http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/12/china-diy-aviators/all/1

Somewhere toward the upper right side of our graph we would find
Mao Yiqing, who has built China’s first — and so far only — human-powered
airplane.

He calls the plane Mozi, after the Chinese philosopher who, by many accounts,
invented the kite with Lu Ban in the 5th Century BC. Yiqing, who is 40 and lives
in Shanghai, follows in the footsteps of Paul MacCready, who built the
prize-winning human-powered Gossamer Condor 30 years ago.

Yiqing honed his skills running Oxai, a company that builds high-end
remote-control planes. Mozi was built using many of the same techniques and
materials — balsa wood, styrofoam and carbon fiber — as his model planes. His
workshop is covered with pictures of Eric Raymond, the American pilot who flew
his solar glider across the United States and, in June, over the Alps. Yiqing is
preparing his plane, which weighs 38 kilograms and has a wingspan of 25 meters,
for a flight across Dianshan Lake near Shanghai.

“It’s about 6 kilometers wide,” he says of the lake, “and there’s the risk of
losing the airplane. But I’m lightweight and I’m cutting down on the
cigarettes.”

Should all go according to plan, Yiqing will bring Mozi to the Birdman Rally in
Japan, where he hopes to break the duration record for human-powered flight.
Already he’s attracted the attention of Brian L Allen, the cyclist-pilot of the
Gossamer Albatross and Condor. I showed Allen, an engineer at NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, a video of Mozi in flight. He was impressed.

“Flying from an unfinished motorway speaks highly for its controllability,”
Allen said.