People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps twelve were chosen as astronaut candidates. The Astronaut Corps was established in January 1998 and the twelve along with two PLAAF trainees sent to Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in 1996 forms Chinese Group 1. Seven pilots entered the Astronaut Corps in May 2010 as the Group 2. In 2014, Group 1 astronauts Wu Jie, Li Qinglong, Chen Quan, Zhao Chuandong, and Pan Zhanchun retired from the Astronaut Corps due to age; none of them had flown in a mission. The Astronaut Corps was part of the General Armaments Department until GAD's disbandment in January 2016. As part of the
Chinese as a foreign language "Arte de la Lengua Mandarina" was published in Canton in 1703. This grammar was only sketchy, however. The first important Chinese grammar was Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare's "Notitia linguae sinicae", completed in 1729 but only published in Malacca in 1831. Other important grammar texts followed, from Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat's "Élémens" (sic) "de la grammaire chinoise" in 1822 to Georg von der Gabelentz's "Chinesische Grammatik" in 1881. Glossaries for Chinese circulated among the missionaries from early on. Robert Morrison's "A Dictionary of the Chinese Language" (1815-1823), noted for its fine printing, is one of the first important Chinese dictionaries for the