Fallen Astronaut 2007, art journalist Jan Stalmans wrote to Van Hoeydonck, asking him how many replicas were in existence. Van Hoeydonk returned a handwritten response on the letter, that 50 copies had been made, most of which were still in his possession, unsigned. Van Hoeydonck wrote that he had only ever received money for one copy of "Fallen Astronaut", despite many purchase offers he had received (see the English translation ). Fallen Astronaut Fallen Astronaut is an aluminium sculpture created by Paul Van Hoeydonck. It is a small stylized figure, meant to depict an astronaut in a spacesuit, intended to commemorate the
Chinese as a foreign language China. After this period, only Cantonese and Mandarin remained as the most influential variants of Chinese, the former due to the importance of maritime trade in Guangzhou and the emergence of Hong Kong as a key economy in East Asia. Chinese departments in the West were largely centered on Cantonese due to British colonial rule over Hong Kong until the opening of communist-ruled China starting in the 1970s. The teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in the People's Republic of China started in 1950 at Tsinghua University, initially serving students from Eastern Europe. Starting with Bulgaria in 1952, China