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Zhang (right) and Zheng in happier times at the Ministry of Sound, where Team Singapore celebrated its 2005 South-east Asia Games successes. -- ST FILE PHOTO
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They had plans to go to Hong Kong next year for the honeymoon they never had.
They had plans to study in the same university and start a family.
But these plans will remain just that - unfulfilled - as former national table tennis player Zhang Xueling, 25, tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered life almost two weeks after her husband Zheng Qi, 30, died in a car accident.
Giving her first in-depth interview since his fatal crash on May21, Zhang revealed that the couple's unfulfilled dreams were her biggest regret.
In between sobs, she said over the phone from Shanghai last Friday: 'Not a single one of our dreams was realised.
'We didn't even get the chance to go for our honeymoon because we were just too busy preparing for the Asian Games in 2006.'
The pair met in Singapore in 2001. Zhang was a national player who went on to win multiple gold medals in the South-east Asia Games and the Commonwealth Games. Zheng was the assistant coach of the men's team.
After five years of courtship, they got married three months before the Doha Asian Games in 2006.
Life might have panned out differently for them had they gone ahead with their plans to buy a flat and settle in Singapore. But that never materialised.
Instead, after the Games, Zheng returned to his hometown of Shanghai and Zhang followed soon after.
Then, he was offered a post to coach the Beijing girls' youth team. He turned that down and chose to coach the Shanghai women's team instead.
She said: 'Maybe it's all fated. His life was meant to be short and mine, a disaster.'
Zhang was in Beijing visiting her parents when Zheng crashed his four-month-old Lexus, a gift from his father for his 30th birthday.
'My whole world came crashing down,' she recalled in Mandarin. 'My heart was beating very, very fast when my mother first told me. I couldn't believe it.'
In fact, she recalled being uneasy when she parted from him at the Shanghai airport a few days earlier, feeling like she 'suddenly could not bear to leave him'.
The morning after the accident, Zhang flew back to Shanghai with her parents.
But her family and relatives refused to let her see his body, which was 'a mess' after the accident.
'They felt I wouldn't be able to take it. Only after the cosmetic adjustments was I allowed to see him,' she recalled.
Even then, she could barely recognise Zheng.
At his funeral, Zhang ensured that her husband left with his favourite things.
He wore an Armani tuxedo, the same one he had put on for their wedding.
His coffin was filled with his favourite lifestyle magazines and a soft toy of a lion kicking a football, as football was the other sport he loved.
Zhang was sombre but polite during the 11/2-hour long interview. The only time she became stern was when the talk turned to a Chinese newspaper article that reported that the accident had been caused by drunk driving.
Rubbishing the story, she said: 'That isn't true. It's baseless. He's gone already. Why would anyone write something like that?
'Just a while back, he had a night out with some coaches and they had some drinks. He called me to ask me to pick him up. He won't drive after drinking.'
At this point, her voice started cracking again as she struggled to fight back tears.
For now, she is staying put in Shanghai, but she is struggling to adjust to life without Zheng.
She no longer wants to drive, she cannot sleep unless she has the lights on and her parents do not feel safe leaving her alone.
Occasionally, she still looks out of her window at home, like she always used to do, and wait in vain for her husband to come back from training.
She said: 'Being with him was my dream. All I ever wanted was for the two of us to be happy together. Now I can't even have that.'
linxinyi@sph.com.sg
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