(Minghui.org) Eleven fellow Falun Gong practitioners and I were detained after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting the practice in July 1999.

The director of the police substation had a peephole installed in our cell door, enabling the guards to secretly monitor us, in case we started fighting with each other.

We later wrote to the director and told him that Falun Gong teaches us to be good people, and that the peephole was totally unnecessary.

We urged him to stop following the CCP's persecution policy and instead, treat practitioners kindly. It didn't take long before the director and guards knew that practitioners were good people.

Some family members of the practitioners dropped off meals to the detention center, while others did not. However, we always shared the food equally among us, without resentment. We all got along well and were happy.

One winter day in 1999, ten of us were detained again in a local detention center. When we asked a guard why we were detained, he said, “We're afraid that you'll go to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, during the upcoming Party convention.”

One evening, a guard shouted at a young man, “You need to learn how to be a good person!” as he pushed him into our detention cell. “You should follow these Falun Gong practitioners' example!”

The young man later told us that he and a friend were arrested, tied to a utility pole, and left there in the freezing cold, for stealing a cow.

When we told the young man that he could sit beside us to keep warm, he was visibly touched.

We explained, “Falun Gong teaches people how to be good. A person has to work to make a living. He cannot take things from others for his own personal gain.” He was moved and said he would conduct himself better in the future by learning Falun Gong.

Although his friend was being detained in another room, he too, came to know of the goodness of Falun Gong. They were both released the following day, after paying a 5,000 yuan ($709 USD) fine, each.

One day, four people were arrested for gambling and taken to our cell. We took care of them, gave them some of our snacks, and clarified the truth to them. They said they were very fortunate to meet good people like us.

The next day—after they were released—they returned to the detention center to drop off a batch of dumplings that they had made for us!