Mystical places in China
4 legends · 4 cities
Regions and cities
Koshi Province1
Liaoning1
Xizang Autonomous Region1
Zhejiang1
By kind of place
All places
Liaoning and the Piltdown Bird
In November 1999 National Geographic held a press conference for Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, the missing link between dinosaurs and birds, bought at a mineral fair in Arizona for eighty thousand dollars and quarried from the shales of Liaoning. The Chinese palaeontologist Xu Xing saw the article and recognised the tail: he had described it himself, and it belonged to a Microraptor. CT scanning confirmed the slab was glued together from at least two and probably five animals — the body of the bird Yanornis, the tail of a Microraptor. The magazine retracted, and the specimen went into the textbooks as the Piltdown Bird.
Hangzhou and the Airport Closed for an Hour
On the evening of 7 July 2010 Xiaoshan airport at Hangzhou stopped work for almost an hour: controllers logged an unidentified object in the zone and eighteen flights were diverted. Passengers and residents photographed a bright trail in the sky. It is a rare instance of a report of an unidentified object shutting down a major airport. Days later the authorities said the phenomenon was connected with military activity and gave no details. The likeliest reading is a missile or aircraft trial; a contrail lit by a low sun produces exactly this picture, and the photographs are consistent with it.
Mount Everest
The highest mountain on earth, with more than two hundred bodies left on its slopes — recovering them is all but impossible. One served for decades as a landmark known as Green Boots. Above eight thousand metres climbers regularly describe the third man: a persistent sense of a companion who is not there. The effect has been known since Shackleton's expedition and is attributed to hypoxia, which makes it no easier.
Mount Kailash
A peak in western Tibet held sacred by four religions at once — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Bön. It has never been climbed: ascent is considered sacrilege, and pilgrims instead walk a circuit around it.