"The issue is the headline. It posits a question, then jerks you around until you've spent long enough on the page to satisfy some engagement metric."
But there was and is just no definite answer, except for drama. I found every bit interesting and relevant to be able to picture the situation.
"The title "The First Man to Refuse to Return from Space" would be more appropriate for an investigative article. "
And no, because it was way more severe than this: he said he won't come home and he said figurativly "oh, I can just open this airlock and then we all would die?" (where "unless you give in to my demands" was maybe intentionally implied - maybe not, he was not mentally stable)
So an actual clickbaity sounding headline, that would have actually be quite close to the truth, would be:
"First man in space, who threatened to kill everyone on board"
But Ars did not do this. Partly because they are not (so much) into the clickbait game, but partly because the facts are (intentionally by NASA) not that clear here. And the Author tried to gather as much facts as he could. So giving us, where he was born and went to school was no real answer to the title question - but it helped me getting a picture of the person in question, which is still alive, but who refused to comment. Because people have reasons for why they act like they do:
"When I turned on my own instrument, it didn't work," Wang said. "You can imagine my panic. I had spent five years preparing for this one experiment. Not only that, I was the first person of Chinese descent to fly on the Shuttle, and the Chinese community had taken a great deal of interest. You have to understand the Asian culture. You don't just represent yourself; you represent your family. The first thing you learn as a kid is to bring no shame to the family. So when I realized that my experiment had failed, I could imagine my father telling me, 'What's the matter with you? Can't you even do an experiment right?' I was really in a very desperate situation"