Staff Writer

Jan. 21, 2004

Her father's slap across her face broke Anne Yang's heart.

But it was only one moment compared to the months that shattered her world, when the Derwood couple went from being among China's elite to being labeled as traitors.

This week, as Chinese New Year celebrations abound with parades and firecrackers, they lament that they may never see their native country again.

Chunfang "Anne" Yang, 26, and her husband, Li Ding, 27, who were granted political asylum in the United States in December, said their troubles started by chance.

As Yang was about to leave China to start studies in the United States in 1997, a friend gave her a small book on Falun Gong.

In the United States, the meditative practice is considered in about the same light as such disciplines as yoga or tai chi.

In China, however, where the ancient practice originated, the communist leadership has jailed hundreds of its followers and condemned some to death.

[...]

The U.S. State Department in 2001 formally expressed concern over China's human rights violations of Falun Gong followers and called for inspections by the International Red Cross.

As recently as last year, the State Department cited ill treatment of followers in an annual International Religious Freedom Report to Congress. Locally, U.S. Rep. Albert R. Wynn (D-Dist. 4) is cosponsoring a resolution criticizing China's oppression of followers, both in China and in the United States.

Meanwhile, the young couple focused on their studies, she as a doctoral student in statistics at Temple University in Philadelphia, and he as a doctoral student in economics at the University of Maryland, where he is completing his thesis.

They were married on Oct. 1, 1999.

They had not considered themselves political, they said, nor had their families.

Seated in their sunny but sparsely furnished apartment in Derwood, they rocked back in surprise at a question about it.

People just try to make a living, they said.

Ding's father is a mid-level official in a workers union in Zhoushan, an island off the Yangtze River delta. His mother works in a distribution center for commodities such as grain, rice and oil.

Yang's father is a professional engineer and architect in Jinan near the east China coast. Her mother is an accountant.

Yang and Ding were fortunate to be selected to attend one of the country's most respected colleges, Fudan University in Shanghai.

"It was very competitive," she said.

Yang added that it was an easy choice to later apply for an American scholarship to study in the United States. Both students were fluent in English, as they had studied it since they were in grade school.

"We were eager to learn about the outside world," she said.

When she left China, a friend urged her to take her little book to "save herself a trip to the doctor." So she tucked it into her suitcase.

As Yang read more, she found that the ancient religious practice struck a chord with her. Ding's studies had left him only five hours of sleep a night and exhausted. The meditation helped their bodies and spirits, they said.

A cruel awakening

One summer night in July 1999, while Yang was working in a computer lab, she was alarmed by international news reports about the Chinese government's sudden crackdown on Falun Gong followers.

"That is where I first learned that a government can lie to its people," she said.

She found herself crying onto the keyboard.

Until then she had resisted her American colleagues' versions of events in China, especially the massacre on Tiananmen Square in 1989, when the Chinese military crushed pro-democracy student demonstrations.

"Your government is anti-China and lying," she had told them.

Growing up, she had been taught that rebel students had attacked loyal government soldiers.

[...]

She wrestled with the slow realization that her homeland had betrayed everything that she had come to believe.

She and Ding debated whether to make a honeymoon trip back to China to see their families.

Friends and advisors warned them that it was too risky.

Nonetheless, the couple decided to make the trip, and they attempted to view a trial of a Falun Gong follower that was occurring, by chance, at the same time in Beijing.

"If nobody dares to step forward and say the truth, there is no hope for the country," Yang said, explaining why they went to the capital city.

As their taxi approached the courthouse, a policeman stopped Yang and Ding.

"Do you practice Falun Gong?" he asked.

Yang said "yes," and they were immediately arrested.

"That's the way we spent our honeymoon," she said.

The newlyweds were separated and taken to their hometowns. They were interrogated and put on a "re-education program."

After an eight-hour train ride from Beijing and an interrogation until 3 a.m., Yang was put under house arrest at her parents' home.

The cruelest moment, she said, was when her father believed she had indeed fallen into a cult. He struck her as she tried to explain that it was not so.

Ding was held with six other detainees, including women and old men, for two nights in one hotel room. Then two police officers escorted him on a 17-hour train ride to his hometown, where more officials interrogated him for four hours.

"They wanted me to promise not to go back to Beijing and not to talk about Falun Gong," he said.

The students were eventually allowed to return to the United States.

"But suddenly we were enemy -- in our own family, among our own friends," Yang said as her eyes welled up with tears. "It pains my heart most."

"I never imagined that could happen," she said.

Changing views

Since all of this has happened, the couple's views of American values have changed. They said they used to think that the U.S. mantra about human rights was a cloak for civil disobedience.

That has changed. Freedom of religion is the founding principal, Yang said.

"It's something you can touch. You can feel it," she said.

Ding hopes the couple can work to someday bridge the differences between the United States and his homeland.

From under a map of the United States taped on the wall, Ding continues his readings on the Internet.

"I thought I knew what I needed to know," the doctoral candidate said. "I found I didn't know a lot of things."

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