Jan 22, 2004

By Marlene Karas/AJC

Sam Lu practices Falun Gong with friends at a Chamblee park. Lu's wife was released last week from a Chinese labor camp where she was a political prisoner.

Sam Lu was a lonely man when he came to Smyrna from China three years ago.

He had fled his homeland after his wife was arrested for passing out pamphlets on Falun Gong, a spiritual and meditative set of exercises outlawed by the Chinese government. He had no friends or family around and was more comfortable speaking Chinese than English.

Lu is still lonely. But he credits his new friends in America with helping win the release last week of his wife, Zhou Xuefei. He said his wife will live with his parents in Zhenzhen in southern China, where she will be supervised by the local Communist committee. Lu concedes that the next step, getting her a passport, will be difficult.

Lu, who received political asylum in the United States, said he wants to see his wife but fears he would be arrested if he returned to China.

The couple had been married two months when Zhou was arrested. They met when she was a student in one of his Falun Gong classes in China. She had an easy grasp of the program, and Lu fell in love with the woman he describes as noble and pure.

Their problems started after the Chinese government [began persecuting] Falun Gong in 1999[...]. Lu, a tax auditor for the government, was arrested for his religious practices, but released after a few months. After his wife's arrest, he used a passport he already had to leave the country.

Lu, 34, thought it ironic that in his new community he was allowed to teach a class at Smyrna's Community Center and the city gave him a proclamation supporting Falun Gong.

He was moved by the support and by people who embraced his drive to have his wife released. A phalanx of new friends talked at town hall meetings, wrote letters to members of Congress and signed petitions. During former Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States and Mexico 15 months ago, Lu and six of Lu's supporters followed the president to each location he visited.

Surrounding Lu at each stop, they stood in silent protest holding laminated posters of Zhou with the words: "Please help to rescue my wife Xuefei Zhou, a Falun Gong practitioner detained and tortured in a Chinese labor camp."

Ping Cai, who went on the trip, met Lu at a Falun Gong class in Atlanta. Although Falun Gong was founded in China, both Lu and Cai learned about it as exchange students at American universities. A graduate of Beijing University, Cai said she witnessed the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. She came to the United States seven years ago to get a master's degree in business and now works for a large corporation in Smyrna.

Cai said the fight goes beyond the struggle for Zhou's release, because she is one of many political prisoners.

"We want to help everyone who is being persecuted for their beliefs," Cai said. "We are relieved that Zhou has been released, but we have to continue our momentum."

Mary Hook, another supporter, said she is one of about a dozen Western practitioners of Falun Gong in Atlanta. The Fulton County librarian met Lu in a class at the Chinese Culture Center in Chamblee. She has supported him by calling her congressman, speaking at a DeKalb County town hall meeting and writing letters.

In a letter to the AJC in December, she urged readers to ask President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to ask for Zhou's freedom and a visa to enter the United States.

"My heart has been touched by Sam and how devoted he is to his wife," Hook said. "He is very stoic and displays the utmost loyalty and love. I dream of meeting his wife at the airport some day with flowers and balloons."

Lu, who recently moved to Duluth, said support from people he didn't know three years ago has helped him survive his ordeal. He can't wait for his friends to meet his 28-year-old wife, whose name translates as "falling snowflake."

"I feel great compassion from my friends in Georgia. That has helped," Lu said. "But I want to be with my wife. I want to feel happy again."

Source: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/0104/22friends.html