Li Qinglong (; born August 1962) is a

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

pilot An aircraft pilot or aviator is a person who controls the flight of an aircraft by operating its directional flight controls. Some other aircrew members, such as navigators or flight engineers, are also considered aviators, because they a ...

selected as part of the Shenzhou program.

Biography

Li Qinglong was born in Dingyuan,

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

province, China. In 1987 he graduated from the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Missile College and later the PLAAF Flight College. A fighter pilot in the PLAAF, he had accumulated 1230 flight-hours. In November 1996, he and Wu Jie, started training at the Russian Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center. When they returned to China a year later, they acted as the trainers for the first group of astronauts. In January 2003 it was reported by a

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...

that Chen Long would make the first manned Shenzhou flight. Then in March 2003 it was reported that Li Qinglong would make the first manned flight. It was thought that "Chen Long" was a misspelling of "Qinglong", a fact confirmed by the newspaper a couple of days before the launch of

Shenzhou 5 Shenzhou 5 (, see § Etymology) was the first human spaceflight mission of the Chinese space program, launched on 15 October 2003. The Shenzhou spacecraft was launched on a Long March 2F launch vehicle. There had been four previous flights ...

, which was flown by

Yang Liwei Yang Liwei (; born 21 June 1965) is a major general, former military pilot, and former taikonaut at the People's Liberation Army. In October 2003, Yang became the first person sent into space by the Chinese space program. This mission, Shenzh ...

References

1962 births Living people People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps Shenzhou program astronauts People's Liberation Army Air Force personnel {{astronaut-stub