More Reports of Paranormal Abilities of Chinese Children:

In my 2020 post "EHF: Reports of Chinese Kids With Paranormal Powers," I discussed many reports of paranormal phenomena involving children in China. Let me now discuss some additional reports I have since discovered,  also involving children in China. 

In the 1983 book Parapsychology and Self Deception in Science edited by R.A. McConnell, we have a Chapter 2 entitled "Some Demonstrations of Extraocular Image in China" by C. K. Jen. C. K. Jen had very distinguished credentials, having received a PhD in physics from Harvard, before serving for years as a physics professor in China, and then serving many years as a university science researcher in the United States, eventually being appointed in 1967 as a Professor of Chemical Physics at Johns Hopkins University.  

The observations reported by C. K. Jen (dating from the early 1980's) are very noteworthy. Jen reports an example of a type of phenomenon that has been widely reported, a phenomenon known as transposition of the senses. Transposition of the senses is when some person seems to have sensory capabilities associated with some part of the body normally not associated with such capabilities. For example, a person reporting transposition of the senses may report being able to read with his fingertips while blindfolded. Or he may report being able to see (when blindfolded) some object that is placed on the middle of his stomach. Or he may report being able to see the characteristics of an object when the object is placed near his ear.  Reports such as these appear again and again in the literature of parapsychology. By using the link here (and continuing to press the Older Posts button at the bottom right), you can read seven previous posts I wrote that discussed evidence for transposition of the senses. 

C. K. Jen reports what he calls "extraocular image," involving people getting images from something other than use of their eyes. He states, "In late 1980 and early 1981 when we were there [in China], both the interest and activity in extraocular image had already grown to large proportions on a nationwide scale." Jen reports on page 10 that he was surprised to see that a nine-year-old Chinese boy could apparently identify words hidden from his sight that had been written on well-folded or crumpled paper. 

On page 11 Jen reports an experiment or demonstration at the University of Science and Technology on November 30, 1980.  We read this report of a test of four "demonstrators" consisting of three young girls and one young boy, between age 9 and 11:

"Mr. Jia had his aides  prepare over one hundred samples, each consisting of a piece of paper, on which either a Chinese word or an English letter was written in color (red, blue or black). Each sample was folded many times into a small pad, either sealed at the folding edge with a touch of glue or completely sealed. In any case, the writing inside each sample was not visible to the eye....Mr. Jia asked me to be the chief referee, with my wife and one friend as assistant referees, all sitting in the front row directly facing the demonstraters. We saw an usher carrying a big place of randomly placed samples up to the demonstrators and let each of them take a sample at will. Each demonstrator put the picked sample between his or her palms. In less than a minute or two the three girls indicated that they already got their answers. Mr. Jia announced to them each of the should write on the sample envelope the word and its color they 'saw.' These unopened samples were handed over to me and I then let them be opened one-by-one in front of us (three referees) and have the contents be compared between the inside and the outside."

Jen reports that three of the four answered correctly, naming the right word, with only one failing.  On a second round under the same conditions, the same three children correctly named each of the concealed words.  In addition, several novice volunteers added to the round's participants gave answers that were mostly limited (such as naming a first letter), but which were all correct, with one of the novices correctly naming the word. Interviewing the three children who seemed to be so successful, Jen was told by them that after holding the wrapped up paper for a minute or so, an image of the answer appeared in their "mind's eye."

On pages 13-14 Jen reports of tests of a ten-year-old student named Yu Po. Twice Jen's wife prepared a sealed wax ball or container with a word hidden inside it. Within about 30 seconds Yu Po correctly named the letter. The third time a colleague of Jen prepared a wax ball with a word hidden inside. Yu Po quickly named the word correctly. 

On pages 14-15, after reviewing various far-fetched possibilities involving fraud, and after considering the very young ages of the children apparently displaying such skills, Jen says this:

"Having gone over all the imagined possibilities of fraud on a specific EOI [extraocular image or ESP] demonstration we witnessed, we found none of the suspicions well founded. I am left with no better alternative than to assume the observed phenomena were indeed real.  In a broad sense, I have no reason at all to suppose any of the three demonstrations we eye-witnessed was in any way fraudulent. In the same vein, we heard that virtually hundreds of demonstrations or experiments on EOI [extraocular image or ESP] involving young children have been conducted all over China during the past two years and, in general, the results were about the same as ours. If most, if not all, of these acts are fraudulent, then one would have to assume that multitudes of Chinese people are freely joined in a widespread act of conspiracy and deception. Such an assumption would be utterly unthinkable." 

Jen made such a conclusion apparently with no knowledge of previous reports of this type in other lands. A thorough study of parapsychology would have revealed countless cases of very similar successes stretching back nearly two centuries, such as the countless public exhibitions in which Alexis Didier or Adolphe Didier displayed similar successes in clairvoyance (as discussed here, here   and here). (For an interesting discussion of Alexis Didier read pages 234-238 of Jeffrey Kripal's Authors of the Impossible, in which he discusses a 500-page 2003 work by Meheust exhaustively documenting the evidence for Didier's clairvoyance.) The abilities described in Jen's paper were very similar to other reports I mention below, which come from various countries during the past two centuries. 

In a postscript to Jen's paper, McConnell states that "in August 1980, Dr. Lee C. Teng of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory at Batavia, Illinois, made a lecture stop at the Institute for Modern Physics" in China, and that he and his son "were invited by his hosts to participate in an ESP experiment with the 12-year-old son of an Institute librarian." The boy successfully identified a word written in a folded up piece of paper inserted in his ear, and "successfully reproduced both Chinese characters and physics terminology in English, although he could speak no English." Reading this account in a letter to a parapsychology journal, McConnell phoned Teng and confirmed that Teng was its author. 

In a CIA archive there was an undated British newspaper report which can be read here. Matching the reports given above, we read, "The Chinese say that more than 80 children and one adult have shown this power in tests by reading messages folded and concealed in containers of various materials." For example, we are told that nine-year-old Jiang Yan "correctly described a drawing on a piece of paper which had been folded and inserted into a glove which was then wrapped around her wrist." We are also told that 11-year-old Zheng Hong "could read words on a paper slipped under his foot."

In another document in a CIA archive, dating from about 1979, American physicist H. E. Puthoff states this:

 "Recent widespread interest was triggered by a report in the March 11, 1979 Sichuan Daily. In that report it was claimed that a young boy, 12-year-old Tang Ye, was able to read written material placed in physical contact with his ears...In May, 1970, reports began to surface from all over China that children elsewhere were duplicating this feat."

Later in the same document we read this:

"A 12-year-old boy, Tang Yu, in Dazu County, Sichuan Province, had been discovered to be able to 'recognize the characters (Chinese ideograms) with his ears...Subsequently, more than ten teenagers who also had had this kind of function were discovered one after another."

A bit later in the document we read a list of stringent test conditions, and then read this:

"Under these experimental conditions, some subjects whose functions were stronger were tested with dozens of specimens. The rate of absolutely correct identification was more than 80 percent, which indicated that one of the special inductive functions, the so called 'recognizing characters with the ears,' existed objectively. Scientists in Beijing University further found  in experiments that among over 70 children, approximately 10 old, there was a considerable proportion of subjects who had the special inductive function of 'recognizing characters with the ears.'  " 

The researcher Si-Chen Lee long studied Taiwanese children who might have an ability to read with their fingers, and he reported very substantial success. He reports this:

"Some people are able to read images by using their fingers rather than their eyes. After nine years of investigation, we confirmed that children between 6 and 13 years old can be trained in finger-reading. An earlier report suggested that finger reading can be developed in a high percent of children (~40%) with training (S. L. Chen et al 1989). More than 21% of the children in our studies developed statistically significant finger-reading capability (p < 0.05) after attending finger-reading training classes for two hours daily over four days."

We read of this technique to test children:

"During each finger-reading trial, children placed a hand in a cloth sleeve, as shown in Figure 1. These are standard, light-proof sleeves that are used to handle photographic negatives. The children had the two cuffs tightly tied around their forearms. The samples were randomly chosen by the experimenter, clenched in his fist, and put into the bag through the zipper on the other side. Since all of the two-digit numbers were printed by laser printer, there were no palpable depressions on either side of the paper."

Children and the cloth sleeves used for the tests

Lee reports that of 27 children test in the year 2000, 5 were able to score at a high statistical significance of p < .001, and that of 37 children tested in the year 2001, 6 were able to score at  high statistical significance of p < .001. On page 17 of the document here, Lee reports an interesting effect in which children reported highly unusual "mind's eye" activity when touching unseen pieces of paper with religious meaning. 

Below are similar accounts from outside of China. On page 170 the book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder has a chapter on the topic of "Eyeless Sight." We read of Rosa Kuleshova, who developed an ability to read or detect colors while blindfolded, merely by touching reading material or objects with her hands. Kuleshova held up very well to a long series of scientific tests. The same phenomenon was reported decades earlier in France, by Jules Romains in his book Eyeless Sight (discussed here). A 19th-century work states this: " Although  blind,  this  girl  can  read  by  passing  her  fingers  over  the  printed or  written  page,  and  can  describe  persons  whose  pictures  were  handed  to  her."

An edition of the EdgeScience magazine (#47) published by the Society for Scientific Exploration has an article "Seeing Without Eyes" (page 9) which discusses evidence for clairvoyance like that gathered by Romains. It mentions work by Carol Ann Liaros in the 1970's, saying, "Liaros discovered that blind people could see the images on black-and-white photos (and could see the photos when they were turned over, face-down, and even their reallife colors)."  We read about many other examples of ESP and clairvoyance similar to that reported by Romains, most occurring in recent decades. 

A long article in the June 12, 1964 Life magazine was entitled "Seeing Color With the Fingers." It reported a great number of observations very similar to those reported by Romains.  You can read the article here, by scrolling down to page 102.  In 1964 Life magazine was as mainstream and respectable as the New York Times, and had been a trusted mainstream source for decades.  Just as there is now a gigantic New York Times building in New York City, an equal-sized skyscraper was once called the Time-Life building.  

In the Life magazine article of June 12, 1964, we read a very long account of Rosa Kuleshova's paranormal ability and how it was demonstrated in a long series of tests with different Soviet scientists. Below is an excerpt:

"Rosa, securely blindfolded, could read headlines in newspaper and magazines, and the large type in children's books, just as rapidly as if her eyes were open. She could read ordinary newspaper type, too - more slowly, but still correctly. She was able to describe illustrations in popular publications like Ogonyok and Krokodil as well as on cigaret packages and postage stamps. And she had no trouble at all singling out black, white, red, orange, yellow, blue and green samples of colored papers, colored pencils, aniline dyes, as well as cotton threads and fabrics."

The phenomenon has sometimes been called dermo-optical perception. The 19th-century literature on hypnosis contains many similar accounts of such an ability occurring during hypnosis. The term "transposition of the senses" was often used to describe the ability. A nineteenth century work by William Gregory (a chemistry professor at the very prestigious University of Edinburgh) describes this phenomenon on page 148:

"I have not hitherto noticed, save in passing, a phenomenon which occasionally presents itself, but which is not by any means uniformly present in a marked form; I mean, transference of the senses to some special part of the body.... But it sometimes happens, that the power of seeing, not the ordinary sense of sight, but the clairvoyant power, is located in some special part. It has been observed to be located in the pit of the stomach, in the tips of the fingers, in the occiput as well as in the forehead, or on the top of the head, and in one case which I heard of from a scientific gentleman who tested it, in the soles of the feet. The books and journals which treat of Animal Magnetism teem with similar facts; and the head, hand, and epigastrium, seem to be the usually selected parts, probably from the proximity to the brain in the first, the great development of the nerves of touch in the second, and the presence of the great sympathetic plexus of nerves in the third. The fact itself is beyond all doubt, and it is quite unnecessary to accumulate cases. In one form or other, the power of dispensing with the eyes, and yet perceiving color, &c. quite plainly, is found in every good subject. The same thing frequently happens with hearing. Thus E.  when on her travelling state or stage, is utterly deaf to all sounds, save those which are addressed to her by speaking with the mouth in contact with the tips of her fingers. This fact I have myself verified. I believe she would not hear a pistol fired at her ear, in that state."

On the page here an author quotes a press report of him separating while blindfolded face-down cards held by someone else into two packs, one with only black cards (clubs and spades) and the other pack with only red cards (diamonds and hearts).  The author then goes on to a long description of far more remarkable feats performed at a public exhibition by an Eastern mystic. 

A paper in the April 1991 Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research discusses parapsychology research in China between 1979 and 1989, and discusses three periods: a period between 1979 and 1982 of excited interest in paranormal abilities; a period in the years after 1982 of dampened activity caused by a May 1982 Communist party ruling discouraging research into paranormal abilities; then  renewed research activity between 1987 and 1989, with much of the research taking place under an umbrella of qigong research that involves studying a mysterious bodily energy source that might be applicable to health. 

A long paper "The Rise and Fall of Qigong" picks up the narrative into the 1990's. We hear of  years of qigong research in China around 1988 that seemed to include very many reports of dramatic paranormal activity in China, with the research being presented as part of way of thinking claimed to be consistent with the ruling party's ideology.  According to the paper there then arose in China in the early 1990's a Falun Gong movement which had a more religious approach, one that was very interested in qigong, but  less interested in scientific parapsychology. After the Falun Gong movement gained a very massive following in China, the Chinese government started to discourage it and eventually tried to suppress it beginning around 1999.  This may have resulted in a downturn in study of parapsychology in China. It seems that documenting the paranormal within China has been rather an on/off affair, with activity levels largely dependent on approval signals from the government, which have varied from year to year.  In the paper the "fall of qigong" is depicted as a kind of political and social affair, rather than anyone disproving claims about qigong. 

Despite such ups and downs, it seems that parapsychology research involving children is still occurring in China. In the paper "21 Century Some Real Testable Phenomena of Parapsychology in China," Yi-Fang Chang of the Department of Physics, Yunnan University, Kunming, China discusses some noteworthy research, stating this:

"In the summers of 2012 to 2017, we trained the potential of fifty-two blind children in Kunming. We mainly combine traditional Chinese culture and adopt the method of guiding blind children into a quiet and focused state, then these trained blind children have some effect. A blind child X-N Jin of these children is particularly prominent. He can not only accurately recognize the dozens of poker points and colors in a kraft paper envelope, and identify all cards, but also accurately identify single-sided graphics, even double-sided multi-color graphics. Sometimes he can conduct successful PK [psychokinesis]."

In the paper we read this:

"In 1982, the China Somatic Science Society (CSSS), an organization Zhang Zhenhuan had founded to study extraordinary powers, invited a charismatic qigong healer named Zhang Baosheng (1960-2018) to Beijing. Zhang Baosheng was one of the first healers to propose the idea of a 'cosmic field'—a network of energy in which participation (usually through qigong practice) brought about extraordinary powers or even miracles. Zhang Zhenhuan had Zhang Baosheng demonstrate his extraordinary powers to the group, which included passing cigarettes through solid objects and making objects disappear. The CSSS also confirmed his extraordinary power  through experiments. Yet neither side stopped there. In fact, Zhang Baosheng actually travelled  into the Zhongnanhai compound, where all the top Party officials lived, and healed the Party members themselves." 

One of the authors of a paper makes this startling report of observing Zhang Baosheng (1960-2018):

"In his early personal experience with Zhang Baosheng, gained over months of close observation, the senior author found that, as with other major psychics under loose control, Zhang was able to perform numerous incredible feats. Most of these involved apparent PK [psychokinesis], and many were done in the way the senior author or others requested, with the targets seemingly chosen at random. For example, Zhang caused objects, such as someone’s photo identification card or personal name stamp, to move to another room which Zhang had not entered, or caused a torn personal letter to be restored to a single piece."

An article in the Psi Encylopedia says this about Zhang Baosheng:

"Beginning in the mid 1970s, Zhang Baosheng began demonstrating ostensibly paranormal abilities such as movement of objects and telepathy. In 1982, a local group of scientists brought him to the attention of Beijing scientists at the Institute of Space-Medico Engineering (ISME) where he was heavily investigated: Zhang’s main experiment involved moving small objects in and out of glass tubes. In one well-controlled demonstration, specially marked pieces of paper were treated with a chemical and placed inside a tube. The tube was melted in order to constrict it midway. Cotton buds were placed in the top half having been soaked in a chemical that reacts with the chemical on the treated paper. After five minutes of close scrutiny by four investigators, the paper was found to be lying outside the tube, which nevertheless remained intact. There was evidence of a chemical reaction on the cotton buds, suggesting that the papers had passed through the cotton. In other experiments, Zhang psychokinetically extracted live insects out of the tubes, and on one occasion, a pill was filmed exiting the tube."

In a 2007 paper a Russian scientist reports quite a few specific details about observations of similar abilities in the famed mind-over-matter wonder Ninel Kulagina (the same as Nina Kulagina).

Postscript: An article in Edge Science discusses evidence for anomalous qigong energy effects.