Baotou, Inner Mongolia, his plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched by the 1st Battalion of the People's Liberation Army Air Force under the command of Wang Lin. When his plane was hit, Chang ejected and parachuted down to a farm. He was captured and held in a guesthouse of the PLA Air Force in Beijing, guarded by four soldiers. Meanwhile, in Taiwan he was presumed killed in action and the Central Daily News reported his "death" on 12 January. The ROC Air Force built graves at the Bitan Air Force Martyrs' Cemetery () for Chang Liyi and Yeh Changti, another captured Black Cat pilot who was presumed dead. In April 1965, four U-2 aircraft were shot down by China, including the U-2C piloted by Chang, were put on display at the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution in Beijing. Decades later, Chang was invited and brought to the museum to see the wreckage of his plane. Chang was released from detention in late 1969, almost five years after his capture. He was later sent to live in his hometown Nanjing, where he reunited with his mother and siblings for the first time in 27 years. He worked as a farmer, a factory worker, and eventually as an engineer at the Nanjing Institute of Aeronautics. Return to Taiwan In 1982, the PRC government granted Chang and Yeh Changti permission to return to Taiwan and sent them to Hong Kong. However, Chiang Ching-kuo, then President of the Republic of China, considered them compromised and refused to take them back. Yang Shiju (), a former commander of the Black Cat Squadron, contacted the CIA, which settled the duo in the United States. Neither pilot received a medal from the CIA, but their shoot-down had a major impact on the agency and the US Air Force, which began to prioritize the development of pilotless drones at Area 51. Chang finally was granted permission to return to Taiwan in 1990, after the death of Chiang Ching-kuo. On 12 June 2019, Chang died from a heart attack at Songshan Hospital in Taipei. He was 89. Personal life In 1956, Chang Liyi married Chang Chia-chi (), a fellow native of Nanjing, and they had three children. Eight years after he was shot down in 1965 and declared dead in Taiwan, she married an army officer. Still not fully convinced that Liyi was dead,