(Minghui.org) Mr. Zhou Qing was a physics teacher in Guiyang City, Guizhou Province. He was fired because he refused to renounce his faith in Falun Gong. Over the past 21 years that the Chinese regime has persecuted Falun Gong, the authorities have arrested, incarcerated, and tried to brainwash Mr. Zhou multiple times.
The “Zero-out” campaign started in 2020 is the Chinese Communist Party’s latest attempt to further crack down on Falun Gong nationwide. The campaign is a concerted effort to try to force every practitioner on the government's blacklists to renounce their faith. Mr. Zhou’s name is on the list due to his previous arrests.
When the campaign started, he left home and rented an apartment in the Baiyun District to avoid arrest. He made a living tutoring students after school. The authorities found him after he had to submit his personal information as part of the government's alleged pandemic control efforts. The authorities offered to compensate the landlord to get him to evict Mr. Zhou. The landlord turned down the offer, which only escalated the authorities’ attempt to destroy Mr. Zhou financially.
One morning the authorities broke into Mr. Zhou’s apartment with a warrant, demanding that he go to the police station. The warrant did not specify any alleged offense and he wasn’t given a copy of the warrant as required by the law. At the police station, the officers threatened to tail him all day and intimidate the students who went to his apartment after school if he refused to renounce Falun Gong. They also threatened to summon him to the police station every other day. He was released later that night.
Not wanting to implicate the institution he worked with and his innocent students, Mr. Zhou decided to move again. After he left, all his students discontinued their classes with the tutoring company.
Previous Persecution
The Supreme People's Court in China implemented a new “Registration System Reform” on May 1, 2015, which stipulated that all criminal complaints must be registered with the court once received. Subsequently, Falun Gong practitioners filed a wave of lawsuits against Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party who ordered the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. Mr. Zhou was one of them. This resulted in the police showing up to his class and arresting him like a criminal. They forced him to fill out forms and tried to draw his blood.
An officer asked one of Mr. Zhou's coworkers if he knew that Mr. Zhou practiced Falun Gong. The coworker admitted that he did. When asked why he still taught classes with a Falun Gong practitioner, he replied, “They are decent people and are easy to work with.” Not wanting to make a high-profile arbitrary arrest in public, the police left but threatened to come back.
Mr. Zhou later moved away and left the job after the government claimed it had “fixed” the after-school classes market. He joined a private school. One day he went to the local police station to register a residency permit for his child. The police refused to process his paperwork unless he signed a guarantee statement renouncing his faith. When he declined, the police threatened to ransack his home. In response, he called a relative in the U.S. and swore to hire an American attorney to sue the police if he were arbitrarily imprisoned.
Later, a chief of the local Bureau of Education called the principal of the private school where Mr. Zhou worked. The chief threatened to close the school down if Mr. Zhou wasn’t let go. “He has too much influence and must be gotten rid of,” an official once said of Mr. Zhou.
Mr. Zhou’s Positive Influence on Students
The following are two examples of how Mr. Zhou cared about his students and helped them unconditionally.
1. The high school senior who scored 3/100 on a physics test
At a meeting with parents, Mr. Zhou told them about a high school senior who scored three points out of a hundred on her first physics test.
“That told me three things. First, the student’s background in physics was weak. Secondly, the other students who sat near her during the test scored pretty well, meaning that this student did not cheat. Last but not least, if she'd just guessed at the answers, by chance alone she would have scored about 20 points. It means that she took the test seriously and actually worked on the questions. Unfortunately, those were tricky questions and she fell for them because of her inadequate knowledge of the subject.”
Mr. Zhou recalled that one day after his class, this student ran outside and screamed in the hallway, “I finally know how to solve a physics problem!”
“Think about it: After nearly six years in middle school and high school, she finally was able to solve a physics question shortly before the college entrance exam. She had worked hard and been stressed for nearly six years but she did not give up,” said Mr. Zhou.
In conclusion, Mr. Zhou said that this student had superb character despite all the challenges she faced. He said that she was most likely going to do well in whatever career she chooses.
A student of Mr. Zhou’s once said that most students won’t contradict a teacher if the teacher isn’t too far out of line. A student will accept a teacher’s behavior as long as it isn't outrageous. But earning a student's sincere respect is much more difficult. It's not something many teachers are capable of, but Mr. Zhou is one of them.
2. A lunchtime chat that changed a student’s perspective on life
During Mr. Zhou’s lunch break one day, a student came to speak with him. Knowing that Mr. Zhou would never punish or scold him, he talked about how he cheated in online classes during the pandemic. He also talked about his smoking, drinking, and having a girlfriend.
Mr. Zhou said, “A young man naturally feels good when girls admire him. But what kind of girl admires a boy who likes to smoke, drink, curse, and cheat in class? Once this boy decides to quit all these bad habits and live a better life, won't that kind of girl have a problem with that?”
The next day the student went to Mr. Zhou and told him that he had decided to listen to his advice and focus on his studies. A few months later, he was admitted to a famous university.
