Foreign and Military Affairs

'Black silk ribbon' excites jet set

By Huang Zhiling and Xu Lin (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-01-15 10:30

CHENGDU - Zhang Ying, a noodle restaurant owner in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, normally never pays too much attention to the unnamed airport nearby.

Last Tuesday, however, he was preparing noodles in the kitchen when all the diners rushed out of the restaurant all of a sudden shouting "It's coming!"

"Fearing some of the customers were trying to skip paying, I threw down my chopsticks and followed them. I saw an unusual black aircraft taxiing on the runway," Zhang said.

It took a few minutes for him to get the answer to what all the fuss was about from one of his excited customers.

"It must be the J-20 stealth fighter," the customer told him.

As the black jet took off the people watching screamed and waved. After 18 minutes the plane landed and some of the people in the crowd let off firecrackers in celebration.

"As a huge military fan, I've been paying attention to news about the heisidai for three years. We were really excited about its first test flight. Some just cried out of excitement and pride at the moment," said a military enthusiast in his 30s who goes under the name of "Zei Te".

Heisidai, the nickname Chinese military enthusiasts have given the J-20, literally means "black silk ribbon".

"Silk ribbon" refers to its homophone in Chinese of "4th generation", said Zei, who posted on-the-spot details of the test flight on a forum dedicated to Chinese military development. The post had about 300,000 clicks within four days.

Zei said more than 500 people were at the scene, most of whom were local residents and people involved in the flight project. But there were also dozens of fans from cities such as Beijing and Shanghai who had traveled there to witness the flight.

Liu Zhen, a 22-year-old from Chongqing, had waited in Chengdu for five days, going to the airfield every day to check whether the aircraft was taking off.

"When the aircraft took off at 12:50, I called my friend in Wuhan. He was so glad that he cried loudly," Liu said.

The test flight explained the sudden increase in the number of customers at his noodle shop over the past two weeks, Zhang said.

"Most of them were new faces."

Zhang said his restaurant still witnessed an influx of new diners intending to peep at the stealth fighter jet at the airport the next day.