Cosmonauts, Astronauts, Taikonauts

First there were cosmonauts, then astronauts, now taikonauts, as China became the third nation to successfully launch a manned (and womanned) spacecraft that docked with an orbiting space station.

I was not surprised to read that the Chinese built their own space station since they have a reputation of being self reliant, typically doing things their own way without the need for the international community. However, I was surprised to read that they had repeated requested to dock with the international space station but were rebuffed by the U.S. Even more shocking was that during the Chinese broadcast of the rocket's launch, the animation was accompanied by an instrumental version of "America the Beautiful."