Falun Dafa Practitioner’s Honesty: A Peanut and Five Kilos of Rice

(Minghui.org) I woke up to the noise of beating and screaming one night. It was in March 2002, in the cell at a forced labor camp where I was jailed for going to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa). Other inmates in the cell claimed that it must be someone caught stealing peanuts that we had shelled the previous night.

The forced labor camp is a peanut farm. Laborers often took peanuts to fill their empty stomachs because the work was intense, but the food was poor. The farm cadres would occasionally catch and beat someone who was taking peanuts.

The warden of the labor camp was short and thin, but he always beats people the hardest, so they fear him most.

A man in another cell talked to me on the way to the field the following morning. He said the warden had beaten up his friend last night but had praised me. “I refused to be “transformed”. What was he praising me for?” I was surprised, and so I asked.

He relayed the warden’s reprimand: You bastards always steal whole or pieces of peanuts from the seeding, harvesting, drying, and warehousing area. Look at that Falun Gong guy, I have kept an eye on him all the time. And other cadres also keep an eye on him. He never stole a single peanut in the two years since he was incarcerated here. Ever since the farm was established, numerous people passed by me. He is the only one who has not once stolen a peanut!

I responded that I was a Falun Dafa practitioner and our Master taught us to be truthful, compassionate, and forbearing – to be a better person. No matter what environment or place, big or small matter, we always require ourselves to follow this Falun Dafa teachings. He kept saying, “Good! it is good! You Falun Gong practitioners are amazing!”

After I was released, I leased a small store where I sold rice and grain. Neighbors like to buy from me as I established a good reputation.

An older lady purchased five kilos of rice one morning, but she returned angrily a short while later. “I thought you are an honest man but you have cheated me for years!” She said that I had shorted her 250 grams of rice after she re-weighed it at home.

I followed her to the apartment unit on the sixth floor and she showed me a scale and the bag of rice. It indeed read 4.75 Kilo on her scale. I said that her scale might be wrong. She wouldn’t agree with me so we returned to my store.

The rice weighed exactly five kilos on the scale in my store. I took out a 1,000-gram standard weight to calibrate the scale. It showed 1000 grams. The old lady appeared ashamed.

“Dear lady, I am a Falun Dafa practitioner,” I said. “I don’t short my customers. Look, you walked up and down 6 floors two times this morning. You must be tired. I can give you another 500 grams of rice for free and I will carry them to your apartment for you.”

Arriving at her apartment door, she thanked me and invited me to come inside. I put down the rice and said to her, “Your scale is not correct anymore. If you sell, you will lose. If you buy, you underpay. I know you don’t want to do so.” She thanked me again and said, “Falun Dafa is very good indeed!”