Doomsday gurus have abducted our aliens
 Copyright © 1998 Scripps Howard
 TAIPEI, Taiwan (March 2, 1998 09:30 a.m. EST http://www.nando.net)
 -- These are trying times for the Chinese Flying Saucer Research
 Association, proud guardians of a faith in extra-terrestrials dat-
 ing back to China's first recorded UFO sighting, nearly 4,000 years
 ago.
 The alien-watching fraternity is awash with impostors, according to
 the association's chairman, Ho Hsien-jung.
 Taiwan has long been home to a host of bizarre Buddhist and Taoist
 sects, but now it has spawned a legion of oddball cults promising
 trips to nirvana in alien craft -- and swindling thousands of
 clients of their savings.
 The Justice Minister, Liao Cheng-hao, explained: "Our economy has
 grown very fast. People have money but have not developed mentally
 at the same speed. They feel empty and grab hold of religion. It is
 very easy for fake creeds to steal their money."
 President Lee Teng-hui, a devout Christian, has called for a cam-
 paign of "spiritual modernization" to immunize the country against
 gurus and mystics offering salvation for cash.
 Ho appears regularly on television and radio to explain that aliens
 belong to science, not religion. He goes on field trips to examine
 -- and discredit -- claims of sightings by cult gurus: a fleet of
 alien craft near the town of Nantou turned out to be the lights of
 an airport.
 Scattered around his apartment are gray plastic and aluminum models
 of the spaceships he believes have appeared over China since at
 least 1914 BC, when ancient scribes recorded the appearance of "10
 flying suns." The Chinese word for UFO today is you-fu, or "myster-
 ious floatings." The association has catalogued more than a thou-
 sand such "floatings" in Chinese history..
 Ho insists that these apparitions are a world away from the pseudo-
 religious imaginings of charlatans.
 Wu T'ai-chung is guru of the Earth and Sky Enlightenment Society,
 the latest of a long line of quirky sects to muscle in on the
 growing fascination, in Taiwan and on the Chinese mainland, with
 aliens and fantasies. Wu promises passage in a "light energy
 machine" to a "heaven beyond heaven."
 The cornerstone of his cult is not a sacred text, but a series of
 blurred color photographs taken in the Heaven Mountains of
 Xinjiang, the westernmost region of China, which purport to show
 a convoy of "light energy machines." Police and former cult members
 say they are an example of bad photography and glare on the camera
 lens from the sun.
 Meanwhile, the God Saves the Earth Flying Saucer Foundation, has
 decamped to Dallas, Texas, to await what its leader, a Taiwanese
 university medical professor, says will be a "meeting with God" on
 31 March -- and a trip to Mars to escape an end-of-the-millennium
 Doomsday on Earth.
 "This is a very grave problem for the whole of our society," says
 Chen Shui-bian, mayor of Taipei. "It is not simply a question of
 religion, nor is it simply a question of law. It is a serious social
 problem. Many people have no faith themselves and no faith in
 ordinary channels. They feel bored and empty."
 The cults may seem a hodgepodge of folk religion and science
 fiction, but they all focus rigorously on what appears to be their
 principal mission: the accumulation of cash. Wu's extra-terrestrial
 travel agency has left a trail of dissatisfied, often bankrupt,
 clients.
     "He stripped us clean. We have nothing left," said Tai Ch'iu-
 fen, a mother of seven who joined the cult with her ailing husband
 three years ago and handed over their entire savings. "He said that
 if we wanted to travel this road to another world, we would have to
 leave behind our earthly baggage."
     They also put their four daughters in the care of Wu and his
 lieutenants at the cult's country retreat. "He promised to give the
 children a good environment free of pressure. He said they did not
 need to read so many books."
     The couple then joined Wu on recruiting trips to mainland China,
 a fertile area of expansion for Taiwanese mystics. Although she and
 her husband had suspicions for some time that the "light energy
 machine" might never arrive, they have only just made the final
 break.
    The tenacious grip of such cults on the minds of their followers
 bewilders Ho.
    "If a religion uses UFOs, this religion obviously has problems."
 He says their light-streaked photographs are fakes. "Everyone knows
 a real UFO has form and substance. But you can't even see their so-
 called flying saucers. They are just light."
     Despite years of scouring the skies, Ho admits he has never
 personally seen a flying saucer.
     "UFOs rarely come to Taiwan, so it is difficult to have solid
 evidence. Taiwan is very small. It is hard to see this island from
 outer space. They fly over but rarely land."
 By ANDREW HIGGINS, London Observer Service
--- DB 1.39/004487
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