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 V 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)