STAFF REPORTER

In the attic of a small dentist clinic on Taipei's Hoping E. Rd., around 20 college students were seated in a circle for their weekly study group meeting. With the kind of energy rarely seen in the country's mostly listless college classrooms, they recited loud and clear from their books. No one so much as murmured. In one easy breath, they finished reading the 32-page chapter. Several portraits of Li Hong-zhi, founder of the Falun Gong, looked on.

Many in the meeting are reading Li's Zhuan Falun, the treatise of the spiritual movement, for the dozenth time.

When the clock struck nine, the exchange between them of how each has practiced the book's teaching in the past week suddenly ceased. One by one, they began to assume a meditating position. It's time for "releasing goodwill. ... To help Falun Gong practitioners in the mainland and elsewhere pull through the trouble the Chinese government gave them in the recent satellite [pre-emption] incident," one student in the group announced.

As the brief melody sounded from the recorder in their middle, all participants closed their eyes and took deep breaths. Their tranquility was in sharp contrast to the noisy traffic and the blaring of political slogans from passing election campaign trucks.

Falun Gong practitioners from Shih Hsin University, above, meditiate on campus. Top of page, Falun Gong held spectacular events in China before the crackdown. PHOTO COURTESY OF CHIAN YUN-HSIANG

"This is to use our willpower to clear the universe's substance field of bad elements. We do this to tell the Chinese [Jiang] government to stop suppressing Falun Gong practitioners because suppressing a good thing is wrong," one student told me after the 10-minute meditation.

This group is made up of students from different universities. Many of them are members of Falun Gong clubs in their colleges. In addition to daily exercise, voicing support for fellow practitioners in China by "revealing the truth" about their practice is an essential part of the clubs' activities.

Since the first Falun Gong club set up in National Taiwan University in early 2000, a dozen such clubs have appeared in other colleges, including Chung Cheng University, Cheng Chi University, and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. Numbers of club members range from a couple to a couple dozen, not many as far as college clubs go. However, the number of clubs is growing fast, with more than half of the existing clubs set up just last semester.

This study group is one of many such gatherings in which human willpower, the unsolved mysteries of the world and the latest scientific discoveries are the popular subjects of discussion.

There is one passage in Zhuan Falun, that they like to cite: "The guiding ideology of today's human science is confined only to this physical world in its research and development. ... As for phenomena that are intangible and invisible in our dimension, people dare not approach them and dismiss them as unknown phenomena. ... If human beings are able to take a fresh look at themselves as well as the universe and change their rigid mentalities, humankind will make a leap forward."

"I think Falun Gong practitioners include all kinds of people. .... Some people hope to improve their health, primarily elderly people. Some people love its explanation of the universe and life. Many intellectuals and students come to Falun Gong for this reason," said Chang Chin-hua, dean of the NTU graduate school of journalism and instructor of the university's Falun Dafa club.

An open attitude toward the scientifically unexplained may be the biggest appeal of the spiritual movement to young intellects.

"Science sometimes contradicts itself and is therefore inadequate in explaining the world. What people used to consider supernatural might be scientific in the future. The passages in Zhuan Falun are in tune with the rising spiritual need of young students in recent years," said Chang Ching-hsih, director of the Taiwan Falun Dafa Institute and also instructor of the NTU Falun Dafa club.

"I've read many religious texts and philosophical writings before but none give meaning to the present or provide an answer to an inevitable death. The succinct words in the small Zhuan Falun are clear enough to eliminate all my doubts," said Wu Cheng-han, founder of a Falun Dafa chapter and a student at the Graduate Institute of Atmospheric Sciences.

Encouraged by his mother, a college professor who studied chigong to improve her health, Wu later found the doctrines of the movement more appealing than the exercises. The beginning in 1999 of large-scale [persecution of] Falun Gong in China prompted him to set up the club when he was a senior at the university.

Calling attention to the repression of Falun Gong in China is one of the main goals of the organization in Taiwan. It arises from the belief of practitioners in Taiwan of the nation's unique place in Falun Gong's development.

"Falun Gong, like all schools of chigong, is a Chinese thing. Practitioners in the US or other countries are quite scattered. It's left for us in Taiwan to make the most effort to bring the truth about Falun Gong into the open," Wu said.

Some clubs make efforts to "tell the truth" about Falun Gong through activities such as photo exhibitions.

The Shih Hsin University Falun Dafa club held a photo exhibition in March showing pictures of how the Chinese government encouraged Falun Gong in the early 1990s, how the practice attracted newcomers in the West and in Chinese communities around the world, as well as documentaries of the arrests and brutal treatment of practitioners in China.

One thing they want to make clear in these "truth-telling" activities is that Falun Gong is not a religion.

"The Taiwan Falun Dafa Institute doesn't have a deceased founder, like Sakyamuni. Assimilation and other rituals in religions are also absent from Falun Gong. The interior ministry therefore classifies it under "athletic and recreational civil groups" like other schools of chigong," Chang Ching-hsih said.

The lack of a list of members makes it difficult to ascertain the number of practitioners, giving the movement a kind of mysteriousness. But the absence of a central organization means they have to pursue their mission as individuals.

"Since there's no organization to raise funds, practitioners have to go it alone. For example, my mother has just had pamphlets printed for us to hand out," said Ho Bing-chen, founder of Chung Cheng University's Falun Dafa club and currently a research assistant at the university.

"Our aim is to clear the air and hopefully stop the suppression by the Chinese leaders, so we try to communicate with Chinese citizens. Students do this by making phone calls to mainland households or writing letters to individuals. Some may call public security offices to tell them to stop," Chang Ching-hsih said.

"The student club has done a lot of work using the Internet to communicate the truth about Falun Gong to the world," he added.

Speaking of the recent hacking incident, in which Beijing said that illegal satellite broadcasters in Taiwan [tapped into] regular Chinese television programs and beamed Falun Gong propaganda, student practitioners showed their indignation.

"In the muddle the incident created in the media, the focus has been that the [incident] was illegal. Few people want to see why someone would do it. When there are hundreds of people killed for no good reason and no channel to voice the injustice, who is the real victim?" Wu said.

"Not only did China fail to provide any evidence of the content of the interruption, but it's doubtful any practitioner can afford the around NT$5 million in equipment necessary to hijack China's signal code," Ho said. "Saying this is wrong because it violates international law is simplistic. Even if practitioners in Taiwan had done it, in these circumstances, where the law is being abused, it's an act of justice."

What Chang Chin-hua asked at the press conference called after the television [interruption] echoed these sentiments: "If you're watching TV at home and some arsonist sets fire to your next door neighbor's house, and they scream loud and cry for help, would you blame them for infringing on your right to watch TV?"

http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/10/13/print/0000175578

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