By the end of 1959, China had 41 such aviation clubs with 49 airstrips and more than 1,500 trainees. From 1960, the flight clubs started admitting junior middle school graduates as trainees, who took the air force's enrollment test together with high school graduates after one to two years of training and middle school education.

Qian Changyan, 70, is a former vice-principal of the No.1 Middle School, affiliated to the Huangzhong Normal University in Wuhan, one of the first flight clubs established in the 1950s, and was the supervisor of his "gliding class". He says there were 28 students in his class, and most of them were from poor peasant families. "They arrived at the school in shabby vests and shorts, without any luggage ... The air force took special care of them, and provided them ewe's milk when there was no milk during the great famine of 1960-62."

The school ran a maximum of six "gliding classes" a year, and about 70 percent of its graduates were enlisted by the air force as flying cadets. The military was tasked with providingfor their life, the government's sports bureau had the responsibility of improving their physical fitness levels through a special exercise regimen, and the middle school conducted general knowledge classes for them.

All the flight clubs were closed in 1979, and the air force started looking for flying cadets from among high school graduates. The air force selected 44 high schools as the bases to train the flying cadets in the mid-1990s. And these schools sent more than 1,100 flying cadets to the air force from 1996 to 2003.

But owing to lack of proper training and policy support, some schools were struck off the list. The air force reformed the entire flying cadet development process and the enrollment system in 2007, finally giving shape to the "Little Eagles" project.

Oriental Outlook contributed to this story.