Yang passed China's stringent astronaut selection tests in 1996 and 1997, due to his excellent physical condition, including low oxygen resistance capability in aircraft 10,000 meters above the ground.

    He began to receive theoretical training on manned space flight in Beijing. The 30-strong course included an "ABC of Manned Space Flight" and "Identification of Stars", aviation dynamics, air dynamics, geophysics, meteorology, astronomy, space navigation, design principles and the structure of rockets and spacecraft, as well as equipment examination. Moreover, they received systematic training in space flight simulators.

    "To establish myself as a qualified astronaut, I have studied harder than in my college years and have received training much tougher than for a fighter pilot," said Yang.

    During the first two years of training, Yang, 1.68m tall, said he never went to bed before midnight in order to be the best.

    In a bid to improve his English, he often called his wife from his apartment in Space City, asking her to help him practice English.

    Yang, who used to be poor student of English, passed English-language tests with full scores.

    He performed well in exercises designed to improve weight resistance capability in simulators moving at speed.

    But for Yang, training was not confined to training sites.

    He was once found by his wife Zhang Yumei spinning in circles at home. He explained that he was practicing for upcoming tests ona special swivel chair.

    A senior expert in charge of the training said Yang was the best of his students, his favorite.

    Yang chose not to use a pillow on his bed for several days before a training session in which the head of a trainee was in a position lower than the rest of the body.

    Su Shuangning, director-general and chief designer of the astronaut system under China's manned space program, described Yang as a sober-minded person with a "superb capability for self-control".

    To his wife, Zhang, a middle school teacher, Yang is a caring husband, and to his eight-year-old son, Yang is a hero.

    Zhang said she could not forget the expression in his eyes when she was about to be carried into an operating room for a kidney biopsy operation in July 2001. She suffered nephritis.

    "Just at the moment when I was to enter the operating theater, I saw the expressions of extreme care, love and regret like I've never seen. I felt as if a knife had pierced my heart," recalled Zhang.

    She was very weak after the operation, but Yang had to leave Beijing three days after the operation for upper air training in Jilin Province, northeast China.

    Yang sat on a chair beside her sickbed throughout the whole evening before his departure to express his love and care for his wife.

    He asked his mother to come to Beijing to look after his wife during his absence, and declined an offer from his commander to postpone the training.

    As China's first manned space launch drew closer, Yang was among the three finalists chosen for the maiden voyage.

    In order to familiarize himself with sophisticated operations, Yang put all the charts on facilities inside the capsule on the wall in his dormitory.

    He also video-taped the equipment and structure of the capsule, and recorded the footage on a video compact disc so that he could watch it in his spare time.

    During the last professional technical tests, Yang identified and remedied all the "faults" his instructors had set up.

    His instructor would ask him after each test whether he had made any operational errors, and he always answered confidently, "no errors at all".

    During five tests of normal flight procedures, he scored 99 outof 100 in two tests and perfect scores in three tests. Enditem