26. Before the Conference: Ideals, Egos, and Hidden Fault Lines

The moment an idea enters the world, it becomes vulnerable to everything already waiting there. When I first imagined the Interstellar Civilisation Conference, I saw a gathering place: a room where people who had carried strange experiences in silence might finally sit together, speak openly, and feel less alone. I wanted to create a small public space in a society where certain questions survived mostly in whispers, private messages, and videos that disappeared almost as quickly as they were shared.

I had not yet understood what would gather around that fragile idea once it became real. Goodwill came with ambition; political caution mixed with private calculation. Some people offered help freely, while others saw a stage, an opportunity, or a threat.

In the end, the preparation revealed more to me than the conference itself. An ideal is tested by the character of the people who gather around it—and sometimes saved by those who never ask to stand in its light.

By then, the transformed version of I Met Aliens had begun to feel like a small breakthrough. Until then, most of our exchanges had taken place through WeChat voice messages: intimate and useful but limited. Now the programme had images, guests, pauses, facial expressions, and real conversation. Listeners could see the people speaking. Their own questions could be answered. Many told me that, for the first time, the interviews gave them a sense of actually being there.

The programme had been running for some time, and I had begun to lower the political vigilance I had carried at the beginning. The so-called punishments I faced between 2017 and mid-2018 were unpleasant, but not devastating. My name had been turned into a sensitive term on major Chinese platforms. Videos uploaded by listeners were removed again and again. Little pink nationalists, none of whom had ever met me, occasionally appeared to report me with the righteous malice of people who mistake obedience for virtue.

Still, I was overseas. Their attacks reached me mostly as noise. If one video disappeared, listeners uploaded it elsewhere. If a major platform closed a door, the programme moved through smaller channels, YouTube, and overseas sites. Those who wanted to find it usually did. After weighing the situation calmly, I realised the damage was limited. It irritated me, but it did not frighten me enough to stop.

One afternoon, while chatting with friends from the UFO community, the conversation turned to the freer atmosphere overseas. We spoke of UFO conferences in the West: crowded halls, guest speakers, book tables, people flying in from different cities and countries to listen, argue, compare notes, and meet others who shared the same forbidden curiosity.

Then the thought came to me: as far as I knew, China had never held a large public conference devoted to UFOs and extraterrestrial contact. Why not try?

The response to the programme had already proved that the interest was real. Perhaps an in-person gathering could work too. Even if it failed, we would at least have tested the waters for the community. From the emails I received, I knew how lonely many people were. Some wrote about contact experiences, missing time, strange dreams, physical marks, and spiritual interference. Others were less certain. Beneath their words was a quieter question: had anyone else seen what they had seen, felt what they had felt, feared what they had feared?

What they wanted, I think, was not only information. They wanted a room.

Reality quickly sobered me. Organising such a conference in China would be far more difficult than doing it in Australia or the United States. The political pressure was obvious. Then came the practical obstacles: venue costs, operating funds, police filings, overseas speaker fees, interpreters, international flights, accommodation. Any one of these could become a point of failure. Still, I carried the reckless thought that has pushed me into many meaningful troubles in my life: let’s give it a go.

I began contacting several influential platform hosts in the community. Liu from Starry Sky Radio listened, thought for a moment, and agreed to support me. Other major platform operators soon followed. They understood the significance of the attempt. In those years, UFO and contact-related topics had been gaining momentum in China without yet meeting open suppression. If the conference succeeded, it might give others a little more courage to try something similar.

I also understood the unspoken arrangement. I would be the one stepping forward. They would remain on the second line, helping with promotion, ticketing, and resources while watching the political weather from a safer distance. If anything went wrong, I would be left standing in the open, facing the consequences alone. I did not resent them for that. In China, every new path must first be tested by someone willing to place her foot on uncertain ground.

Soon the idea began to take shape. I drafted a conference plan, listed the schedule and key dates, and divided the work. I would introduce the conference to listeners and invite the overseas speakers. Other platform operators would help with promotion and ticket sales.

Just as everything seemed unusually smooth, a friend in the community strongly recommended Mr Huo.

He was a long-time UFO enthusiast and a successful entrepreneur. When he heard about the conference, he became excited and offered to serve as the official organiser. At the time, I was in Australia, trying to coordinate an event inside China from a distance. His willingness to take on a major role felt like a godsend. He had everything I needed on the ground: confidence, maturity, connections, and a respectable public identity.

I was almost dazzled by the convenience of it.

Only later did I understand how often danger first arrives as convenience: a well-connected man smiling broadly and promising to take care of everything. Under political pressure, one loose link can become the point where the whole structure begins to break.

At the time, I could not foresee what was coming.

So we began. I promoted the conference in each episode of I Met Aliens. I reached out to guest speakers. Mr Huo promised to handle the venues and ticketing as the official organiser. Other platform hosts stayed in the background, helping with publicity and sales.

The gears of the conference began to turn, slowly, almost beautifully.

And beneath that smooth movement, the first hidden crack had already opened.

The First Hidden Crack

The conference hit its first reef almost immediately.

A man I had never met, Mr Xu, suddenly added me on WeChat. He introduced himself with the booming familiarity of someone who had already decided he belonged in charge.

“Hey, Shao, hello! I’m Xu. Mr Huo introduced me. From now on, I’ll take care of the conference side. Just leave it to me. I’m the newly appointed conference organiser.”

My stomach tightened.

I called Mr Huo at once and asked why such an important role had been changed without a word to me. He laughed loudly, almost too casually, as if the noise itself might cover the awkwardness.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Xu is a good fellow. Just let him handle it. If anything happens, I’ll take care of it. Relax. Don’t worry.”

That was how the official organiser of the conference was changed behind my back.

I still regret handing that part of the work to Mr Huo. He had come strongly recommended and seemed like a safe pair of hands. Instead, the decision created the vulnerability that would later threaten the entire event. Respectable titles, I learned, were no substitute for having actually worked with someone.

By then, however, I had no immediate replacement. I could only accept the arrangement for the time being and watch Mr Xu carefully.

Still, I kept one safeguard in place. I asked Liu and Firefly to help oversee the process. They were both people I trusted: decent, mature, and steady under pressure. I kept returning to the same point: the tickets had to be sold through a proper platform. Anything involving money could not go directly through Mr Xu. We owed that much to the audience. The ticket money had to cover the speakers and venues, and if anything went wrong, at least the buyers could still be refunded.

My caution soon proved necessary.

It did not take long to learn that Mr Xu had his own plans. While contacting possible venues, he had also placed large deposits on hotel rooms, apparently hoping to profit from out-of-town attendees who would need accommodation. When I heard this, my unease sharpened. This man had not appeared out of pure goodwill.

Other strange decisions followed. None of them was dramatic enough on its own to justify removing him immediately. Together, they produced a feeling I could not ignore. His way of handling things was loose, opportunistic, and unstable. I had the growing sense that, sooner or later, something would go wrong.

Trouble Before The Conference

In the next few episodes, I told listeners that the conference would take place in Beijing and Shanghai, but I did not release the exact venue locations.

That alone was enough to stir the water.

Tickets began selling through the partner platforms almost immediately. Emails kept coming in from people asking for the addresses, especially those travelling in from other provinces. They needed to book hotels, arrange trains, make plans. Their enthusiasm should have reassured me. Instead, it sharpened the question I had been trying to avoid.

Should I make the venues public?

Liu and several platform operators urged me to be careful. For now, they said, I should announce only the cities. The actual addresses could wait until a few weeks before the events, when they would be sent privately to registered attendees.

Liu was unusually grave.

“Shao, you’re already known in the community. There will always be people who want to make trouble for you. Once the address is public, they can act before you even know what’s happening. You’re standing in the open. They’re hidden in the dark.”

The others agreed. They had their own reasons for wanting the conference to go smoothly. If this first attempt succeeded, it could set a precedent for future events of their own. A small opening could become a path.

I understood what they meant.

In China, I was learning, practical obstacles were often easier to manage than human ones. Money could be raised and venues booked. What was harder to predict was the invisible economy of resentment: who felt ignored, displaced, or entitled to a place onstage.

The UFO and spiritual circles were hardly immune. People spoke easily of light, love, awakening, and higher consciousness, yet ordinary envy survived quite comfortably inside the vocabulary. Spiritual language did not remove human pettiness; sometimes it merely gave it softer clothes.

There was also the pressure no one named too directly: possible scrutiny from the authorities. Once that possibility settled over the conference, every ordinary decision began to feel exposed.

The warnings turned out to be justified.

Soon after I announced the conference, Mr X from the Chinese UFO Club resurfaced.

One evening, Liu and Firefly had dinner with a UFO Club member who went by the name Wong. He was a middle-aged man from northern China, smooth in the way of men who had spent years moving through informal networks. He had made his money doing business between China and Russia, and carried himself with the worldly ease of someone accustomed to the private rooms where favours were traded and decisions quietly shaped.

Over dinner, he lowered his voice and told them, “You should warn Shao to be careful. A senior figure in the UFO Club, Mr X, is very unhappy about this conference.”

The reason, according to Wong, was almost ridiculous in its smallness. Mr X was offended that he had not been invited to give a formal address onstage. He felt slighted. He believed he had been denied his proper place.

Then Wong added, with the air of a man offering a favour while making sure its value was fully understood, that Mr X had even considered filing a bad-faith report with the authorities to have the conference shut down. Wong claimed he had talked him out of it.

Liu and Firefly thanked him, then passed the message on to me.

When I read the message, anger moved through me with surprising force. I had no real dealings with Mr X and had taken nothing from him. Yet, according to Wong, a bruised sense of status was enough for him to consider damaging an event that many people had already worked and paid to support.

I opened WeChat and fired back at once.

“Mr X is shameless. Truly shameless. How does a person sink this low? I have nothing to do with him. There is no conflict of interest between us at all. Just because he feels someone else is getting attention, he wants to undermine me behind my back?

“Fine. I’ll leave the UFO Club right now. I’ve had enough of these self-important old men and their stale little politics. They don’t do serious UFO research. They sit around fighting for status, guarding their turf, and scheming against anyone who tries to get something done.”

Liu knew my temper. He also knew better than to keep arguing with me on WeChat. Within minutes, my phone rang.

“You really are impulsive,” he said. “Whatever you do, don’t quit now. Mr X has already thought about filing a bad-faith complaint against you. If you confront him now and walk out of the Club, you’ll turn this into open war. He could report the conference at once, and then the whole thing will be finished. Wong has only just managed to keep a lid on it. Hold your temper. Once the conference is over, you can leave whenever you like.”

Firefly rushed into the group chat as well.

“Shao, dear, listen to Liu. Don’t be rash. We all know you have a quick temper, but this time it really matters. So many people in the community are behind this conference. Everyone wants to see it happen. If you lash out now, you’ll be giving Mr X exactly what he wants. Swallow it for now. We can deal with him after the conference.”

Liu paused. When he spoke again, his voice had softened, as if he were trying to guide me gently toward a more practical answer.

“Or you could invite him to say a few words onstage,” he said. “Let him save face. Give him his moment, and he won’t have a reason to make trouble. The conference will be safe. It may be the wiser move.”

“No.”

The word left my mouth before I had time to dress it in courtesy.

I knew the grammar of compromise in Chinese social life: soften the tone, offer the seat, give the difficult man a little public honour so he will not burn the house down. I understood why Liu thought it sensible.

What I could not accept was the moral cost of it.

Mr X had already been making trouble for me through various channels. His intention was clear enough. He wanted to teach the younger people in the circle where they stood. Before anything could be done, he expected tribute. Before any new voice could rise, his old authority had to be acknowledged.

I later heard that before the great wave of factory layoffs in the 1990s, he had once held a minor leadership position in a factory. The habits seemed to have followed him. He had carried that little bureaucratic throne with him into the UFO Club, where age, seniority, and volume were supposed to pass for legitimacy. If he spoke loudly enough, if he occupied enough space, if he had been around long enough, others were expected to lower their heads.

Petty power often survives because reasonable people keep making room for it. They step back for the sake of peace, telling themselves the compromise is temporary or strategic. Gradually, the line moves, and what should have been refused becomes normal.

I typed my reply into WeChat.

“Even if this conference fails, I will not let someone like him contaminate it. I organised this out of goodwill and genuine interest. I did not do it so I could bow my head to a man with such poor character.”

After that, Liu and Firefly stopped trying to persuade me on that point. I would not invite Mr X to give the opening address.

Still, I knew they were right about one thing. I could not quit the Club immediately without provoking the very retaliation they feared. Liu and Firefly understood the terrain better than I did. They were older, steadier, more practised in the delicate art of getting things done in China without provoking the wrong people too early.

So I chose the only compromise I could live with: I would stay in the Club until the conference was over, but I would not give Mr X the stage.

That night, I swallowed my anger and told myself to be disciplined. A small humiliation, I reminded myself, might protect the larger purpose.

Still, the resentment sat in me for a long time. Beneath it was a sadness I had not expected, and a kind of disbelief.

In my imagination, people drawn to UFOs and extraterrestrial life should have been people drawn toward a larger truth. I had wanted to believe that such seekers carried a greater reverence for life, a deeper curiosity about advanced civilisations, and a sincere desire to understand how more evolved beings might live together: how they built trust, shared knowledge, protected one another, and sustained a planetary home without destroying it.

Reality was colder than that.

The same envy, rivalry, vanity, and backbiting moved through these circles as they moved through any other human world. It was a strange grief, to discover how small a world could remain while speaking constantly of the stars.

Some people seemed less interested in the light itself than in making sure another person’s light did not rise too high. Spiritual vocabulary could enlarge the imagination without necessarily enlarging the character.

Perhaps before we could receive anything from civilisations beyond Earth, we first had to become the kind of human beings capable of receiving it.

The Weight of Old Hierarchies

I thought again about the Club itself.

From the outside, the so-called Chinese UFO Club was hardly more than a modest hobby club for UFO enthusiasts. It had few members, little public presence, and a quiet website that hardly anyone visited. Most of its information moved through the same small circle. By any ordinary measure, such a group should have been loose and harmless: people gathering around a shared curiosity, trading stories of UFO sightings, alien encounters, and the mysteries that still hovered at the edge of ordinary life.

Yet inside it, I kept encountering the stale air of an old work unit, or a factory office left over from another era. Seniority mattered. Factions formed. Loyalty was watched. A few older men drew a circle around themselves and called it leadership. Everyone else was expected to know their place. Hierarchy entered the room before thought did. Status and face consumed the energy that should have gone into inquiry.

The pond was small; the territorial battles were grand.

What astonished me was that even an independently organised conference could become something Mr X felt entitled to control. The event had no formal connection with the Club. It used none of its money, none of its resources, none of its authority. In every practical sense, it was private. Still, he seemed unable to bear the idea that something might take place beyond his reach.

Sitting alone in my room that night, I found myself thinking about the kind of society that had shaped men like him.

Mr X seemed to belong to an older China, to the generation formed in the decades after 1949. They had lived through campaigns, famine, factory discipline, and the Cultural Revolution. Many had been denied a proper education. They learned slogans, denunciation, obedience, and survival. They learned when to attack and when to hide. They learned that power could crush them, and later, some learned to reproduce that power in whatever smaller world they could find.

A person shaped by that history may carry its habits long after the original setting has disappeared. Authority becomes the language he trusts. Power becomes the proof that he still exists. A minor title, a louder voice, a few years of seniority—these can harden into a throne. Deference becomes his due. Independence becomes an insult.

The grammar is crude, yet powerful: give me face, or I will make you pay. Follow my rules, or I will find a way to press you down.

That was one-way historical wounds seemed to survive in ordinary life: through suspicion, status anxiety, and the need to control a room that did not belong to you. People once pressed down by power can learn, consciously or not, to reproduce it on a smaller scale.

What pained me was that these patterns had not ended with one generation. They had seeped quietly into the next, and sometimes the next after that. New platforms, new communities, new language; the same old hunger to dominate.

The contradiction stayed with me. We spoke of disclosure, higher civilisations, and humanity’s future among the stars while remaining entangled in the political and social habits of our own past.

Inviting The Speakers

During those weeks of preparation, the pressure rarely lifted. Yet there were moments of grace. Several friends from the community - Piaomiao Lantian, Brother Chaobai, Xiao Guo, and Jingjing—stepped forward to help with the practical work on the ground, giving me enough space to focus on coordinating the overseas speakers. Their generosity steadied me. After all the suspicion and obstruction, it mattered to be reminded that some people still served the work quietly, without needing to possess it.

The hardest decision was who to invite.

My ideal speakers were people who had devoted themselves to serious research into consciousness studies and anomalous experience: those who could speak about evidence, method, patterns, and the strange relationship between consciousness, contact modalities, and the unseen dimensions of reality. I wanted the conference to move beyond spectacle. I wanted it to point, however modestly, toward a more disciplined form of inquiry.

Yet the Chinese UFO community at the time was still drawn less to research than to revelation. The names that carried the most heat were those associated with contactee narratives, hidden programmes, government cover-ups, dramatic cosmic conflict, and the promise of secret knowledge. Corey Goode and Cobra, often spoken of together as the “two Cs,” had enormous appeal. They offered a universe charged with drama, danger, hidden wars, heroic struggle, and concealed truth.

I understood the attraction. People were not only seeking information. They were seeking meaning, rescue, and a story large enough to contain their dissatisfaction with ordinary life. Still, I worried about the hunger for revelation when it outran the discipline of discernment. Without discernment, mystery can become another kind of intoxication.

After much weighing, I decided to invite Dr Michael Salla, Laura Eisenhower, and Corey Goode. Corey replied quickly and said he was willing to participate, though only online, because he was unfamiliar with China’s political environment. We declined. A live video appearance felt too fragile for a paid conference. The repeated struggle to set up an online interview with the former Canadian defence minister was still fresh in my mind. If the connection failed, or if interference occurred again, the disappointment would fall on us.

While I was still uncertain, Laura recommended John DeSouza, a former FBI agent known in UFO circles for his connection to the world behind the X-Files. From our first exchange, I felt an unexpected sense of relief.

John was impressive in a way that immediately steadied me. He was responsive, easy to work with, and socially astute. He had the kind of professional ease I had sometimes seen in lawyers from top-tier firms: the ability to speak with people from all walks of life, build rapport quickly, and still keep difficult tasks moving forward. It was a skill, certainly, but also the result of years spent inside serious corporate or government environments, where charm alone is never enough. You learn to read people, manage pressure, and get things done without making the process more difficult than it has to be.

Not every negotiation was so smooth. One prospective speaker came with a list of demands that immediately strained the budget: a fee several times higher than the others, business-class flights on an airline of his choosing, and expensive five-star accommodation, all at our expense. The numbers were difficult to absorb. For several nights, I barely slept, trying to work out how to cover the speaker costs without raising ticket prices.

In the end, we were fortunate. The speakers arrived safely. The Beijing and Shanghai events went ahead without the disasters I had imagined in the dark hours of preparation. They were gracious, cooperative, and moved by the warmth of the audiences. After the conferences, they stayed in China for another week, travelled, met people, and spoke often of the sincerity they had encountered.

We had guests willing to come. We still had to get them into rooms. That would prove harder than I expected.

Favours, Egos, and Symbolic Power

No sooner had one danger passed than another appeared.

To keep the first conference alive, we had to move through a web of favours, pride, old loyalties, and the quiet arithmetic of obligation. Nothing remained simple for long. A refusal could bruise someone’s ego. A small courtesy could be mistaken for allegiance. Even the seating plan began to carry political weight.

Once word of the conference spread, several well-known figures in the community began circling the event. Some sent messages through mutual acquaintances, hinting that they would like a place onstage: to serve as hosts, give opening or closing remarks, or be introduced as honoured guests. To keep the peace, we offered front-row seats and invited some of them to the dinner.

Mr Huo, the businessman I mentioned earlier, was especially persistent. He wanted his company’s new beverage placed on every dining table and promoted during the event. He also asked about inserting an advertisement into the programme. We declined as politely as we could. The conference had begun as a gathering of enthusiasts, a space for curiosity and exchange. It was never meant to become a commercial showcase. Yet Mr Huo kept pressing at the edges. One moment he was trying to alter the organising body without proper discussion; the next, he was looking for ways to turn the conference into an opportunity for his product. Everything about his involvement carried the smell of business.

There were smaller pressures as well. A close friend insisted that a friend of hers should attend as an interpreter, making it clear that she would be offended if I refused. In the end, I gave away another complimentary ticket simply to avoid one more unnecessary conflict.

Then another elder from the UFO Club began to involve himself.

By then, I had already seen enough of the Club to understand its hidden currents: the factions, the rivalries, the old resentments dressed up as principle. In that atmosphere, this elder figure, whom I will call Mr A, turned his attention toward me.

Compared with Mr X, who was forceful, jealous, and openly difficult, Mr A moved more softly. He did not demand open submission from younger people. His vanity had a gentler costume. He liked to show photographs of himself with important people and speak at length about his connections. When given an audience, he enjoyed standing at the front of a room and delivering polished, harmless remarks that preserved the glow around his own importance. In English, such a person might be called a “name-dropper.”

Before the conference, Mr A began hinting on WeChat.

“Shao,” he wrote, with a smile I could almost hear through the screen, “you know, I also know many overseas guests…”

More than once, he sent word through others that he would very much like to give the opening address.

When Liu told me, he sounded tired.

“Mr A is usually polite enough,” he said. “This is just what he enjoys. Maybe let him say a few words at the opening or the closing.”

I understood Liu’s dilemma. By then, the conference had become something people wanted to claim. It offered a stage, a photograph, a place in the room, a chance to be associated with something new before it had fully taken shape. If we refused everyone too sharply, we would create resentment before the event even began.

The trouble was that Mr A and Mr X were known enemies inside the Club. If Mr A appeared onstage and gave a speech, Mr X would read it as a public insult. He already resented me for organising the conference. If he discovered that his rival had been given visibility while he had been left out, his obstruction could harden into retaliation.

When I asked Liu what we should do, he sighed. In the end, we chose a compromise. We invited Mr A to the dinner, gave him one of the best seats, and placed two overseas guests beside him so he could take photographs and enjoy the recognition he wanted. He would feel honoured without being placed onstage.

It was a small piece of theatre designed to prevent a larger drama.

Mr A could leave satisfied. Mr X would have less reason to feel provoked. And the conference, with luck, might survive another hidden current.

That was when I realised how far the conference had drifted from its original innocence. It had begun as a gathering for people drawn to UFOs, contact, consciousness, and the larger mystery surrounding human life. Now it was being pulled into an older machinery of status, rivalry, and symbolic power. So many people wanted a claim on it, a place near it, a way to be seen beside it. Every small arrangement could be read as a signal: respect, disrespect, loyalty, provocation. Somehow, I had ended up in the middle of it.

When the Ground Gave Way

Just as the conference was beginning to survive the politics of favours, egos, and private negotiations, we were struck by a blow that almost ended it.

About a month before the event, Mr Xu, the official organiser on the ground, suddenly became unreachable. For several days, no one could get hold of him. I was already uneasy when a message arrived.

“Shao, something has happened.”

Mr Xu, I was told, had been taken away by the police. No one knew why.

My heart sank. For a moment, I was certain the political risk we had feared had finally materialised.

At the time, it was hard not to suspect a bad-faith report, or some form of official attention that had been waiting for the right moment. If someone wanted to kill the conference, this was the cleanest way to do it: wait until the final weeks, remove the organiser, freeze the logistics, and let the structure collapse under its own weight.

“Don’t panic yet,” one friend said quietly. “We still don’t know why Xu was taken. Let’s find out first.”

Firefly was bewildered. “But how is this possible? Didn’t he already complete the police filings?”

That was true. If Xu had done anything thoroughly, it was the local reporting. He had gone again and again to the police stations in both cities to make sure the conference was properly registered and could not be accused of being an unauthorised gathering. He once told us that even the police had laughed at his caution. “Isn’t it just an astronomy hobby event?” one officer had apparently said. “Why are you so worried?”

Because of that, we had assumed the local police saw no political danger. When Xu disappeared, we drew the conclusion we had been primed to draw: someone must have escalated the matter. Fear thickened by the hour. In retrospect, that assumption would prove wrong.

Then the practical disaster revealed itself.

Both conference venues, along with the speakers’ accommodation, had been booked under Xu’s name. Unless he appeared in person or provided written authorisation, no one else was allowed to step in. But where were we supposed to find a signed authorisation letter when he had vanished?

The hotels were unmoved. They reminded us that only deposits had been paid. If the remaining balance was not settled quickly, the venues and rooms would be cancelled.

Only then did we discover the scale of Xu’s mess. Hoping to profit from the hotel bookings, he had reserved a large block of rooms in advance, apparently planning to resell them to attendees travelling from other provinces and keep the difference. The more rooms he reserved, the larger the balance became. Now that balance stood in front of us like a wall. We had no easy way to produce such a sum at short notice.

The obvious answer was to use the ticket revenue. Yet that money, too, was locked away. We had sold tickets through a proper platform precisely to protect the buyers and prevent anyone from running off with the funds. The rule was sensible: the money would only be released shortly before the event, or on the day itself. It was meant to protect the audience. In that moment, it trapped us as well. The money was there, visible and unreachable, while the venues threatened to disappear.

For a while, it seemed the conference had reached the point of no return.

Then help began to arrive.

It felt almost like providence. Just when the whole structure seemed ready to collapse, three unlikely rescuers appeared at the right moment.

The first was Yao, a senior member of the Shanghai UFO Association. She contacted us and offered to help. Her husband, James, one of my listeners, encouraged her warmly to support us however she could. Around the same time, a community organiser who used the name “Galaxy Awakening” stepped forward and offered to take over the remaining arrangements under the name of the Shanghai UFO Association, helping clear the way for both the Beijing and Shanghai conferences.

Then there was Zhu, an elder I deeply respected. He reached out to me himself. His voice was gentle and full of sincere concern.

“Shao,” he said, “you’re overseas. It must be very difficult to organise a conference like this from so far away. Let me see what I can do for you.”

Zhu was from Shanghai, nearing retirement, and a devout Christian. He was quiet and modest, the kind of man who had spent years helping people in his church without calling attention to himself. Our beliefs were different, but his character was beyond dispute. Everyone in the community respected him. His willingness to help moved me deeply.

That was when I began to understand the meaning of divine intervention. At certain turning points in life, when every possible route seems blocked, someone steps forward. I could not help feeling that the sincerity behind the conference had somehow been seen. Perhaps the extraterrestrial beings we spoke about so often understood the intention behind our effort. Perhaps, in the most difficult hour, help had come through human hands.

In the final weeks before the conference, Yao and Zhu travelled across Shanghai through the cold November wind and hard afternoon light, searching for suitable venues, checking details, speaking with managers, and trying to salvage what had nearly been lost. In Beijing, Liu set aside his own work and began looking for a new venue. None of them asked for payment. They simply wanted the conference to survive.

Soon, Yao found a new venue in Shanghai. Strangely, the previous event had left behind decorations and props related to the universe and the stars. The room already carried the atmosphere we needed. Even she could not help saying that if the extraterrestrials were not helping in secret, how else could such a coincidence appear?

At the same time, Galaxy Awakening and the Shanghai UFO Association took over the remaining arrangements with remarkable efficiency. In the final three weeks, they helped complete the venue and ticketing work for both cities almost in one continuous effort. Zhu even cleared space in his own home so the speakers’ books, shipped ahead of their arrival, would have somewhere to be stored. He personally helped move the heavy boxes.

As for the money, two acquaintances from the community and I had no choice but to use our personal savings to cover the venue and accommodation costs, trusting that the ticket revenue would be released in time to fill the gap. It was frightening, but the pieces finally began to connect. By the last few days before the conference, the stone that had been pressing on my chest began to lift.

There is an old saying: once you step onto the first stair, the path itself begins to carry you upward.

That was how it felt. We had reached that point because friends and volunteers had stepped forward, because people of genuine goodwill had chosen action over performance, and because the work itself had gathered a momentum stronger than the chaos around it. Perhaps there was also, somewhere beyond the visible world, a kindness from the stars.

False Promises and Real Goodwill

After the conference ended, the truth surfaced.

Afterwards, I learned that Xu’s detention had nothing to do with the conference. He had become entangled in a pyramid scheme that he had first fallen into and then introduced to others. I was told he was later released without a fraud charge. The timing had simply collided with the conference at its most fragile moment.

What disappointed me most was his manner afterwards. Once he was released, he behaved as if nothing had happened. No explanation. No apology. No visible understanding that his personal mess had almost destroyed something many people had worked so hard to build.

My deeper frustration remained with Mr Huo. He had accepted responsibility for organising the conference, then handed the role to Xu without proper consent. When that decision nearly brought the event down, he behaved as though the responsibility belonged elsewhere.

By the end of that ordeal, I understood something I had only known in theory before: in China, the hardest part of getting things done is rarely the procedure. It is the private motives people bring into the room.

When the conference nearly collapsed, the forces behind it were painfully familiar: vanity, greed, bad faith, resentment. Some people could not bear to see another person succeed. Some treated every relationship as a transaction. Some wanted access to the contacts and resources I had built, while resenting the fact that I cared more about the work itself than about serving their status.

When the conference survived, it was because decent people appeared at the crucial moment. Help came quietly, without ceremony, from those who asked for nothing. A room appeared. A person stepped forward. A problem that had seemed impossible suddenly opened.

What sustains an endeavour is conscience. What destroys it is the absence of it.

At last, in December 2018, the conferences opened successfully in Beijing and Shanghai. The speakers arrived safely and were gracious, cooperative, and moved by the warmth of the audiences. Those of us who had carried the project to the finish were exhausted, but for the first time in months I could breathe.

Before leaving China, the guests told us they would gladly return. For a brief moment, after all the pressure, it felt as though something sincere had survived the machinery around it.

What none of us could have expected was the wave of consequences and revelations the conference would leave behind.