Liu Yang (astronaut) hours of flying experience. After two years of astronaut training, Liu excelled in testing before being selected with another woman, Wang Yaping, as a candidate for the astronaut corps. Liu was selected for the crew of Shenzhou 9, the first manned mission to the Chinese space station Tiangong 1, along with Jing Haipeng, the first repeat Chinese space traveller, and Liu Wang. Liu became the first female Chinese astronaut to go into space. The mission was launched on June 16, 2012, 49 years to the day after the first female space traveller, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was launched. During this manned
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