China’s leaders are surrounded by reminders of their nation’s long and eventful history. As a matter of fact, the residential compound where many of those leaders live, the Zhongnanhai, is part of the Forbidden City, the six hundred year old former home of the Chinese emperors. So it’s a safe guess that as they watched China’s first astronaut rise into orbit on their television screens last week, at least some of the men who rule China were thinking about their country’s first age of exploration.