The leading candidate to be on China's first manned space mission, and in the process become a household name, was identified as Yang Liwei by a pro-Beijing newspaper Tuesday.
The Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po said Yang topped a list of three astronauts who have been whittled down from an initial batch of 14 following physical and psychological examinations.
Second in the pecking order is Zhai Zhigang and third is Nie Haisheng, according to the newspaper, which has proved a reliable source of news on the launch.
However, it remains unclear how many astronauts will be inside Shenzhou V when it blasts off from the Gobi desert in north China's Inner Mongolia region sometime between Wednesday and Friday.
Yang, who was born in 1965 and is married, hails from Saizhong county in northeastern China's Liaoning province.
Earlier reports had suggested Li Qinglong or Wu Jie, who were trained in Russia, would be China's first man in space.
