Liu Yang (astronaut) Liu Yang (astronaut) Liu Yang (born October 6, 1978) is a Chinese pilot and astronaut who served as a crew member on the space mission Shenzhou 9. On June 16, 2012, Liu became the first Chinese woman in space. Liu was born in Zhengzhou, Henan in 1978, into a worker's family of Linzhou, Anyang origin. She graduated from PLA Air Force Aviation University in Changchun. Liu joined the PLA Air Force in 1997 and qualified as a pilot before becoming the deputy head of a flight unit, holding the PLAAF rank of major. She is a veteran pilot with 1,680
Chinese as a foreign language late 16th century. Among the first were the Italian Jesuits, Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci. They mastered the language without the aid of any grammar books or dictionaries, and are often viewed as the first Western sinologists. Ruggeiri set up a school in Macau, which was the first for teaching foreigners Chinese and translated part of the "Great Learning" into Latin. This was the first translation of a Confucian classic into any European language. He also wrote a religious tract in Chinese, the first Chinese book written by a Westerner. Matteo Ricci brought Western sciences to China, and became a