Two men take the white hydrogen balloon to the sky. Photo: screenshot of the video posted by Pear Video

Two villagers in Northeast China took a hydrogen balloon to collect pine nuts from tall pine trees on Saturday, but accidentally floated away.

Although they landed safely on a hill, the police later took them away to be investigated.

Gathering pine nuts is a dangerous job as the seeds are located high in the trees, and collectors need to climb the tall trees or take hydrogen balloons to reach them.

As the video posted by Pear Video shows, these two villagers living in Wangqing county of Jilin Province took a huge white hydrogen balloon and ventured high into the sky.

One of the villagers said in the video that the balloon is like a moon during the day. According to a local police officer, although these two men could control the balloon, the reason they could not find a safe place to land is that the mountain is covered by large amounts of trees.

However, they ended up finding a flat hill and landed safely. They were taken to the police station to receive investigation after landing as "flying into the sky like this is not allowed," the police officer said.

Another nuts collector was not as fortunate as these two villagers. A collector surnamed Bi in Jilin Province took to the sky in a hydrogen balloon to collect the pine nuts, but has remained missing since then.


Newspaper headline: Two villagers float away in balloon