Recently, someone said to me on WeChat:
“Zhang Xiangqian, I only recently came across your work, and it’s mind-blowing. I stayed up almost all night reading it. What kind of environment do you live in to write such unbelievable articles, especially the scenes of an alien planet and descriptions of alien society in Adventures on Guoke Planet? Are there really aliens? Have you actually been to an alien planet? Zhang Xiangqian, can you tell me honestly—what kind of environment did you grow up in to develop this utterly unique mindset, unmatched anywhere in the world?”
I was born into an extremely poor family. As a child, I not only lacked clothes and went hungry, but in late autumn, I didn’t even have shoes. I’d stand barefoot on straw, my feet cracking from the cold, the pain piercing through me at night.
The place I was born was not just poor and remote—it was also cut off from information. People knew nothing of the outside world. Adults mocked Americans for not knowing how to raise pigs, saying they’d slaughter them before they got big—when, in fact, they might’ve been talking about roasted suckling pigs.
The food we ate as kids was monotonous; we didn’t even know what “delicious” meant. If someone asked what tasted best, my playmates and I would unanimously say “roast pork”—not braised pork, because we’d never seen soy sauce back then. Once, when I was little, I went with my father to a restaurant in Sanhe Town and ate stir-fried intestines. It felt incredibly delicious, and for over 30 years, I couldn’t forget it. Years later, passing by that restaurant, I went in. The chef had gone from a young man to an old one, but his signature dish—stir-fried intestines—was still number one on the menu. I ordered it, but it only tasted slightly better than other places—not worth the 30 years of longing.
Standing at the restaurant’s entrance afterward, I thought: if I’d married my first love now, it might feel the same—ordinary, not living up to 40 years of pining. People tend to idealize what’s lost or hard to attain.
As kids, we only knew of the Soviet Union, Japan, and America—other countries were a mystery. We were told a few capitalists in America lived in paradise while most people suffered in hell, and countless oppressed people worldwide awaited our liberation. Later, I realized it was us who needed liberating, us who were suffering.
When news of the Tangshan earthquake hit, every household built a straw shack outside their door or in the yard, living in them out of fear of tremors. As kids, whenever we heard a diesel boat chugging down the river behind us, we’d race to the bank to watch—sometimes running so fast our legs cramped, afraid we’d miss it. A 12-horsepower diesel boat would pass, and the shore would be packed with onlookers, a scene not much different from African tribespeople.
When electricity came to our village during elementary school, my friends and I skipped class to watch workers set up the lines. We’d get back late, get our palms smacked by the teacher, but we couldn’t resist going. We were thrilled, reporting progress to the adults daily.
For a while, when the Hangbu River was being repaired, we kids went every day to watch people dig up ancient tombs. We often heard them say, “This is a long-haired tomb,” not knowing back then that “long-haired” meant Taiping Heavenly Kingdom soldiers. Piles of skeletons, occasional rusted spears and swords—we were scared but couldn’t suppress our curiosity.
Back then, we had an intense curiosity about the outside world, but we could only hear bits from adults—no other information channels existed. The biggest, most tangible joy was watching open-air movies, though they were just the same few model operas over and over.
In conversations today, many think I’m exceptionally intelligent. But as a kid, I was nothing like that. My intelligence was poor—I’d stand in one spot for ages without moving, and with my slurred speech, I was often scolded by adults, especially my father. Wherever he saw me, his go-to line was, “Get back home!” This made me insecure, introverted, and reluctant to interact with others.
I worked hard at school, but my brain wasn’t sharp—I relied on rote memorization. Elementary was fine, but in junior high, memorization didn’t cut it. My grades slipped, and I failed the college entrance exam twice, even the preliminary rounds. My father, disappointed, hit me with a carrying pole.
I loved reading, but in the countryside back then, books—especially extracurricular ones—were hard to come by. Once, I saw a classmate reading UFO Exploration. I was curious and asked to borrow it, but he was stingy and took it back after I barely had a look. That was my first encounter with UFOs and aliens. Though fascinated, such books were nearly impossible to find in our village.
It wasn’t until I got online, over 30 years later, that I could access heaps of UFO, alien, and extraterrestrial materials. Before that, our nearby town only had textbooks for high school and below—nothing else.
The first time I went online, over a decade ago, I posted on Baidu’s “Science Exploration Forum” about my alien encounter. Later, I shared it on the “Huasheng Forum.” Some now claim I made it up from online alien info—that’s not true.
In 1985, I encountered aliens. They used field scanning to transfer their knowledge into my brain, possibly rewiring it to handle profound questions about the universe, time, space, fields, and motion.
Many inwardly refuse to believe aliens exist, completely dismissing my claims of meeting them or traveling to an alien planet. But after reading Adventures on Guoke Planet, with its detailed descriptions, their hearts are shaken, and their once-firm disbelief starts to crumble.
The collapse of faith is painful. That’s why many curse me on WeChat, attack me, report me, threaten me—demanding I admit my alien planet trip was fake or, at least, that it was just my soul or consciousness, not my body. If Adventures on Guoke Planet were pure fabrication, they’d laugh it off and not bother adding me on WeChat to rant.
Some might ask: if someone firmly believes aliens exist and suddenly overwhelming evidence proves they don’t—that Earth is the only inhabited planet in the universe—wouldn’t their faith collapsing be painful too? Those folks might feel a little disappointed, but not pained.
Why? Because those who deny aliens don’t base it on scientific reasoning. It’s a conservative, narrow-minded inertia—a reflex to disbelieve everything. Influenced by a combative mindset, they habitually reject all, siding with victors and authority. They lack personal ideas—authority’s view is theirs. They don’t reason; they pick teams and stances.
Those who believe in aliens tend to have open minds, reasoning rationally: with the universe so vast, how could Earth be the only special case? It’s like the geocentric model claiming Earth is the universe’s center.