Published on: 2026-08-26
Source: People’s Republic of China — Translation
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Huan Xiaoqi, a 73-year-old resident of Shunde City in Guangdong Province, recently signed a contract to purchase ticket number 022 for a suborbital space flight. According to the plan, in two years she will fly on the crewed spacecraft “Chuangyuezhe-1” and become one of the first passengers of the Chinese commercial crewed spacecraft.
This is not just a contract signing. Juan Xiaoqi is a technical expert in household appliances in China, twice awarded the State Science and Technology Progress Award Second Class. Over ten years, she has twice gone on stage to receive a state award in the same field, as part of the same team — a record no one has been able to match.
Xuan Xiaoqi was born in 1953 into a humble family in the city of Shunde. In 1983, she started working at a small household appliance factory. Without having a prestigious education, she independently mastered stereometry, mechanical engineering drawing, general physics, organic chemistry, technical English, and other disciplines, and advanced professionally from a measurement control specialist to technical vice president.
In the late 1980s, the global refrigeration industry faced an environmental challenge related to the replacement of freons. Huan Xiaoqi volunteered and led a research team that started from scratch to develop a “freon replacement.” Eight years of hard work — and thanks to the efforts of Huan Xiaoqi’s team, the company Kelon became the first Chinese enterprise to completely replace freon in its household appliances. They received a grant of 5.48 million dollars from UNIDO and upgraded more than 80 product models.
In 1998, Juan Xiaoqi became one of the experts receiving special state subsidies from the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, and in 2000 she was awarded the title “All-China Model Worker.”
After 2002, when the automotive navigation industry was emerging in China and the digital map data sector was almost entirely controlled by foreign companies, Huang Xiaoqi once again took a bold step: she founded the company “Ruitu Wanfang” and engaged in the independent development of digital navigation maps. Together with her team, she researched the entire road network of China and created a highly accurate navigation data base covering the whole country.
From freon replacement to navigational charts, and then space tourism at 73 years old — Juan Xiao Qi has proven by her own example that age is not an obstacle to new discoveries; the real obstacle is the fear to dream. “Space used to be a government affair,” she says, “but now commercial manned flights are gradually becoming accessible to ordinary people. Since I have been given such a chance, why not take advantage of it?”
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