Aiming for the stars

Chen Dongni, deputy director of the Beijing Planetarium. [Photo provided to China Daily]

It also gives children other choices besides dance, piano and painting.

Zhu, who has worked at the planetarium for 15 years, has helped organize national astronomy competitions for primary and middle school students over the past years.

"The competition, which is different from other contests like the Math Olympiad, is for children who love astronomy. And, many of them have started working in this field," he says.

Last year, about 820,000 people visited Beijing Planetarium. Although the numbers are expected to rise in the future, Zhu says that compared with the more than 20 million population of Beijing, this is a small number.

In order to have more children learn about the cosmos, Zhu has been promoting a program to hold astronomy lessons in primary and middle schools around the country. As of now, 30 primary and middle schools in Beijing have astronomy lessons.

"Five years ago, we started working with the planetarium in Delingha, Qinghai province. Now, all the primary school students in Delingha have astronomy lessons. It's really great," says Zhu.

Since Sept 1, dozens of primary and middle schools in Pingtang county of the Qiannan autonomous prefecture in Guizhou province have astronomy lessons. And soon, such lessons will be held in the whole prefecture.

"We hope that with the joint effort of the planetarium and education departments, we can have more primary and middle schools start astronomy lessons," says Zhu.

"Besides China, many other countries are now promoting astronomy education," he says.

"With such lessons, we hope more top talents will choose to study astronomy, instead of artificial intelligence or finance," he says.

Besides astronomy lessons for children, China's social media is also paying a lot of attention to the subject.