Peking University, Dec. 5, 2012: The famous Taikonaut Jing Haipeng, who had been to space twice in 2008 and 2012, delivered a speech entitled “A Return to Space for the Glory of the Nation” in the Hall of Administrative Building. PKU President Zhou Qifeng was present.

When Mr. Jing appeared in the hall, all PKUers welcomed him with a big round of applause. In front of hundreds of elite students, Mr. Jing confessed the tension he felt. “As a person who has been to space twice, I am still so nervous to have you as my audience,” said he.

Mr. Jing first shared a story which tremendously influenced his life. When he was a teenager, he was crazy about basketball and was on the basketball team of the village where he grew up. A week before the match with another commune basketball team, the coach asked them to wear sport suit on the day they play. Yet it was not at all easy for Mr. Jing. He was the only laborer in the family at that time. After seeing him worried for a few days, his mother said to him: “Everything will be fine, my boy. You will play in your new sport suit.”Then his mother took out the only left cotton in the household and started to spin threads, out of which a piece of white cloth is woven. Mr. Jing dyed the cloth blue and made the shorts. Then he went downtown, bought a vest and printed flying seagulls on the front while the number “5” on the back, all of which cost him less than 1 RMB. Mr. Jing was so excited, but the new sport suit did not earn him the chance to play that day. He was not as good as other two team members who played the same position as he did.

Since then, he spared not time to train himself to be a better player, not missing out on one day. In the final, one of the members fell down and was badly wounded. After sitting on the bench for four matches, Mr. Jing eventually got to play the last 10 minutes. The two teams were neck and neck. Thanks to the shot by Mr. Jing in the last minute, his team became the champion.

According to Mr. Jing, if he had never played basketball, he would never understand how important faith is in one’s life. The faith of becoming a qualified pilot was the strongest driving force in those efforts he had made in the past years. As a pilot, he had the safety flight record of 1200 hours in 12 years, which was way beyond average. Suffered from the nausea and vomiting caused by the training simulator, he did not press the button to stop the machine. He had not stopped training after he went to space in Shenzhou 7,which enabled him to return to space in 2012 to accomplish the space docking between manned spacecraft Shenzhou 9 and Space Laboratory Tiangong 1.

When asked about the changes brought by the experience of going to space, Mr. Jing said with a smile, “I become a more grateful and brave person with composure when encountered with any emergency now.”After his two trips to space, he gained a deeper understanding of how much family and friends meant to him: “ I know I can always go farther, having them behind my back.”

In the end, Mr. Jing encouraged all PKU students to seize every opportunity to improve themselves and believe in faith. “Just keep walking, and you will get somewhere one day.”

Background info:

Jing Haipeng (born October 24, 1966) is a Chinese pilot and astronaut selected as part of the Shenzhou program. A fighter pilot in the People's Liberation Army Air Force, he was selected to be a CNSA astronaut in 1998. He is the first Chinese astronaut to have flown on two missions: Shenzhou 7 and Shenzhou 9.

Jing was one of the six trainees for the Shenzhou 6 mission.

Jing, along with Liu Boming and Zhai Zhigang were selected for the prime crew on Shenzhou 7 on September 17, 2008. On September 25, 2008, at 21:10 CST, they launched into space as the first three-man crew for China aboard China's third human spaceflight mission.

Jing was selected as commander of Shenzhou 9, becoming the first repeat traveller of the Chinese program. He commanded the first manned mission to dock with the first Chinese space station, Tiangong 1, and with the first female taikonaut, Liu Yang. The third member of his crew was Liu Wang. The mission was launched on 16 June 2012, returning to Earth on 29 June.

Reported by: Li Chiyang
Edited by: Zhang Jiang
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_Haipeng