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Approved For Release 2000/08/11 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000300420017-1 CHINA'S PSYCHIC SAVANTS ls an ancient form of energy providing China's children with the miracle of second sight? BY MARCELLO TRUZZI E csseorou Tang Yu and his friend Chen Xiaoming were on their way home from school in the remote mountain village of Dazhu County when they be- gan to wrestle. Tang brushed against Chen's coat pocket, the story goes, and had the sudden vision of two Chinese symbols. He described the vivid symbols to Chen, who pulled a package of Flying Wild Goose cigarettes from his pocket. The label on the side of the package, the boys reported, consisted of the two symbols Tang Yu had “seen.” Tang Yu was reluctant to share his discovery with Tang Kem- ing, his fifty-year-old peasant father. He knew his claim would sound like alie. Instead, he began to play guessing games with the villagers. He asked them to write random characters on pieces of paper, crumple the paper into balis, and Jet him hold each ball in turn next to his ear. Tang then guessed the mes- sage within; his guesses, it was said, always proved right. Word of the boy spread beyond his small town to all of the Sichuan province in central China. Soon the region's science commission and its bureau of ed- ucation and culture had asked to examine Tang, and research- ers there confirmed his ability to identify words and colors on small wads of paper held to his ear. News reporters and awe- struck officials of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee quickly backed those results, and on March 11, 1979, this remarkable tale was published in the Sichuan Daily. Thus began what to- day is viewed—by both those in China and the West—as either a major breakthrough in parapsychology or a remarkable out- break of fraud and pathological science. indeed, over the subsequent few months, as news of Tang's abilities spread throughout the People’s Republic, more than ten other psychic children were supposedly discovered in Bei- PAINTING BY KEIKA NAKAJIMA Approved For Release 2000/08/11 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000300420017-1 LORE Te ERE “RCD pre ape a EP ONY ERO AC RETR RE RTE ERIC OM he i EI I