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 Chinese language proficiency exam program, which tests has been taken around 100 million times (including by domestic ethnic minority candidates). Within China's Guangdong Province, Cantonese is also offered in some schools as optional or extra-curricular courses in select Chinese as a foreign language programs, although many require students to be proficient in the Mandarin first. Chinese is rated as one of the most difficult languages to learn for people whose native language is English, together with Arabic, Japanese and Korean. According to the Foreign Service Institute, a native English speaker needs over 2,200 hours of intensive study, taking 88 weeks