[Image by Song Chen/China Daily]

Thirty-nine of the 100 junior middle school graduates enrolled in the quasi-military aviation training program in five key high schools across China four summers ago joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force as flying cadets last year. They are the first batch of pilots to emerge out of a new air force pilot training program that focuses on developing the instincts and thinking power of pilots from an early age.

The program has now been extended to more than 10 high schools and will admit 1,000 students this year, and the air force hopes to select about 400 flying cadets from the dozens of "Little Eagle Classes" when they graduate three years later.

New life

"Although I had visited the Aviation University of the PLA Air Force (in Changchun, Jilin province) several times before, I felt the air was different on that summer night in 2011 when I was enrolled in the 'Little Eagle Class' in the Jilin Provincial Experimental High School," says 18-year-old Zou Yu from Taoxian, Hubei province, who is now a flying cadet of the aviation university

The high school and the university face each other across a road in Changchun. The university has produced more than 70,000 pilots and about 300 generals for the air force. And almost all of China's astronauts have studied there.

With his classmates from Hubei and Hebei provinces, Zou spent half of the past three years in the high school studying the lessons in the curriculum, and the other half at the university receiving basic training to become a pilot. Zou's father suggested he should apply for the pilot program, because air force pilots are highly regarded in China.