Zheng Rui's mother and father greet her as she walks down a lane
toward her home after a long day at work. Zheng has kept this
heart-warming picture in her mind for the past five years.
"They used to stand in front of my building, smiling and waving
at me," said Zheng, a researcher at the cancer center of Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. But every time she sees
it, the agony returns.
Zheng's parents, Zheng Yuguang, 65, and his wife Yang Shuyin,
62, were on board American Airlines Flight 77 to Los Angeles on
September 11, 2001, as it crashed into the Pentagon.?
Five years on, the memory remains a distressing one for Zheng,
who refused to recall the details of that day during a telephone
interview with China Daily. "It was just too much sorrow
to begin with," she explained. "I've tried hard not to think about
it. So do people around me. The accident had such a huge impact
that it changed my life and my attitudes toward life forever."
Prompted how it affected her decisions in daily life, she would
give no clear answer: "I cannot say exactly how. Maybe in 10 years,
I'll be able to sit down and make a list. But not now."
The turning point of Zheng Rui's life came in 1999 when she went
to the US from Beijing to strive for a post-doctoral degree from
Johns Hopkins. Before long, she invited her parents, both retired
in Beijing, to visit her and stay for almost a year.
Zheng Yuguang, a former chemist, and his wife, a retired
pediatrician, were married for 35 years. They also raised a son,
Yang Shidong, who works at Fujitsu electronics in Nagano,
Japan.
The memories of their visit to the US are still sweet and
joyful.
"Unlike Western parents, my parents didn't say 'I love you,' but
their love was reflected in their everyday lives," Zheng said. "I
still miss their witty jokes and my mum's cooking."
Her parents enjoyed their time in the US. Zheng Rui and her
husband, Wan Li, took them traveling, hiking and swimming in Maine.
During their stay, the elderly couple reached out to the local
community, revealing their zest and passion for life, Zheng
recalled.
"It was amazing that they made some good friends here, although
their English was very limited," she wrote in an online
obituary.
"Although they were over 60, they were still enthusiastic about
learning English. When a word came up, they would immediately turn
to the dictionary or ask me."
Before boarding Flight 77, Zheng Yuguang and Yang Shuyin told
their daughter, who saw them off at Dulles Airport, how much they
had enjoyed the year with her and promised to visit again in a
couple of years. Then they hugged and kissed her and disappeared
into the airport.
When news of the 9/11 attacks reached China, their Chinese
relatives could not believe it.
"It was surreal," said Chen Wei, Zheng Rui's cousin in Changzhou
of east China's Jiangsu Province, of their first reaction.
"We?would never have thought that the two of them were on the
plane. There was more chance of winning the lottery than of being
attacked by terrorists."
When the deaths were confirmed during a call from Zheng Rui,
relatives in Changzhou were shocked, their grief mute. On the
phone, Zheng Rui cried and couldn't continue the conversation, Chen
recalled. For Yang Shuzhen, the sudden death of her beloved younger
sister was unbearable. Chen said: "My mother collapsed and felt her
heart break after hearing the news."
Chen attended the funeral, held in Washington D.C., on behalf of
the family. All procedures for the trip were quickly green-lit and
completed in only three days.
Chen was impressed by how well the US government took care of
them. "Everything was well-arranged," recalled Chen, 45. The US
government bought her a first-class ticket. A guide and an
interpreter accompanied her throughout the five-day trip. At the
memorial service at the Pentagon, Chen joined other family members,
gathering for the first time after many years of separation, to
share their grief with relatives and friends.
"There was a whole floor in a building in Washington, displaying
pictures of the deceased," Chen recalled.
At the memorial site, people talked and offered condolences,
many without knowing each other's names. "I met people of many
different colors," Chen said. "The tragedy bound everyone into one
big family."
At the Pentagon, Zheng Rui and her family called out the
couple's names in hope that her parents' spirits would hear. Zheng
took some earth from the Pentagon and later buried it at a cemetery
in Beijing.
"She wanted them to rest in peace at home," Chen said. However,
Zheng Rui cannot share in that peace, a sense of guilt shadowing
her. She sometimes asks herself: "What if they hadn't come to visit
me? Would they still be alive and living a happy retirement in
China?"
Most of all, the pain of being unable to see her parents never
ends. "It just exists at different stages," she said. "It is not an
ordinary wound. A knife wound will heal one day. But this wound
will never heal, and the grief will follow me for the rest of my
life."
Today, a 30-minute event in Washington organized by the US
Congress will commemorate the foreign victims of the 9/11 attacks.
A third Chinese person, Michael Gu, 34, of Shanghai, also died, at
the World Trade Center in New York. His widow, Jean Liu, declined
to be interviewed.
Zheng was invited to be a keynote speaker and will also read the
names of the countries where the foreign victims came from. She
said: "It is an opportunity for me to let more people know my
parents, who were loved by their families and friends."
(China Daily September 11, 2006)