Zhang Shujing couldn't wait to welcome her husband back -- from somewhere 343 km above the earth.

"I have prepared a lot of flowers -- lilies and a rose. The rose represents my heart," said Zhang, the wife of Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang, who accomplished the nation's first space walk with his two colleagues onboard the Shenzhou-7 spacecraft on Saturday afternoon.

Dressed in red, the color of luck in Chinese tradition, Zhang and the wives of the other two taikonauts watched the live telecast of the space walk and talked with the spacemen from the Beijing ground control center on Saturday night.

In the conversation, Zhang asked her husband how he ate, slept and whether he had dreamed of her. "He said sorry that he had not," said Zhang. "But I know I was in his heart."

She exulted in the feat performed by Zhai. "He is brilliant! I'm so lucky to get myself such a husband and I'm very proud," she told Xinhua. "I wish I could fly with him if I had a chance."

Zhang Yao, the wife of Liu Boming, thought Liu's performance was "perfect". "I 've been watching TV all the night in the past few days. Sometimes I fell asleep, then awoke and continued."

Zhang Ping was a bit surprised to find her husband Jing Haipeng "look younger in space than on earth". She noticed every detail of Jing's work in space. "He read the manual attentively, sometimes scratching something on it with the pencil. They did an excellent job."

Like the three astronauts, who are all 42 years old, their wives have much in common: All are surnamed Zhang, while two of them are from the same hometown with the same birthday.

While exuding pride for their loved ones, the wives have gone through jitters and anxiety.

"I was so nervous when they opened the hatch door (before the extra-vehicular activity) that my hands sweat," said Zhang Shujing. "I lost 3 kg of weight in the past two weeks, but I have more trust in them than worries."

"One day they spent in the sky was like a decade for me on the ground," said Zhang Ping, adding she felt more relaxed after the conversation.

The Shenzhou-7 spacecraft took off from northwest China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 9:10 p.m. on Thursday, and is scheduled to land on the Inner Mongolia steppe at about 5:40 p.m. on Sunday.

The astronauts have to be quarantined for about half a month after the landing, said Zhang Shujing. "We can't see them during that period, but we can rest our hearts as long as they are on the earth."

(Xinhua News Agency September 28, 2008)