Long wait to connect

On a cold morning last winter, Su Junyi, a graduate student at the Beijing Language and Culture University, tried - for the umpteenth time - to reach her fiance Yang Yifei.

Yang was a Chinese peacekeeping soldier in Liberia. As an engineer, he often stayed at construction sites for weeks, not able to connect with Su either over phone or via the Internet.

"You can imagine how sad and disappointed I would get at not being able to reach him, after dialing his number continuously 20 times," Su, a slim and pretty 24-year-old, told China Daily. "When I did eventually get through to him, I felt like I had won a lottery."

To avoid troubling her roommates, Su would go out to make her calls before 6 am in the freezing cold as Liberia's time zone lags China by eight hours.

That winter day was a lucky one for Su as she got through to Yang. But after a 30-minute conversation, she came down with a high fever that kept her in bed for a week.

For about two weeks after Yang's departure last December, there was no word from him. An anxious Su eagerly looked through every website on the peacekeeping mission in Liberia and even set up special folders in her computer on Liberia, peacekeeping, the Chinese army and so on.

She would invariably look at peacekeeping information first, every time she switched on the computer.

On New Year's day this year, the young woman, who till then had not thought of God, offered prayers at the Yonghe Lamasery of Beijing. "I prayed for his safe return," Su says.

Before Yang left, Su used to joke that the peacekeeping mission would help him lose weight. But when Yang e-mailed her a photo a month later, Su couldn't help crying at his emaciated look.

The young couple have been dating since their high school days in Songxian County of Central China's Henan Province. "My separation from Yang made me realize that it is not easy to be married to a soldier. But I am willing to make sacrifices for Yang."

(China Daily 08/03/2007 page20)