Chen Dong: from a Naughty Boy to an Inspiration

Chen Dong: from a Naughty Boy to an Inspiration Few would imagine Chen Dong, one of the two astronauts aboard the Shenzhou Ⅺ spacecraft, used to be a naughty boy. Chen was born to a working-class family in Luoyang, Henan Province. When he was in Grade Three, he played for fun in the vegetable field of the school with some other students. The vegetables were a gift for the teachers from the school. “I was very frightened after that,” he recalled. But Mr Yang, the teacher in charge of his class, took all the responsibility. Mr Yang told him, “I know you didn’t really mean it, but you have to know we teachers won’t have any vegetables in the next few days. You have to think about others when you do such things.” Mr Yang’s tolerance taught Chen the sense of responsibility, and then Chen began behaving himself. From a naughty boy, he later became the class monitor. “If responsibility was what I learned from being a class monitor, I learned the soldiers’ responsibility after becoming a member of the PLA,” he said. Chen joined the PLA Air Force in 1997. In 2009, he realized his dream of becoming an astronaut. He took off aboard the Shenzhou Ⅺ spacecraft on October 17, 2016. After selected as one of the second batch of astronauts, Chen devoted all his time to picking up space knowledge. While the space mission is daunting, astronauts have to be “good pilots”, “good scientists” and even “doctors”, “biologists” and “farmers”. Along with Jing Haipeng, Chen completed more than 3,000 hours of training before the final launch of ShenzhouⅪ spacecraft. “We can’t stop training until the last minute before the launch,” Chen said. Before heading out for the 33-day space mission, Chen said to his twin sons, “Dad is going out for a while. When you look up at the sky and see a shining star, I am probably there. Say hi to me.”