At 5:30pm on Jan 4, 2004, Taipei's Steven Lai (
Lai sent his footage to the Taiwan Ufology Society (TUFOS,
"We studied it for some time, but the object was too close to the buildings to have been a UFO," said TUFOS President James Huang (
PHOTO: GAVIN PHIPPS, TAIPEI TIMES
While Lai's footage wasn't this year's first Taiwan UFO sighting, hundreds of people still trawl the skies with high-powered telescopes daily hoping to catch a glimpse of the unexplained. They send their reports, whether credible or not, to TUFOS. Now boasting 500 members, the group is the nation's sole Ufology society and is a sorting house for dozens of reports that come in annually regarding UFO sightings in Taiwan.
Since Taiwan's first officially recorded sighting of a UFO by Tsai Chang-hsien (
Affectionately known as "Ufo Ho" to his friends and colleges, the articulate Ufologist spent months wading through pages of reports filed by Taiwanese citizens over the years. Realizing the information his organization had gathered was wasted sitting in his computer, Ho decided to publish a complete record of Taiwan's UFO sightings.
"There's certainly no shortage of books touching on UFO sightings, but there was nothing specific to Taiwan," he said. "No one had ever set out to catalog the nation's UFO sightings and publish all the written and photographic evidence in a single publication before."
It took Ho almost a year to sift through information and contact and re-interview the people who had reported the sightings, to ensure there were no discrepancies. Entitled On the Trail of UFO Sightings (UFO
The results of Ho's book point to a drop in UFO sightings in Taiwan in recent years, with only two recorded incidents taking place last year, and an increase in the number of sightings on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait.
"Obviously there are more people in China than anywhere else, so I'm not surprised at the increase in sightings there. The recent drop in UFO sightings can be put down to several things," he said. "There are now more diseases than ever before, and anything landing here would be susceptible to falling victim to them. And secondly, I think the military use of lasers means that fewer extra-terrestrials now dare to enter the Earth's atmosphere in case they are shot down."
While Ho and his fellow TUFOS members continue to scan the skies looking for explanations for the unexplained, the Underwater Archeological Institute (UAI,
The UAI hit the headlines in July 2002, when it stumbled across a 100m-long wall-like structure 28m beneath the murky waters of the Penghu archipelago's Hsichi (
"After four years searching we were very happy with the find in Penghu. It created a lot of interest, especially in Japan and has given us quite a lot of credibility," said expedition chief, Steve Shieh (
"There's definitely a lot more out there. As to how much I wouldn't like to say, but I think there is a much bigger find waiting to be discovered."
Allegedly stretching from the South China Sea to Hawaii and encompassing large numbers of Pacific Islands, the legendary continent was supposedly home to Asia's earliest peoples, the Ketagalan (
Known as Taiwan's Four Underwater Fabulous Ancient Mysteries (
"We plan to take to the water again some time in April, when the weather conditions are best, and continue to search the area around the Jialeshui area. It lies roughly 300m off the coast in waters measuring from 16m to 40m in depth, so it's a pretty simple dive," said the UAI's expedition leader. "Of course, it's not cheap. A three-day dive with 12 people costs around NT$400,000 and we're still looking into finalizing the funding."
If funding permits, then the UAI also plans to take to some of Taiwan's less-accessible waters this year. In its most ambitious project to date, the group hopes to take to the high seas at the periphery of Taiwan's territorial waters and search an area 240 nautical miles (386km) southwest of Kaohsiung near the Dingxia Islet (
"It's a big project and we've only just contacted the Kaohsiung City Government in regards permission to explore the waters around the islet. I'm sure we'll be given permission" Shieh said. "The government hasn't been interested in our finds so far, but we hope to show them things this year that they simply won't be able to ignore."
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Due to the Lunar New Year holiday, from Sunday, Jan. 26, through Sunday, Feb. 2, there will be no Features pages. The paper returns to its usual format on Monday, Feb. 3, when Features will also be resumed. Kung Hsi Fa Tsai!
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