speaker 1: seeing nocturnal lights. Level two is a distant observation of
Speaker 1: a disc or oval shape in the sky during the daytime,
Speaker 1: known as a daylight disc. The third level of sighting,
Speaker 1: or radar visual, is a visual report of a UFO
Speaker 1: combined with radar confirmation of an object. Level four, also
Speaker 1: known as a close encounter of the first kite, is
Speaker 1: a visual sighting of an unidentified flying object appearing to
Speaker 1: be less than five hundred feet away and with some
Speaker 1: clearly visible surface details, while level five, also known as
Speaker 1: a close encounter of the second kite, is a UFO
Speaker 1: sighting in which a physical effect is alleged, such as
Speaker 1: interference in the functioning of a vehicle or electronic device,
Speaker 1: or inducing fear zeological effects such as paralysis or heat
Speaker 1: in the witness. A close encounter of the third kind,
Speaker 1: or level six, after which the nineteen seventy seven Steven
Speaker 1: Spielberg movie was named, involves a UFO encounter in which
Speaker 1: a moving entity is said to be present. For j
Speaker 1: Allen Heineck, that is where it ended. Others have proposed
Speaker 1: two more stages, an encounter of the fourth kind being
Speaker 1: a supposed UFO event in which a human is abducted
Speaker 1: by a UFO or its occupants, or at the very
Speaker 1: least where the witness experiences a transformation of their sense
Speaker 1: of reality, and finally, a close encounter of the fifth kind,
Speaker 1: where an alien abductee receives some manner of physical effect
Speaker 1: from their supposed close encounter, be that an injury or healing, or,
Speaker 1: as in Huang Yang Chose apparent case, being directly flown
Speaker 1: through the sky. In two thousand and four, Huang's story
Speaker 1: was investigated by China Central Television under the auspices of
Speaker 1: their science and education channels Approaching Science program. They decided
Speaker 1: to look for evidence to support Huang's stories. Various apparent
Speaker 1: witnesses were interviewed, including lu Qing Tang, the soldier at
Speaker 1: the repatriation camp in Shanghai, as well as the head
Speaker 1: of Huang's village committee and its co workers. So to
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps, they asked Huang to go to
Speaker 1: two different medical facilities in Beijing to conduct a series
Speaker 1: of tests. At the first institution, he was given a
Speaker 1: polygraph test while he was questioned about his story. Huang
Speaker 1: failed the test. However, doctors were reluctant to conclude that
Speaker 1: he was definitely lying. After all, not only was he
Speaker 1: having to contend with the mental pressure of being in
Speaker 1: such an environment for the first time, but also twenty
Speaker 1: seven years had passed since the alleged events took place.
Speaker 1: It was understandable that some elements of his recollection might
Speaker 1: be hazy, so his statements were subjected to a second
Speaker 1: evaluation at the psychiatric division of Beijing's Anding Hospital. Their
Speaker 1: deputy director, doctor Chen Bin concluded that Huang was either
Speaker 1: telling bear faced lies or that he suffered from a
Speaker 1: bizarre and severe case of somnambulism. In other words, he'd
Speaker 1: somehow sleepwalked to the various cities. However, he couldn't offer
Speaker 1: an explanation as to how the man could have apparently
Speaker 1: traveled such vast distances in the limited time available. Huang
Speaker 1: yang Cho's brain health was also tested to see whether
Speaker 1: he might have some form of epilepsy that might induce
Speaker 1: such disassociative sleepwalking, but the tests showed Huang's brain to
Speaker 1: be perfectly healthy. Further tests found no evidence to suggest
Speaker 1: he suffered from any other dysfunction in the brain, with
Speaker 1: one physician adding only that he found Huang to be
Speaker 1: a moderately paranoid person. The documentary producers also arranged to
Speaker 1: film interviews with Huang while he underwent hypnosis. The producers
Speaker 1: watched on expectantly as Huang was filmed being led into
Speaker 1: the hypnotist's office and invited to lie down on a
Speaker 1: couch and try to relax his mind. Huang laid back
Speaker 1: as the hypnotists soporific words washed over him, and before
Speaker 1: long he appeared to have sunk into a deep trance.
Speaker 1: The hypnotist began with a few simple questions about who
Speaker 1: he was and where he came from. Then he asked
Speaker 1: Huang to recount once more the story of how he
Speaker 1: came to be in Nanjing. The first time. Huang proceeded
Speaker 1: to give a detailed account of his apparent mysterious journey.
Speaker 1: Then the hypnotist asked him to describe the cow brothers.
Speaker 1: Huang duly obliged, describing their features, their height, and hair.
Speaker 1: But as he did so, something became immediately apparent to
Speaker 1: the documentary producers. Huang was merely describing his own appearance.
Speaker 1: Though there is little concrete evidence to back up Huang
Speaker 1: yang chose claims, speculation in China and abroad remains rife
Speaker 1: about what it all means. His life's story was even
Speaker 1: adapted into the twenty twenty three film Tell Them I
Speaker 1: Flew Away, directed by Chiu Pung Lie. As the blurb
Speaker 1: for the film on Mubi has it, the film explores
Speaker 1: the essence of human nature and the pursuit and yearning
Speaker 1: for a better life after the protagonist is abducted by aliens.
Speaker 1: Could Huang really have been abducted as some have it?
Speaker 1: Was he really just sleep walking, Or was he suffering
Speaker 1: from some kind of dissociative identity disorder somehow traveling across
Speaker 1: China as alternately himself and then the cow brothers. Or
Speaker 1: had a young farmer whose only dream was to travel
Speaker 1: and see the world felt so trapped by circumstance and
Speaker 1: the social morase of his community that the only way
Speaker 1: for him to achieve it was to somehow imagine it
Speaker 1: into being. For what it's worth, the producers of the
Speaker 1: documentary came to a rather vague conclusion that Huang yang
Speaker 1: Cho had been sleepwalking, but gave no explanation for how
Speaker 1: he'd seemingly managed to travel so far in such short
Speaker 1: spaces of time, a feat that would have been simply
Speaker 1: impossible in waking life, let alone having to do it
Speaker 1: while you were sleeping. The opera Huang claimed to have
Speaker 1: seen when he was supposedly flown to Beijing was called
Speaker 1: Forced onto Mount Liang. During the making of the documentary,
Speaker 1: a journalist traveled to the chang Un Grand Theatre in
Speaker 1: Beijing to inquire if the opera had actually been playing
Speaker 1: there in September nineteen seventy seven, at the time of
Speaker 1: Huang's apparent visit. After speaking to the theatre manager, the
Speaker 1: journalist was disappointed to find that the theater had in
Speaker 1: fact been closed at the time due to day damage
Speaker 1: sustained during the nineteen seventy six Tongu Shang earthquake. It
Speaker 1: didn't reopen until nineteen seventy nine. However, as the manager
Speaker 1: went on to explain, shang Un Grand isn't the only
Speaker 1: theater in the area. There was also the te Shung
Speaker 1: Theater near by. After getting directions, the journalist headed straight there.
Speaker 1: A short time later, he was stood in the Tea
Speaker 1: Chang Theater foyer as a member of staff thumbed through
Speaker 1: a large record of the theatre's past productions. He lit
Speaker 1: a cigarette and watched hawkishly as the staff member turned
Speaker 1: back the pages until finally they found the date they
Speaker 1: were looking for and the name of the show that
Speaker 1: had been playing at the time. Well, well, they said,
Speaker 1: pointing to it, would you look at that? It was
Speaker 1: the opera Forced onto Mount Young. This episode was written
Speaker 1: by Diane Hope and Richard McLain Smith. Diane is an
Speaker 1: audio producer and sound recordist in her own right. You
Speaker 1: can find out more about her work at Dianehope dot
Speaker 1: com and on Instagram at in the sound field. Unexplained
Speaker 1: is an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain Smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book
Speaker 1: and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
Speaker 1: purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
Speaker 1: like to share. You can find out more at Unexplained
Speaker 1: podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter at
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