Astronaut which describes it as "a hybrid of the Chinese term "taikong" (space) and the Greek "naut" (sailor)"; the term became more common in 2003 when China sent its first astronaut Yang Liwei into space aboard the "Shenzhou 5" spacecraft. This is the term used by Xinhua News Agency in the English version of the Chinese "People's Daily" since the advent of the Chinese space program. The origin of the term is unclear; as early as May 1998, Chiew Lee Yih () from Malaysia, used it in newsgroups. With the rise of space tourism, NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency
Chinese as a foreign language and Macau and has traditionally been the dominant language among most Overseas Chinese communities. A number of universities outside Hong Kong and Macau offer Cantonese within their Chinese-language departments as well, especially in the UK and North America. The interpretation of the Chinese language in the West began with some misunderstandings. Since the earliest appearance of Chinese characters in the West, the belief that written Chinese was ideographic prevailed. Such a belief led to Athanasius Kircher's conjecture that Chinese characters were derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphs, China being a colony of Egypt. John Webb, the British architect, went a step