Mr Viral
Update: On May 28, the Aero Sports Association of Gansu Province has confirmed Peng Yujiang’s flight had not been officially approved. Peng told authorities he was conducting ground-based paragliding training — which doesn’t require approval — when strong winds lifted him into the air. The association classified the event as an accident, not illegal flying, and suspended Peng from flying for six months.
No oxygen mask. Ice clinging to his face. Frost crusting his suit at minus 40 degrees Celsius.
Yet somehow, a Chinese paraglider survived being wrenched nearly nine kilometers into the sky — close to where commercial airliners cruise — after a powerful high-altitude phenomenon pulled him into the oxygen-starved air above the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.
The pilot, Peng Yujiang, took off from northwestern China’s Qilian Mountains on May 24 and remained airborne for more than an hour. Footage from a camera mounted on his paraglider — posted by someone close to him to Douyin, China’s version of TikTok — shows him coated in ice and flying without supplemental oxygen in minus-40-degree air.
“I felt the lack of oxygen. My hands were frozen outside. I kept trying to talk on the radio,” Peng says in the Douyin video after landing safely 33 kilometers from his launch point.
Screenshots from Peng’s GPS flight tracker show he took off at 12:19 p.m. from the Qilian Mountains, an area that hosts a government-backed paragliding base. In 2018, it was the site of the first Coupe Icare China — a spin-off of France’s iconic Icarus Cup, an annual festival celebrating free flight.
Roughly 20 minutes after takeoff, Peng was caught in what experts call “cloud suck” — a rare and dangerous phenomenon in paragliding where strong updrafts inside a cumulonimbus cloud pull pilots rapidly upward. These towering storm clouds are notorious for generating violent vertical currents that can overpower gliders in seconds.
Data from his flight tracker shows he was lifted to a peak altitude of 8,598 meters, with his ascent rate peaking at 9.7 meters per second (about 35 kilometers per hour).
Peng’s altitude came close to the world record for surviving such a flight without supplemental oxygen.
In 2007, German paraglider Ewa Wiśnierska was lifted to 9,946 meters during a training flight in Australia after being caught in a similar cumulonimbus updraft. She lost consciousness for nearly 40 minutes but later regained control and landed with only minor frostbite.
Peng is reportedly recovering without serious health complications and has declined interview requests. According to domestic media, he has asked the public to stop amplifying the incident, saying he wants to avoid escalating the situation.
Since the flight went viral, Peng’s Douyin account has been set to unsearchable, and the GPS record of his flight has been removed from XContest, a global paragliding tracking platform.
While Peng’s video account on messaging app WeChat shows he has been paragliding since at least 2021, flight logs from XContest show eight other flights in the same area in 2025 alone, the highest reaching just over 5,300 meters.
Quoting an anonymous source, domestic media reported that while Peng holds a valid paragliding license, the May 24 flight was unregistered.
Under China’s national paragliding regulations, all flights must receive prior approval from local air traffic control. Pilots are also barred from flying in poor weather conditions such as clouds, fog, or rain. Violations can result in license suspension or revocation.
An official investigation into Peng’s flight is now underway.
Editor: Apurva.
(Header image: A screenshot of footage from Peng’s flight. From @中国气象爱好者 on Weibo)
