(Minghui.org) With regard to Falun Gong practitioners peacefully appealing outside Zhongnanhai for fair treatment, Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Yu said calmly, “Had I known about the event beforehand, I would have been there.” Due to poor communication, Ms. Yu missed the opportunity to appeal peacefully for Falun Gong on April 25th, 1999. A few months later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched the persecution of Falun Gong, after which practitioners told her that local practitioners were being persecuted. She was leaving and said, “I must go abroad to expose the persecution to human rights organizations.”
The Ultimate Enigma of Life
When she was young, Ms. Yu looked like a boy with her hair trimmed short, and played games with the boys such as mud fighting, climbing trees, and marbles. When she was calm, she wondered where life came from.
She later recalled, “I wanted to cultivate Buddhism and Taoism from the time I was a child. When I was a child, I used to stand under a tree after taking a bath on summer evenings and let my imagination run wild. I thought that I did not come to this world for nothing. A final home or something like that was summoning me back.”
At the university, whenever her classmates were taking specialized courses, she enjoyed reading philosophy texts in the library. With an independent spirit, she also wandered into temples from time to time. She would read the book Tao Te Ching lying under her pillow after getting up every morning.
She recalled, “Where human life comes from and returns to was the ultimate enigma for me. As I read a lot of philosophy books and Tao Te Ching, contemplating this issue, I had an increasingly strong desire to cultivate my moral character and nourish it in order to upgrade myself, so I decided to practice cultivation.”
All of Ms. Yu's classmates knew that she was quite interested in cultivation. One classmate suggested that she ask a teacher from the English language department of the university, who was said to know how to practice cultivation. When Ms. Yu met the teacher, he recommended that she practice Falun Gong. With the teacher's help, Ms. Yu found the practice site at the university and was eager to go. Around 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. the next morning, she got up very quickly and rushed downstairs. After awakening the yawning gatekeeper to open the gate, she made a dash for the practice site.
Cultivation Is Not Only Spiritual Activities
The practice site was set up by a male student from the Physics Department of Hubei University who had attended Master's Nine-Day Lecture Series in Guangzhou. There were dozens of practitioners at the site then, including teachers and students from all the departments.
Being there for the first time, Ms. Yu felt a little embarrassed in fear of being recognized as a newcomer. Standing among the crowd, she imitated others' movements. The assistant saw at a glance that she was a newcomer. The assistant was handsome, not tall, and appeared a little shy. When Ms. Yu was embracing the wheel in front of her head, her wrists were not raised to the same height as her eyebrows. The assistant showed her and then went away. Ms. Yu immediately felt a burst of very hot energy circling her wrists, as if she were wearing bracelets. The energy flow lasted for about 10 minutes.
Ms. Yu said, “At the beginning of my cultivation, I had many feelings and experiences. For example, when I embraced the wheel on campus in the early mornings of winter, my feet became very hot, as if I was treading on burning coals, but it was not scalding and I felt very comfortable. Sometimes I suddenly found myself standing alone after embracing the wheel for nearly half an hour. At that time, I was a little surprised but had no doubt about the amazing experiences.
“My grandfather had been practicing cultivation in the Tao school since he was three years old. He has technical information and supernormal abilities, and he had used them to cure many patients. I also heard my mother talk about supernormal abilities, so I did not wonder about supernormal phenomena at all. Nevertheless, they were completely new to me, as I had never before experienced the real and miraculous manifestation of cultivation in our dimension. I initially thought that cultivation was no more than spiritual improvement, since all the books about cultivation I read focused on spiritual activities. At the beginning of my cultivation, I also did not know Falun Gong was a cultivation method that cultivates both mind and body, which will undergo changes according to your spiritual improvement along with the aid of the exercises.”
The five Falun Gong exercises are graceful and easy to learn. Witnessing her own and fellow practitioners' changes, Ms. Yu could not help but marvel at the miraculous power of Dafa. Ever since then, Ms. Yu has studied the Fa and done the exercises every day.
Conducting Herself with Integrity
After graduating from university, Ms. Yu worked at China Telecom. Fresh from the ivory tower, she soon perceived the complexity of worldly matters and human relations in her company. Nepotism prevailed among the staff, and they hurt one another for personal profit, but none of this changed her principles of conduct at all.
Ms. Yu always worked hard and responsibly. Once the head of the company told her to audit the accounts. She came to work early and worked late every day, which ended up damaging the skin on her forefinger from all the work she did with the accounting books. A few months later, she had finally checked up on all the accounts, which had been in a mess, and discovered that the project manager was corrupt. Ms. Yu told the bureau chief, and as a result, the project manager resented her. Later the chief told Ms. Yu sincerely, “Do not neglect to foster good relations with your colleagues.” When bonuses were issued, Ms. Yu got less than any other employee.
Working in a propaganda agency, Ms. Yu never accepted any bribes. As she said, “One should not be rewarded for doing nothing.” One colleague did not understand Ms. Yu at all. Having no life experience, Ms. Yu sighed, “In China, it is really difficult to be a good person.”
On April 25, 1999, when Falun Gong practitioners appealed peacefully outside Zhongnanhai, Ms. Yu had just transferred to a propaganda agency. She was very busy with work, so she did not know what was happening in the outside world at that time. As she said, “We were engaged in putting together a magazine then. I served as a chief editor and was very busy, so I gradually did the group exercises less. I once went to do group exercises after a long time and found nobody at the practice site. I wondered if the site had been changed. I later called the assistant and learned from him that the CCP had begun to persecute Falun Gong. Practitioners at the site had been illegally detained for appealing for the right to practice Falun Gong.” This really surprised Ms. Yu. Their familiar faces emerged one by one in her mind, and she wondered if they all had been detained. It was hard for her to believe.
The CCP went all out to persecute Falun Gong. The CCP TV broadcast slanderous propaganda against Falun Gong from morning till night. The newspaper was filled with articles defaming Falun Gong, but Ms. Yu dismissed them because she had her own cultivation experience, which was more convincing than anything else. She recalled, ”At that time I thought the slander was so absurd, but I learned very little about the persecution due to the tight restrictions on information inside China. I did not think about it too much, and I just went to work as usual every day. When I was free, I listened to Master's Fa lectures and did the exercises. I also seldom came across my fellow practitioners.”
The persecution, which began on July 20, 1999, had spread all over China. Ms. Yu's employer was also affected. Fortunately, all her colleagues knew how well she conducted herself. A manager that believed the slanderous propaganda discussed Falun Gong with Ms. Yu, who let him listen to Master's audio Fa lectures with her personal stereo. The more he listened, the more he liked it. After he finished listening, he said jokingly, “Don't let me listen anymore, because I feel what your master said is quite reasonable.” The higher authorities sent someone to investigate if there were any Falun Gong practitioners in her work unit. None of her colleagues reported her. They all made a clear choice between right and wrong.
It is difficult to be a good person anywhere. It is even more difficult to do so in Mainland China. Ms. Yu perceived that the moral values of society were deteriorating daily, which was distressing. She then decided to go abroad.
Spreading the Facts about Falun Gong
After leaving China, Ms. Yu really understood how severe the persecution was in China by reading all the available information. This soon prompted her to shift from personal cultivation that paid attention to herself alone, to clarifying the truth to her classmates and the people around her.
She studies at a university in an old town near the border of southern Germany. The Chinese Embassy put pressure on the local Chinese student association, forcing a few classmates who were on good terms with Ms. Yu to abandon her, but other classmates remained good friends. Those who had held a prejudice against Falun Gong also understood the facts about it as a result of Ms. Yu's behavior.
Ms. Yu said, “I am the only Falun Gong practitioner at the university. Because it is easy for them to access information here, people know the facts about Falun Gong and what the CCP is all about. Although many people do not listen to what you say, they can see how you behave.”
University life is not easy, because her only income is from doing part-time work. In a city dependent on tourism, there were very few enterprises or companies, and it was not easy for her to find a good, well-paying job. Once Ms. Yu found a company to work for, but one of her classmates also wanted to go there. Knowing that she was also going there he hesitated because he knew he was not as competent as she was. At the time Ms. Yu had only several hundred Euro in her bank account and certainly she was in need of money, but she gave up the job interview after she learned this, although, as a matter of fact, his financial situation was much better than hers. “To cultivate is to let go of your selfishness and to attain altruism in the end, just like the story told in Zhuan Falun: If someone wants a house then just let him have it.” Fortunately, she found a new job soon after.
Ms. Yu's generosity and warmheartedness are very much recognized by her fellow students. “I have my own way of studying, which works quite well. My class notes are well known among my classmates for being complete and informative, and they are often borrowed and shared among them for photocopying. They thought it was useful and helped a lot to expedite their learning the course while having spare time for part-time work. I did not keep my notes for myself and would lend them to them whenever they needed it. For this reason I became quite popular among my fellow students.”
Ms. Yu spares no effort in sharing the facts about Falun Gong and letting people see through the lies of the CCP. In Europe she could clarify the truth by appealing to the German Parliament and European Congress through all available channels, anticipating that the persecution of Falun Gong in China will end soon through the joint efforts of all kind people, and that Falun Gong practitioners will soon be practicing freely in China. On the occasion of the 13th anniversary of April 25, 1999, when more than 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered around the Zhongnanhai compound to peacefully appeal for Falun Gong, Ms. Yu said, “I should have been there, had I known what was going on then.” It is her wish to clarify the facts about Falun Gong to people and bring them the beauty of Dafa. Thirteen years have elapsed, yet her faith remains constant.