Kids’ questions about the paranormal

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Ghost story magazines have been pulled from the market, and Death Note has been taken offline. Will this turn China’s youth away from superstition and onto the path of scientific development?

Last year, science fiction author Han Song visited a Beijing middle school to present a talk on the power of imagination. In the Q&A session after his presentation, the students were most curious about the paranormal — UFOs, aliens, parallel universes, and ghosts.

On his blog, Han listed all 36 of the questions he received. Here’s his introduction to that post:

On 19 September, at the grand call of the China Association for Science and Technolgy to bring popular science onto school campuses by “joining big hands to small hands,” I went to the Yunhe Middle School in Beijing’s Tongzhou District to speak as an “expert.”

That day, more than 700 high-school freshmen boys and girls were brought together to hear my lecture. My topic was “Imagination and Our Future,” and I spoke of why imagination is more important than knowledge (this is quite a boring issue in China).

After the students had listened to the talk, they immediately brought up 36 questions for me to answer (if the post-lecture Q&A time hadn’t been limited to one and a half hours, they’d have continued, and I’d probably have collapsed). The moderator, a freshman politics teacher, saw my equivocation and said, concerned, that this was the first time he’d seen so many questions, and he recommended that I select a few to answer briefly. Ultimately, that friend acted like a State Council Information Office press conference moderator and selected questions for me to answer.

I’m actually pretty ashamed — I wasn’t able to answer many these students’ questions. Two points came to me: first, that the students usually may not have had the opportunity to ask these questions, and second, the teachers usually my not have thought of how to answer the questions.

Ah, society!

Ah, the future!

The teacher moderating the lecture was quite experienced. He saw my dismay and came over to assuage me: “Don’t pay it any mind. The questions the students are asking are all naive and superficial.”

Then he said something that I didn’t really understand: “They’re interested in everything that has nothing to do with their studies.”

After I returned home, I carefully copied down the “naive, superficial” questions that those fifteen and sixteen-year-old students asked. I believe that one day, the comrades at the Ministry of Education Information Office will be able to answer them.

The full list of questions follows:

The Students’ Questions

  1. Are there really ghosts in the world?
  2. Why is it only the small publishing houses that publish books about the world’s unsolvable mysteries?
  3. Did America’s Apollo really land on the moon?
  4. Do ghosts really live with us on the earth, only their level of space is different, so we can’t see them? But then why did a Japanese TV show have ghosts recorded on camera?
  5. What about the sixth sense? Is there such a thing as ESP?
  6. Is the earth and the galaxy or the sun just a toy for some group of higher life forms?
  7. Later in our lives will we be able to talk to ghosts?
  8. Are there strange beings like dryads in real life?
  9. I’ve heard that somewhere they dug up an alien corpse, and they found something that couldn’t have been made with current technology. What’s the explanation for this?
  10. I’ve heard that the sinking of the Titanic wasn’t really because of an iceberg?
  11. Why is science unable to cure some diseases but superstitious techniques can?
  12. Are crop circles made by aliens? Even though humans can make them, why is their composition different from those made by aliens, and why are some of them so complex that humans can’t make them? Any people have recorded aliens making them.
  13. When people disappear in the Bermuda Triangle, is it because of parallel universes?
  14. Can black holes really swallow everything in the world?
  15. When the @-shaped flying thing appeared in the night sky over Dalian, what was it?
  16. Mr. Han, I’d like to ask you, many people say that our creativity and fantasies are flights of empty fancy, and we ought to put our minds to our studies. What do you think about the conflict between fantasy and studying?
  17. Is the entire universe we live in just one atom, and outside the atom is an even bigger object or an even larger universe?
  18. You have just said that China is relatively conservative and places an emphasis on history. I want to ask you, how can China improve?
  19. In some scientists’ theories, different dimensions exist because of magnetic fields; in that other dimension there is a world like this one in which everything is identical to things here, including your other half. Is there any scientific evidence for this?
  20. How can China’s backward test-oriented education get a substantive change in outlook?
  21. Many people have taken photographs of UFOs; not only on earth — astronauts have also snapped pictures in space. Why aren’t these ideas made public in society for confirmation or denial?
  22. Why do so many ships and plans meet disaster in the Bermuda Triangle? Why did an American plane end up on the moon after a WWII mission?
  23. Are there eyewitnesses to UFOs, and are there real photographs? Do aliens really exist?
  24. The mystery of why the incorruptible corpse of an old woman in Xianghe hasn’t been explained. Why doesn’t the old woman decay?
  25. What are “flying rods”?
  26. Are there really the remains of buildings on Venus? If there are, then are there aliens?
  27. Sir, do you believe that UFOs are the newest American weapon, or are they alien objects?
  28. What is the fourth dimension? Could you think if it as a transparent body?
  29. Are there really parallel universes? Do a second and a third universe exist?
  30. Hello, sir! Science fiction may have something to offer future development, but does it have a misleading effect on we young people?
  31. Have people returned from the dead in the Bermuda Triangle? Is this because of magnetic fields?
  32. I’ve heard that in college there’s this experiment: In a dark, rectangular room, one person stands in each corner of a dark, rectangular room. When you touch one person’s shoulder, after a few rounds, you can feel a second person’s shoulder.
  33. Why have people died from curses after entering the pyramids?
  34. Is there any possibility for people to travel through time to the past or the future?
  35. Are there really ghosts? Like ghosts of dead relatives who appear in dreams?
  36. Is there a life beyond?
Links and Sources
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