(Clearwisdom.net)

1. Falun Dafa Saved Me

I began practicing Falun Dafa at the beginning of April 1998. I was only 35 years old that year but I was in dreadful physical shape, with all kinds of ailments. I had edema throughout my whole body and I had a serious heart problem ever since I was 23. I was hospitalized several times each year because of the heart problem. Besides these ailments, I had hypertension, kidney trouble, and a bladder tumor, and I had to depend on diuretics to urinate. Even with the medicine I could only urinate drip by drip. It was very painful and the urine was often mixed with blood. In addition, my husband was doing business out of town all year around and he had been arrested and detained three times for fighting with others. Any feelings between us as husband and wife had long broken down, and we were on the verge of divorce. I had thought several times of committing suicide to end my pain. But when I looked at my old father and looked at my two children who were not even 10 years old, all I could do was simply weep and struggle on, with each day seeming like a year.

One day, my husband suddenly called me on the phone and said, "I was wrong and I am sorry. Now I want to learn Falun Gong and I will try to be a good person. Wait for me at home and we won't get divorced." At that time I did not believe him at all. What kind of Gong was so effective that it could really turn him into a good person? After he came back home, I saw that my husband really had changed; he had changed into a totally different person.

With a curious mentality I also wanted to hear what Master Li, the founder of Falun Gong, was saying. So, my husband I watched the videotapes of Master Li teaching the Fa (1). Since then I too started practicing Falun Dafa.

On the third day after I started practicing Falun Gong, I went to the bathroom to urinate. To my great surprise, it was not as difficult as before and my abdomen felt immediately relieved, a feeling I had never felt before. At that moment, I was so moved that I could not hold back my tears. I had never expected that the suffering I had dealt with for six or seven years could disappear miraculously just like that! Soon after that, my other illnesses also disappeared; I became a totally healthy person.

My husband and I deeply felt the magnificence of Falun Dafa. We wanted more people to benefit from practicing Falun Gong. So from then on, every day, one of us would stay to mind our shop and the other would go out to introduce the Fa to others. We printed "A Brief Introduction to Falun Dafa," using our savings, and we also set up a Fa-study group at our home.

2. Clarifying the Truth

Only a year after we began practicing Falun Dafa, the "Tianjin event" happened, followed by the "April 25 incident" (2) in 1999. By that time, although we didn't understand many principles of the Fa, we knew that to speak the truth and to defend the Fa were the right things to do because we had personally experienced the magnificence of Falun Dafa. Therefore we knew that when someone treats Dafa unjustly and speaks unjustly about our Teacher, we should come out to tell him the truth; otherwise we would be not qualified as disciples of Master Li.

On April 23, 1999 when we heard about the "Tianjin event," we went to the newspaper publisher right away. That evening, the police forced us out of the publisher's office with violent beatings and kicking, and those who refused to leave the publisher were carried out by four personnel. Soon after the peaceful appeal at Zhongnanhai, we heard that the authorities wanted to cancel Dafa book publishing orders; several dozen of us practitioners went to the Beijing publication bureau to ask them to reconsider. We told them about the positive physical and mental changes we had experienced after we started to learn Falun Dafa. The personnel who met with us suggested that we leave, saying they would pass on our request to their superiors and they would then give us a clear answer.

Not long after that, we heard that a Beijing TV station was about to broadcast a TV show with content defaming Falun Dafa. So we went to the Beijing TV station to clarify the truth. The personnel who met with us took notes of what I said and asked me to write down my name; they said they would report to their superiors. By that time many Falun Dafa practitioners in and around Beijing who heard the situation also went to the TV station to tell them the facts. In the end the TV show did not go ahead.

In June, the Central Government issued a notice which forbade any disturbance to our practice. The notice was announced by Propaganda vehicles in our district. We were all happy, thinking that the disturbance had finally ended and that we could now calm our minds to study the Fa and practice again.

However, the full-scale suppression started on July 20, 1999. On about August 2, a reporter by the name of Cheng Bukuan from the local newspaper wrote a story distorting the facts about Falun Gong, even fabricating various lies in the story. We immediately went to see him to clarify the truth. He was very rude at the beginning. We told him that his fabrications and distortion of the facts were against his conscience and that it would negatively affect the reputation of the newspaper; who would believe what was printed in the newspaper any more? After hearing that, he knew that he was in the wrong and he apologized. He said that he did not have a choice in the matter and that there were orders from above to force reporters to write such articles in all districts. Later my husband went to the newspaper publisher many times to talk to the head of the newspaper and to the editors, asking them to clarify the truth of Falun Gong in the newspaper. They refused. Later we came to realize that if they refused to clarify the truth for us, we should clarify the truth for ourselves. We then wrote a truth-clarifying article, had it printed in a large quantity and distributed it ourselves.

3. I Will Speak the Truth Even if I Die

On July 19, 1999 there was a massive arrest of Falun Gong practice site assistants across the country. My husband was among those taken away. I went to ask for his release, but the authorities refused. In the afternoon of July 23, they broadcast the circular, "To Ban Falun Gong." Fellow practitioners and I went to the city government and to the office of appeals, but both said that they could not do anything. We then went to Beijing to appeal. I thought then that even if I died I would speak the truth: "Falun Dafa is great!"

The second day in Beijing, I went to Tiananmen Square. There were many fellow practitioners at the square but we did not know what to do. When the police stopped us and asked us if we practiced Falun Gong, we all said "yes," and when they ordered us to get in the police van, we did as we were told. This way many fellow practitioners and I were sent back to our local areas. The street police station took me to the street administration office; they then tried to sway my mind. I kept telling them about the positive physical and mental changes both my husband and I. had experienced. They said, "If you talk this way, we will have to send you to the detention center. You'd better think about it. This time many will be executed." I said, "I will still speak the truth that Dafa is great and I will not be intimidated even if I die."

My husband and I were detained together. The first words my husband said when he saw me were, "We are absolutely not going to write the repentance letter. Is there anything wrong with learning Falun Dafa? No. There is nothing wrong with that. We will not write it since we did nothing wrong." I agreed with him and said, "Right." Later they called in my brothers who were working elsewhere and asked them to force me to write the repentance letter. They said that if I refused to write it, they would force my older brother to beat me. My brother refused to cooperate with them. Finally, the authorities ran out of ideas and they let us go home.

One day I was reading and studying the Fa in my shop when several people came in (those who were always monitoring us) and tried to take my book away. I said, "This book teaches people to be benevolent and teaches people how to be good people. In the past, if you harassed me and interfered with my business, I would have already thrown you out and I would not have treated you so politely like I am doing now. This is because I have become a better person since I started to learn the Fa." They were speechless and left.

(To be continued)

Notes

(1) Fa: Law and principles; the teachings of Falun Dafa.

(2) April 25, 1999: On this date ten thousand Falun Gong practitioners peacefully appealed at the Zhongnanhai compound (China's central government building) and successfully negotiated the release of forty-five practitioners who had been illegally arrested in Tianjin City.