First Chinese Man in Space--Yang Liwei

　　 Space Hero Yang Liwei

　　In January 1998, Yang Liwei was selected as a member of the group of Chinese astronauts set to train to fly the Project 921 (later Shenzhou) spacecraft. He was one of 14 chosen from among 1,500 pilot candidates. The team underwent five years of rigorous physical, psychological, and technical training at the Astronaut Training Base in Beijing.

　　Yang Liwei noted the study was much more difficult than that in college. There were more than 30 subjects he had to have a well command of. Yang's English was not good, so in order to improveing in this area, he often called his wife from the astronaut station to serve ashis English learning partner. Practice makes perfect, at the exam, Yang got a score of 100 .

　　Besides some basic lessons in aviation dynamics, air dynam ics, geophysics, meteorology, and astronomy, the astronauts also had to learn survival skills under extreme conditions in case their capsule landed anywhere on the earth, whether on land or at sea.

　　After a long- time of training, on September 20, 2003, the 14 astronauts began to exercise in the real Shenzhou-5 spacecraft at the Jiuquan Launch Center. One month later, Yang was selected as one of three finalists to be the country's first astronaut.

　　For the general public, it was still a question as to who would be the astronaut chosen to command the Shenzhou V,as Yang's selection for the spacecraft was only leaked only 6 hours before the launch.

　　On October 15, 2003,Yang was launched into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. In space, YangA completed 14 orbits and traveled more than 600,000 km, before finishing China's first manned space flight, and again standing on Chinese soil at 7:00am, on October 16, 2003.