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Gizmodo
2 days ago
- General
- Gizmodo
Paraglider Defies Death After Freak Updraft Sucks Him 28,000 Feet Into Sky
A Chinese paraglider survived being sucked in by a cloud and flung 28,208 feet (8,598 meters) into the sky—even though he was just testing his new equipment and wasn't intending to take off. On May 24, Peng Yujian, a 55-year-old paraglider, was already roughly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above sea level, testing the fit of his new paragliding equipment. About 20 minutes in, a powerful updraft known as a 'cloud suck' shot him about 18,000 feet (5,500 meters) higher. Peng caught the wild event on a camera mounted on his glider, which naturally went viral after being posted on Douyin, China's version of TikTok. The video shows Peng coated in ice and holding on for dear life to the glider's controls. He says he may have lost consciousness during his unexpected descent. 'I felt the lack of oxygen. My hands were frozen outside. I kept trying to talk on the radio,' Peng said in the Douyin video after landing safely 20 miles (33 kilometers) from his launch point, according to Sixth Tone. Peng was in the air for more than an hour, during which he was exposed to temperatures nearing minus 40 degrees Celsius (which equals −40 degrees Fahrenheit). 'Everything ahead [was] a vast expanse of whiteness,' he told Chinese broadcaster CCTV News. Cloud suck is a meteorological phenomenon that can be deadly for paragliders. It refers to a strong upward air movement caused by powerful thermals—columns of rising warm air created when the ground heats unevenly from the sun—feeding into a cumulus cloud. As the updraft gets stronger, it creates a low pressure region at the cloud base, drawing in even more hot air from below. This results in a positive feedback loop that can cause wind speeds of over 1,000 feet (300 meters) per minute. Ewa Wiśnierska, a paraglider from Germany, still holds the dubious record of the highest altitude reached after being pulled by a cloud suck, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. An updraft flung her roughly 33,000 feet (10,000 m) into the sky in 2007. The summit of Mount Everest, the highest point above sea level on earth, is 29,029 feet (8,848 meters) above sea level. The Chinese government grounded Peng after his 'unsanctioned' flight for six months, citing safety regulations, according to a report from the Aero Sports Association of Gansu Province obtained by The Guardian. It's unclear whether that remains in effect, but something tells me he might not want to go paragliding again anytime soon.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Chinese paraglider almost equals world record at 28,000 feet — by accident
HONG KONG — The sky was apparently not the limit for a Chinese paraglider who climbed to a near record-breaking altitude of more than 28,000 feet Wednesday. The only problem? He hadn't even intended to fly. In what acrophobes — those with a fear of heights — could only imagine in their worst nightmares, 55-year-old Peng Yujian was just conducting a routine equipment test in the northern province of Gansu when a powerful updraft lifted him off the ground. 'I had just bought a secondhand paragliding harness and wanted to test it. So I was conducting ground parachute shaking,' Peng told state-run broadcaster CCTV News on Wednesday. 'The wind suddenly picked up and lifted me into the air.' 'I tried to land as soon as possible, but I failed,' he added, explaining that he was then carried even higher by a wind and ended up trapped in the cloud system, ascending as high as 5 miles above the ground to heights usually the preserve of commercial airliners. According to a statement from the Aero Sports Association of Gansu Province, Peng is a licensed paraglider with two years of experience that appeared to come in handy on the video captured by a camera attached to his equipment. NBC News could not independently verify the footage, released by CCTV, which showed Peng's face and gear coated in ice as he said: 'I can't get out now. I'm totally lost.' Peng said he started to panic when he reached the cloud base. 'Everything ahead [was] a vast expanse of whiteness,' he told CCTV, adding that he had no directional awareness without a compass. Even with a compass, it would have been too difficult to maintain direction because of poor visibility inside the clouds, Peng said. 'I thought I was flying straight, but in fact, I kept spinning around.' Peng said the scariest moment of his ordeal was when his parachute plunged headfirst toward the earth. But he managed to right himself before emerging from the cloud system heading northeast. 'I looked around and thought: 'Ah, I'm saved this time!' he said. In the Aero Sports Association statement, Peng, who was not wearing an oxygen mask, said that he gasped for air after landing and that he might have lost consciousness for about three minutes due to hypoxia and low temperatures. Peng's adventure almost saw him break the world record, itself also set accidentally in 2007 when a German paraglider was encased in ice after being sucked into a tornadolike thunderstorm in Australia and carried to a height greater than Mount Everest. Along with another pilot who published the video 'without permission,' Peng was initially handed a six-month flight suspension, Chinese air sports authorities said. Under China's national paragliding regulations, pilots are required to have a valid license issued by the Aero Sports Federation of China, and a flight plan must be approved before any activity. Individuals who violate the rules are penalized based on the seriousness of the incident. But the ban sparked a backlash on Chinese social media. 'He barely made it out alive. It's not like he wanted to fly that high,' one user wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. While local media reported that the association withdrew the statement the same day, it is unclear whether Peng's suspension is still in place. Peng said the swelling in his body has 'gone down a lot,' but that his hands and face still felt numb. 'My fear hasn't completely faded,' Peng told CCTV News. 'I still feel uneasy when I think about it now.' He said he decided to 'take a break' from flying for the moment. This article was originally published on
NBC News
2 days ago
- Climate
- NBC News
Chinese paraglider almost breaks world record at 28,000 feet — by accident
HONG KONG — The sky was apparently not the limit for a Chinese paraglider who climbed to a near record-breaking altitude of more than 28,000 feet Wednesday. The only problem? He hadn't even intended to fly. In what acrophobes — those with a fear of heights — could only imagine in their worst nightmares, 55-year-old Peng Yujian was just conducting a routine equipment test in the northern province of Gansu when a powerful updraft lifted him off the ground. 'I had just bought a secondhand paragliding harness and wanted to test it. So I was conducting ground parachute shaking,' Peng told state-run broadcaster CCTV News on Wednesday. 'The wind suddenly picked up and lifted me into the air.' 'I tried to land as soon as possible, but I failed,' he added, explaining that he was then carried even higher by a wind and ended up trapped in the cloud system, ascending as high as five miles above the ground to heights usually the preserve of commercial airliners. According to a statement from the Aero Sports Association of Gansu Province, Peng is a licensed paraglider with two years of experience that appeared to come in handy on the video captured by a camera attached to his equipment. Released by CCTV, NBC News could not independently verify the footage which showed Peng's face and gear coated in ice as he said: 'I can't get out now. I'm totally lost.' Peng said he started to panic when he reached the cloud base. 'Everything ahead [was] a vast expanse of whiteness,' he told CCTV, adding that he had directional awareness without a compass. Even with a compass, it would have been too difficult to maintain direction because of poor visibility inside the clouds, Peng said. 'I thought I was flying straight, but in fact, I kept spinning around.' Peng said the scariest moment of his ordeal was when his parachute plunged headfirst toward the earth. But he managed to right himself before emerging from the cloud system heading northeast. 'I looked around and thought: 'Ah, I'm saved this time!' he said. In the Aero Sports Association statement Peng, who was not wearing an oxygen mask, said he gasped for air after landing and that he might have lost consciousness for about three minutes due to hypoxia and low temperatures. Peng's adventure almost saw him break the world record, itself also set accidentally in 2007 when a German paraglider was encased in ice after being sucked into a tornado-like thunderstorm in Australia and carried to a height greater than Mount Everest. Along with another pilot who published the video 'without permission,' Peng was initially handed a six-month flight suspension, Chinese air sports authorities said. Under China's national paragliding regulations, pilots are required to have a valid license issued by the Aero Sports Federation of China, and a flight plan must be approved before any activity. Individuals who violate the rules are penalized based on the seriousness of the incident. But the ban sparked a backlash on Chinese social media. 'He barely made it out alive. It's not like he wanted to fly that high,' one user wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. While local media reported that the association withdrew the statement the same day, it is unclear whether Peng's suspension is still in place. Peng said the swelling in his body has 'gone down a lot,' but that his hands and face still felt numb. 'My fear hasn't completely faded,' Peng told CCTV News. 'I still feel uneasy when I think about it now.' He said he decided to 'take a break' from flying for the moment.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Xi Jinping goes on charm offensive as Asia reels from tariff whiplash
HONG KONG — Chinese President Xi Jinping is turning on the charm as he looks to sweep up the shards of America's shattered economic relationships. As the world's markets and leaders try to absorb the impact of the market chaos unleashed by the Trump administration's announcement and softening of sweeping tariffs on almost all U.S. trading partners, Xi embarked on a trip through Southeast Asia. After a visit to Vietnam, he landed in Malaysia on Tuesday. 'A trade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere,' he wrote in the Vietnamese newspaper Nhan Dan. 'Our two countries should resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and an open and cooperative international environment.' President Donald Trump has interpreted Xi's words, as well as his Chinese counterpart's meetings with the leaders of the major economies in China's backyard, as Beijing getting together for a 'lovely meeting' with one of the countries worst hit by tariffs 'to figure out, 'how do we screw the United States of America?'' The message Xi is sending on his tour is loud and clear. China is seeking to capitalize on the Trump administration's truculence to cast itself as the world's preferred trading partner. That Xi's rare Southeast Asian tour started with Vietnam is no accident. Trump's punishing 46% tariff on the country will hammer the economy of a country that is the sixth largest source of U.S. imports and a third of whose gross domestic product relies on trade with the U.S. After Malaysia, which received a 24% levy from the U.S., Xi is expected to visit Cambodia — hit by 49% duties. He will do so after telling his Vietnamese counterpart, To Lam, that Beijing and Hanoi must 'jointly oppose unilateral bullying and safeguard the global free trade system,' according to China's state-run broadcaster CCTV News. Xi's trip, his first overseas foray in over a year, is just the beginning of a broader response to Trumponomics, analysts say. The Chinese leader 'happily sees Donald Trump destroying, undermining, discrediting, deliberate international order in order to make it easier for him to push for the transformation of the international order into something 'better,'' says Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) University of London. Winning over Southeast Asia, with its developing economies already largely dependent on Beijing, will be the easy part. Slightly more difficult for Xi will be supplanting the U.S. as the biggest trading partner of the European Union. Last week, Xi told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez that the bloc should join forces with China to oppose 'unilateral bullying' and defend the 'international rules and order' — words almost identical to ones he used this week in Hanoi. While Beijing followed that up Monday with a statement emphasizing Sino-European unity, Washington has made things easy for Xi, says Wang Dong, executive director of Peking University's Institute for Global Cooperation. 'China doesn't have to 'drive a wedge' between the U.S. and its allies,' Wang told NBC News. 'Rather, the bullying and cruel manner the Trump administration rolled out the punitive tariffs, along with the unpredictability and selfishness manifested by the U.S., have already driven US allies and partners closer to Beijing.' A thaw in relations has already begun. E.U. leaders last week agreed to revive negotiations on the prices of electric vehicles — they imposed a 45% tariff on low-emission Chinese cars in October — despite fears that Chinese products may flood the European market if the U.S. keeps in place its 145% levy on Chinese imports. But that softening comes amid a raft of economic disputes between the world's second- and third-largest economies. It may also be difficult to achieve more due to China's one-party rule and concerns over human rights allegations. 'Lots of people don't share China's political values,' said Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London. More difficult still will be warming up long-standing U.S. allies in Asia — specifically Japan and South Korea — whose economies will suffer the effects of 24% and 25% tariffs respectively, despite them scrambling teams of trade envoys within days of the tariff announcements. The U.S. is both countries' main guarantor against security threats from China and Russia, and Tokyo's and Seoul's reactions are best summed up by the South Korean Foreign Ministry's comment Monday that 'bilateral dialogue with the United States is the most effective way to resolve the issue of U.S. tariff measures.' But with China both countries' largest trading partner and Washington's increasingly spotty loyalty mean South Korea and Japan are essentially 'caught in a quandary,' Brown said. 'China is still practically a power you have to deal with.' And if the carrot doesn't work, there's always the stick. Beijing holds at least one key piece of leverage over Washington and its allies. China held more than $700 billion in U.S. government bonds — the proceeds from which the U.S. Treasury finances public expenditure — making it among the largest holders of such bonds. If China sells those bonds, it will threaten America's ability to finance its debt, Brown said. Between that, and Beijing wearing the reassuring face of a reliable trading partner, 'China's got itself into a relatively good position,' he added. 'And it annoys the hell out of America.' This article was originally published on
NBC News
15-04-2025
- Business
- NBC News
Xi Jinping goes on charm offensive as Asia reels from tariff whiplash
HONG KONG — Chinese President Xi Jinping is turning on the charm as he looks to sweep up the shards of America's shattered economic relationships. As the world's markets and leaders try to absorb the impact of the market chaos unleashed by the Trump administration's announcement and softening of sweeping tariffs on almost all U.S. trading partners, Xi embarked on a trip through Southeast Asia. After a visit to Vietnam, he landed in Malaysia on Tuesday. 'A trade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere,' he wrote in the Vietnamese newspaper Nhan Dan. 'Our two countries should resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and an open and cooperative international environment.' President Donald Trump has interpreted Xi's words, as well as his Chinese counterpart's meetings with the leaders of the major economies in China's backyard, as Beijing getting together for a 'lovely meeting' with one of the countries worst hit by tariffs 'to figure out, 'how do we screw the United States of America?'' The message Xi is sending on his tour is loud and clear. China is seeking to capitalize on the Trump administration's truculence to cast itself as the world's preferred trading partner. That Xi's rare Southeast Asian tour started with Vietnam is no accident. Trump's punishing 46% tariff on the country will hammer the economy of a country that is the sixth largest source of U.S. imports and a third of whose gross domestic product relies on trade with the U.S. After Malaysia, which received a 24% levy from the U.S., Xi is expected to visit Cambodia — hit by 49% duties. He will do so after telling his Vietnamese counterpart, To Lam, that Beijing and Hanoi must 'jointly oppose unilateral bullying and safeguard the global free trade system,' according to China's state-run broadcaster CCTV News. Xi's junket is just the beginning of a broader response to Trumponomics, analysts say. The Chinese leader 'happily sees Donald Trump destroying, undermining, discrediting, deliberate international order in order to make it easier for him to push for the transformation of the international order into something 'better,'' says Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) University of London. Winning over Southeast Asia, with its developing economies already largely dependent on Beijing, will be the easy part. Slightly more difficult for Xi will be supplanting the U.S. as the biggest trading partner of the European Union. Last week, Xi told Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez that the bloc should join forces with China to oppose 'unilateral bullying' and defend the 'international rules and order' — words almost identical to ones he used this week in Hanoi. While Beijing followed that up Monday with a statement emphasizing Sino-European unity, Washington has made things easy for Xi, says Wang Dong, executive director of Peking University's Institute for Global Cooperation. 'China doesn't have to 'drive a wedge' between the U.S. and its allies,' Wang told NBC News. 'Rather, the bullying and cruel manner the Trump administration rolled out the punitive tariffs, along with the unpredictability and selfishness manifested by the U.S., have already driven US allies and partners closer to Beijing.' A thaw in relations has already begun. E.U. leaders last week agreed to revive negotiations on the prices of electric vehicles — they imposed a 45% tariff on low-emission Chinese cars in October — despite fears that Chinese products may flood the European market if the U.S. keeps in place its 145% levy on Chinese imports. But that softening comes amid a raft of economic disputes between the world's second- and third-largest economies. It may also be difficult to achieve more due to China's one-party rule and concerns over human rights allegations. 'Lots of people don't share China's political values,' said Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London. More difficult still will be warming up long-standing U.S. allies in Asia — specifically Japan and South Korea — whose economies will suffer the effects of 24% and 25% tariffs respectively, despite them scrambling teams of trade envoys within days of the tariff announcements. The U.S. is both countries' main guarantor against security threats from China and Russia, and Tokyo's and Seoul's reactions are best summed up by the South Korean Foreign Ministry's comment Monday that 'bilateral dialogue with the United States is the most effective way to resolve the issue of U.S. tariff measures.' But with China both countries' largest trading partner and Washington's increasingly spotty loyalty mean South Korea and Japan are essentially 'caught in a quandary,' Brown said. 'China is still practically a power you have to deal with.' And if the carrot doesn't work, there's always the stick. Beijing holds at least one key piece of leverage over Washington and its allies. China held more than $700 billion in U.S. government bonds — the proceeds from which the U.S. Treasury finances public expenditure — making it among the largest holders of such bonds. If China sells those bonds, it will threaten America's ability to finance its debt, Brown said. Between that, and Beijing wearing the reassuring face of a reliable trading partner, 'China's got itself into a relatively good position,' he added. 'And it annoys the hell out of America.'
