Somethingnaut
Once aloft, he was said to be “reading a flight manual in the capsule of the Shenzhou V spacecraft…”
I bet he wished he’d done that before being launched into space. It would be interesting to find what out China decides to call their first person in space; ‘astronaut’ and ‘cosmonaut’ are already taken. Any suggestions?
9:09 am on 15 October 2003 :::
mal Says:I heard a couple of days back that they’d already got a name for their… ermmm… space travellers, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that just rolled off a Western tongue. It certainly wasn’t a -naut. Hang on… I’ll find it….
Right, it’s “yuhangyuan”. Your guess is as good as mine.
9:11 am on 15 October 2003 :::
mal Says:BTW, I hear they want to take man back to the moon within 10 years. Should be exciting – I always regretted being born after the moon landings had finished, though to be fair, it was somewhat out of my hands.
10:18 am on 15 October 2003 :::
Stu Says:A moon landing within 10 years? Been there, done that…
1:09 pm on 15 October 2003 :::
Matt Says:As always, Wikipedia has some great information on the subject:
bq. The term taikonaut is sometimes used for astronauts from China. The term was coined by Chen Lan for use in the Western media based on the term “taikong” (?? in pinyin: tai4 kong1), Chinese for space. Chinese officials and newspapers prefer the term yuhangyuan (???), however, which roughly translates as “space navigator.” On October 15, 2003 Yang Liwei became China’s first astronaut.
1:57 pm on 15 October 2003 :::
Stu Says:Is that in Mandarin, or Cantonese?
8:39 pm on 15 October 2003 :::
natis Says:Don’t forget fukinese, toisan and the thousand other dialects that there are in Chinese culture. I prefer Cantonese, but I’m biased towards what I can (somewhat) speak.