A rare and unusually large mirage appeared above the sea near Qinhuangdao, a coastal city in China’s Hebei province, on the afternoon of March 28, 2026. Visitors to the Aranya Golden Coast, a resort area in the Beidaihe New District of Qinhuangdao, watched as a vivid horizontal band of phantom buildings, pillars, and ships materialized just above the waterline. Videos of the Qinhuangdao mirage spread rapidly across Chinese social media, with footage showing the illusion stretching from one end of the visible horizon to the other. Some witnesses compared the image to “a train made of building blocks.”
A local guesthouse operator surnamed Ma said he first noticed a blurry shape near the horizon around 2:20 p.m. while photographing the coastline. Over the next several minutes, the shape sharpened into a neat horizontal strip that ran the full width of the visible horizon. Ma said the mirage contained clusters of buildings in different styles, large round supporting columns, and what appeared to be ships drifting in the foreground. He described the colors as vivid and the overall scene as spectacular to the naked eye.
A tourist surnamed Zhao rushed to the beach after hearing about the mirage and recorded several clips. “The image was very far away and quite small, unlike other mirages you see online,” Zhao said. Based on his recordings, the mirage remained visible for at least one hour.
One longtime coastal resident told the Chinese news outlet Sina that he had lived by the sea for more than 30 years and had never seen anything like it. He said all the buildings appeared to stand on the ocean surface like a wall.
Classical Chinese texts attributed mirages to mythical sea creatures
In classical Chinese literature, mirages were typically attributed to vapors exhaled by the shen, a mythical giant clam or sea dragon believed to project illusory palaces and cities into the sky. Ancient writers frequently described mirages as floating towers, city walls, or otherworldly landscapes, and interpreted them as glimpses of celestial dwellings.
Success
You are now signed up for our newsletter
Success
Check your email to complete sign up
Modern atmospheric science explains mirages as naturally occurring optical phenomena. When light passes through atmospheric layers of sharply different temperatures, it bends and refracts, producing displaced or distorted images of distant objects along the horizon. Coastal mirages like the one observed at Qinhuangdao tend to occur when cold sea air sits beneath a warmer layer above, creating the conditions for light to curve upward and project distant scenery into the viewer’s line of sight.
China’s coastline has seen frequent mirage sightings in recent years
The Qinhuangdao mirage is the latest in a notable cluster of mirage sightings reported along China’s coast over the past several years. On the evening of March 2, 2025, mirages appeared over the sea near Shantou in Guangdong province and Xiamen in Fujian province, with tall buildings seeming to float in and out of the clouds. On April 28, 2024, a mirage materialized along the coastline of Qingdao in Shandong province. In January 2023, a similar phenomenon was reported off the same Qingdao coast, with buildings flickering in and out of the mist.
The coastal city of Penglai, also in Shandong province, has been nicknamed a “fairyland” in Chinese folklore partly because of its centuries-long history of mirage sightings. The city’s association with mirages dates back to ancient texts and remains a point of local identity.
Bioluminescent ‘blue tears’ also appeared along the Tianjin coast the same week
In a separate phenomenon during the same week, stretches of coastline near Tianjin, including Lingang Coastal Park and Dongjiang Bay Beach, began glowing with patches of eerie blue light. The spectacle, known in Chinese as “blue tears,” went viral on social media and drew large crowds to the waterfront.
Chinese media reported that a similar glow appeared briefly in Tianjin’s waters during the spring of 2024, but the late March 2026 outbreak was far more concentrated and widespread. The blue light is produced by bioluminescent marine organisms, typically dinoflagellates or sea sparkle (Noctiluca scintillans), which emit light when disturbed by waves or currents.
Despite its visual appeal, the “blue tears” phenomenon has been flagged by marine scientists as a potential indicator of ecological stress in coastal waters. Large blooms of bioluminescent organisms can signal nutrient pollution, algal overgrowth, or disruptions in the marine food chain. Swimmers have nicknamed it “the ghost of the sea” or “ghost fire on the water.”
By Li Muzi
