Chen Dong (astronaut) Chen Dong (astronaut) Chen Dong (; born 12 December 1978) is a Chinese pilot and astronaut selected as part of the Shenzhou program. A fighter pilot in the People's Liberation Army Air Force, he was selected to be a CNSA astronaut in 2010. Chen was born in Luoyang, Henan on 12 December 1978 from a working-class family. He holds a Master degree in Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University. He joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force in August 1997, achieving the rank of Colonel. Chen was selected for the second batch for Chinese astronauts in 2009 when he was a
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