Space hero Yang Liwei who returned to the earth early Thursday
after a landmark 21-hour space flight came back to Beijing by a
special plane at 9:52 am on Thursday.
He flew back from the landing site in Inner Mongolia in north
China, which is the priority landing place for the sophisticatedly
orchestrated landing of the China-made Shenzhou
VÂ spacecraft.
Cao Gangchuan, Chinese Defense Minister, received the
38-year-old astronaut at a military airport in west Beijing.
Also present were Li Jinai, chief commander of China's first
manned space flight program and director of the General Armaments
Department of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and Chi Wanchun,
political commissar of the PLA General Armaments Department.
(Xinhua News Agency October 16, 2003)