Dear President Bush,

I'm an ordinary Chinese woman writing you this letter in tears on my sickbed.

On April 1, the fighter jet my husband was piloting was rammed by a spy plane of your country, and plunged into the sea. My husband has been missing ever since he parachuted into the sea.

The news struck me like a bolt from the blue, and I could not believe it. Five days have passed, and I have been suffering every second from the waiting, and every moment has been as long as a century. The cruel blow came all of a sudden, and it wrecked my body and mind, which resulted in my hospitalization.

My parents-in-law call me again and again, asking whether their only son has come back safely. Our 6-year-old son has kept asking when his father will come home. My heart is aching, and I can tell them nothing. I pray and call out time and again hoping in tears that there will be a miracle.

Who has no parents and wife and children in this world? I learned that you and your government are very much concerned about the 24 officers and men on your spy plane, and I know that their parents, wives, husbands and children are also looking forward to the return of their loved ones.

I can understand this, but I can not figure out why you sent them to spy along China's coast from such a great distance, and why they rammed my husband's plane. You and the American people know that your 24 crew members are being properly looked after and that they are in good health. Their family members and American people do not have to worry about them at all.

But what is incredible is your and your government's apathetic attitude towards my husband's life. My husband, as a Chinese service man, was carrying out his bounden duty within the exclusive economic zone along China's coast.

So far, my husband has not been rescued. But in this serious matter with irrefutable facts and the responsibility completely resting on the U.S. side, you are too cowardly to voice an "apology" and have been trying to shirk your responsibility repeatedly and defame my husband groundlessly.

Can this be the human rights and humanism that you have been talking about every day? If so, can there be any justice in this world?

Mr. President, I have heard that you grew up in a family filled with love, and that you value your family and care for all its members.

If this is true, I think you must understand what it means when an old couple loses their only son, when a tender child loses his dear father and when a young wife loses her husband.

Is such a disaster really falling on my family? I hate to think about it. Nor dare I.

Wang Wei is everything in my life. His parents cannot afford the loss of their son; our young son, his father; and I, my husband. But where is he? As I write to you, I cannot hold back the tears that are blurring my eyes.

I grieve for the loss of my beloved husband. I lament the loss of humanity in some people. Give me a reason! Bring back my husband!

What the Chinese people desire most is peace. As the wife of a serviceman, I hope, more than anybody else, that everyone will cherish peace and life, that everyone will offer love to others so that the misery of war, children's loss of their parents, wives' loss of their husbands and sons' loss of their fathers will not recur in the new century.

In conclusion, please accept my best wishes for your family.

(Xinhua 04/06/2001)