China's first man in space has returned to a hero's welcome after an historic odyssey four decades after the Soviet Union and the United States pioneered manned spaceflight.
Mr Yang Liwei emerged from the Shenzhou Vcapsule and waved, drawing cheers from the 600 locals, recovery workers and police who greeted him on the steppes of Inner Mongolia.
Suspended by a giant parachute, the bronze-coloured capsule carrying the "taikonaut", coined from the Chinese word for space, touched down at around 6.23 a.m. on Thursday after a 21-hour journey that took him around the world 14 times.
Premier Wen Jiabao sent immediate congratulations, hailing the mission as a "complete success".
The 38-year-old fighter pilot turned astronaut, raised in China's decaying northeast "rust belt", was presented with flowers and ribbons by well-wishers and then carried in a chair to awaiting doctors for a checkup.
His return brought a triumphant climax to China's maiden space voyage that came four decades after Russian cosmonaut Mr Yuri Gagarin and American astronaut Mr Alan Shepard pioneered manned space flight in 1961.
The mission marked the crowning moment for a programme launched by Mao Zedong in 1958 but quickly left far behind in the Cold War "space race" that saw the United States put a man on the moon in 1969.