Liu Boming (astronaut) Liu Boming (astronaut) Liu Boming (; born September 1966) is a Chinese pilot selected as part of the Shenzhou program. A fighter pilot in the People's Liberation Army Air Force, he was selected to be an CNSA member in 1998. Liu, along with Zhai Zhigang and Jing Haipeng, was chosen to be the main crew of "Shenzhou 7", with Zhai as commander, on 17 September 2008. On 25 September, at 21:10 CST, they launched into space as China's third human spaceflight mission, and the first Chinese mission ever to have a three-man crew. Liu and Zhai participated in China's first-ever
Chinese as a foreign language using intonation whilst retaining the correct tones. Chinese courses have been blooming internationally since 2000 at every level of education. Still, in most of the Western universities, the study of the Chinese language is only a part of Chinese Studies or sinology, instead of an independent discipline. The teaching of Chinese as a foreign language is known as "duiwai hanyu jiaoxue" (). The Confucius Institute, supervised by Hanban (the National Office For Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language), promotes the Chinese language in the West and other parts of the world. The People's Republic of China began to accept foreign