Yang LiweiYang Liwei Chinese Pilot Yuhangyuan. Born 21 June 1965. First Chinese man in space. Astronaut Career Astronaut Group:. Active Number of Flights: 1.00. Total Time: 0.89 days. Yang Liwei was China's first citizen in space. His launch into orbit aboard Shenzhou-5 on 15 October 2003 marked the entry of China into an elite group, consisting only of Russia and the United States, who had the capability to launch human beings off the planet. Yang's name therefore was placed in history next to those of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard. Yang was born in June 1965 in Suizhong County of northeast China's Liaoning Province. Friends in his hometown recalled that Yang had dreamed of flying when still a child. He joined the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) in September 1983 and entered the No. 8 Aviation College of the PLA Air Force. Yang graduated in 1987 with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree. He became a fighter pilot, accumulating 1,350 flight-hours by the time of his first spaceflight in 2003. In January 1998, Yang 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 rigid physical, psychological and technical training at the Astronaut Training Base in Beijing. The astronauts received lessons in aviation dynamics, air dynamics, geophysics, meteorology, astronomy, space navigation, and the design principles and structure of rockets and spacecraft. They also received systematic training in space flight simulators. Yang noted the study was much more difficult than that in college. The astronauts also had to learn survival skil...
