(Minghui.org) During the 21-year-long persecution of Falun Gong, I have run into people from all walks of life. Some of them were indoctrinated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Their hearts were filled with fear and hate for Falun Gong. But even they could change their attitudes after they learned what Falun Gong is all about from practitioners. They would respect Falun Gong and treat practitioners well.
After I was arrested by the local police, officer T gave me a hard time. He looked so hateful. He found a copy of Zhuan Falun, the main book of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa), in my bag. The book was carefully wrapped. He flipped through it and put it back in the bag. When I asked him to wrap it back up, he poured a bottle of water on my face.
Officer T was the one who took me to the courtroom and to the hospital. On the way, I talked to him about Falun Dafa and asked him not to get involved in the persecution. I also sang him songs composed by practitioners. Gradually, his attitude changed. I once said to him, “If somebody reports Falun Gong practitioners who hand out our materials or talk about the practice in public, you should tell the person, ‘If you don’t want to read their stuff or talk to them, then don’t. No need to report them.’ And you shouldn’t respond to their report.” Officer T laughed and said, “That is what we have been doing.”
On the way to the courtroom or the hospital, I often shouted, “The persecution of Falun Gong breaks heaven’s laws!” Officer T was embarrassed. Once, after I shouted in the hospital, he got mad at me and said, “I am not the one who arrested you. Why do you make people think I am the one who persecutes you?” I smiled and said, “OK, I will be more specific.” Then I shouted, “The CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong breaks heaven’s laws.” He pretended that he didn’t hear me.
Another time he asked, “Can you not shout this time? I feel as if I am losing face.” I said, “I have to tell people the truth. But if you feel you are losing face, you can pretend to be mad and yell at me. I won’t talk back. Wouldn’t that save face?”
In the hospital when there were many people around, he pretended to be mad and yell at me. On the way back, he bought four pounds of dumplings for me, but he used my money. I said, “Today I made you look good in public. You should help me, too. When we drive by crowds of people, can you slow down and let me shout out of the window?” He agreed. So, every time I saw a crowd of people, I asked him to stop the car. I then shouted, “Falun Dafa is good!”
Xiao Li was one of the five or six police officers who watched me when I was hospitalized. Xiao Li was friendly. He had great sympathy and respect for Dafa practitioners. He often reminded me to pay attention to my own safety. One day he told me, “Yesterday I told my son about your experiences. I told him that people like you are role models.
Da Li was the chief of the guards in the prison. Other practitioners told me that he was quite active in persecuting Dafa practitioners. I didn’t talk to him often. Perhaps he was touched. He had heard about my being tortured and tried to avoid a conflict.
Every inmate was given a new set of bedding to show off to the visitors and inspectors. The inmates are supposed to keep the bedding neat and fold the blanket in a square. I didn’t care about the requirements and never bothered to fold the blanket that way. Da Li never gave me a hard time.
Radios are forbidden in prison. The guards frequently searched our personal belongings for radios. But I wanted one to hear “Sound of Hope,” a radio station run by practitioners, because Dafa information is very important to me. One day I said to Da Li, “I don’t like to watch television. Can you give me a radio?” He laughed and said, “You want to listen to Voice of America? That’s okay. Just hide it from the others and don’t let anyone know that it was I who gave it to you.”
Being able to hear “Sound of Hope” helped ease my mental stress, and I got many materials that helped me clarify the truth of Falun Gong in prison.
One criminal inmate in the detention center had been taken to forced labor camps multiple times when he was young. When he was first taken to a labor camp in a police van, his mother ran after the van crying. Looking through the back window as the van drove off, he saw her fall down in the snow. He told me, “Even that didn’t make me cry. My heart is cold and hard.”
This inmate often chatted with me. I patiently advised him not to get involved in bad things, such as gangster activities and stealing after his release, because one must pay back whatever karma one accumulates. He trusted me, and we became friends.
I once went on a hunger strike to protest an unfair verdict and was force-fed. The guards ordered this inmate to hold me still. The doctor inserted a particularly wide tube into my nostril and turned it around to torture me. I started to bleed and almost suffocated. The pain was all but unbearable. The inmate held my hand with one hand and kept wiping away his tears with the other. He cried, “Just eat something. You don’t have to suffer so much.” This was a person who’d said that he considered himself coldhearted and never cried, yet he had tears for a practitioner. I was touched.
Another inmate was the head of a local gang. He was shaking people down for money before he was detained. He was assigned to be the monitor of our cell in the detention center.
He wanted the bowls to be absolutely clean. After I got out of the hospital, I asked to be the one to get our food and wash the dishes for everyone in the cell. He was surprised, because I refused to wear the detention center uniform, refused to do hard labor, and refused to follow the guards’ orders. He didn’t expect me to wash everyone’s dishes. I didn’t discriminate or bully anyone when getting their food. Conditions in the whole cell improved greatly. Before, the inmates always tortured and bullied the newcomers. Afterward, they stopped doing that.
Our cell was a “transition station.” The newcomers were usually assigned to this cell for one night and then transferred to different cells. We had newcomers almost every day. Before being transferred to this prison, most of them had been held in a police station for a day or two and never fed, so I asked the inmates to save some of their leftovers at lunch and dinner for the newcomers. They all respected me, so they all agreed. When the newcomers arrived, they were not bullied and were also fed. They were really appreciative.
Every day after dinner, the monitor ordered everyone to listen to him recite the detention center rules. As he got to know practitioners better, he always added a sentence at the end of his speech: “It is very important that you remember that Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” When he forgot, I would give him a sign. He then added it.
Before I was transferred to prison, he made a double-layer blanket for me as a gift. I have been using it for many years.
This inmate was blessed—I later learned that he was given a light sentence.
I met another inmate who didn’t respond to me when I tried to clarify the truth of Falun Gong to him the first time. Later I was told that, before I arrived, the guards had ordered all the inmates not to talk to me.
Three months later, he told me he would be released in six months and he would give me something important before he left. I was surprised—what was he talking about? He said quietly, “I have an e-book reader with copies of Falun Gong books.”
I was so excited. I was not allowed to have a pen or paper. It was extremely important and precious to be able to read Master’s teachings. A month later he said, “I will give you what I mentioned tonight.”
That night, he said, “The thing I promised to give you is in the locker in room XX, which is not locked. I found the e-book in a fancy bookcase.”
He had hidden the book under a cutting board in a storage room. A day after he hid it in the locker, many things were moved in the storage room.
“It was so lucky that I took it out the day before,” he said. I knew that it was arranged by Master. The newest article in the e-book was Master’s lecture given in 2006. It also had the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, The Stories of Buddha Milarepa’s Cultivation Experience, and so on. It was really priceless. Before I was released, I gave it to another practitioner.
A 50-year-old inmate had practiced martial arts since he was young and was very strong. I saw him hold a young inmate, who was a soldier, just like a lion holding a rabbit. The young guy screamed in pain. Later the young guy said that the inmate's hands were as strong as steel.
This inmate knew many practitioners and said he truly respected them. He and I became good friends. I was hospitalized after being tortured, and the guards often searched our lockers for forbidden stuff. I was worried about the e-book, so I asked this inmate to keep it for me temporarily. It was risky for him, but he didn’t hesitate. When he was released, he came to the hospital to tell me where the book was. He told me that he’d hid it in a corner of a guards’ office where nobody would search.
I had read a story on the internet a long time before about a guy being loyal to his friends. It was impressive, but there was no name or even time frame indicated in the story. When I was transferred to a new division in the prison, four inmates were assigned to watch me in turn.
One of them liked to talk with me. One day he told me his story, which was almost the same as the one I’d read on the internet but more detailed. I asked him if he had posted it online. He said his girlfriend did. The story showed that he had a good heart.
This man was young. He was sentenced after he and his gangster friends robbed an underground casino. They used the money to run their own casino. He also sold drugs. He believed in Buddhas and gods, which seemed contradictory to his sins.
This inmate wanted to know more about Falun Dafa. I let him borrow the e-book. Later I transcribed the poems in Hong Yin and Hong Yin II and gave the transcriptions to him. After he was released, he didn’t go home right away. Instead, he came to visit me and told me that he had memorized all the poems. He gave the transcripts to another inmate before he left prison.
After he was released, he led a difficult life doing hard labor for a living. His gangster friends asked him to join them again, but he refused.
An inmate was a notorious thief in his hometown. He started to steal when he was very little. He was in a gunfight with the police and ran away when he got shot. He wanted to become an educated thief, so he started to read books on Confucianism in prison.
After I arrived at the prison, he took every chance he could to talk with me. He was threatened by the police many times for this. When I was tortured, he tried his best to protect me. When I was near death from torture, he tried to get me good food. He told me that it was Falun Dafa’s teachings that changed him.
After both of us were released, he told me that he had been placed in a solitary cell. When he could not bear the suffering, he recited, “Falun Dafa is good.” Then he no longer was in pain. He was blessed for treating practitioners nicely—his sentence was reduced.
He thought of taking revenge on the people who’d hurt him and his family. I tried to talk him out of it. Sometimes I talked to him on the phone for more than an hour and finally convinced him not to.
If the CCP and its former head Jiang Zemin hadn’t launched the persecution of Falun Gong, how many people in China would be practicing it now? How many criminals would have become good people? How many people would have avoided being imprisoned? How much money would the Chinese government have saved on law enforcement?
The CCP used to spend a quarter of the country’s GDP on persecuting Falun Gong, which could have been spent on improving people’s lives. How many ordinary people would have benefited from that? Imagine a society in which everyone tries to be good—how peaceful and wonderful that would be!
Would this not improve China’s reputation in the world? With Falun Gong spreading, China would become a truly rich and strong nation, and Chinese people and their leaders would gain the respect of the governments and people of the world.