(Clearwisdom.net) After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999, the Party's propaganda deceived many Chinese people. To counteract this, overseas practitioners picked up their telephones to explain to the public what was really happening. This spawned many touching stories. Space is limited, but I would like to share some incidents I have directly witnessed or heard firsthand.
1. Gathering Around the Telephone
One practitioner's relative witnessed an incident at her workplace, where one morning, five or six workers at a seed company heard the telephone ring. One of them picked up the receiver, listened, and immediately called for the others, "Come and listen! It's from Falun Gong."
He pressed the hands-free button, and the workers crowded around the telephone, listening and talking, "Listen to how reasonable those Falun Gong people sound! The CCP is really going to fall." They immediately chose to quit the Chinese Communist Party as the caller suggested.
2. A Convenience Store Owner's Excitement
One time when I went shopping at my neighborhood grocery store, I started talking to the owner about Falun Gong issues. She quickly interrupted me and said, "I received a phone call from Falun Gong practitioners overseas, and they said the same things you're saying." I asked her how long the call lasted, and she said, "It woke me from a deep sleep, so I wasn't looking at the time. I threw on some clothes, shivering with cold, but I listened to all of it. Everything was explained brilliantly."
Her older brother was once the chief of the local police department. In 2004, he was instrumental in having me confined to a forced labor camp for three years. The deprivations I suffered there turned me into a bundle of skin and bones. I was barely 35 kilograms (77 lbs.) at the end of my term and I had suffered severe organ damage. I even developed kidney cancer and was unable to care for myself. After a year and a half in the forced labor camp, I was released on medical parole.
"After what my brother did to you, how could you not hate him?" the store owner asked me with an air of regret.
"My teacher taught me that Falun Gong practitioners have no enemies," I said. "Your brother is also a victim."
"Please, can you put my brother's name down on the list of people that have quit the CCP?" she said urgently.
I told her that it was up to her brother, because he had been the one who raised his fist and took a vow on the Party flag, promising to give his life to the CCP. If he was to quit the Party, it had to be based his own decision.
"I understand," she said. "When my brother returns," --he was, at the time, the chief of a police department in another city-- "I will speak to him face to face."
I told her that she must tell her brother to treat Dafa practitioners with kindness and respect them from now on to make up for what he had done. "I will," she said. "In fact, just a few days ago, my brother released the mother of his child's classmate from a detention center." (The mother was a Dafa practitioner).
3. Changes at a Forced Labor Camp
In 2006, I went to a labor camp to visit my sister, bringing her daughter along. My sister had been sentenced to a year and a half in the camp and had been there for two months already at the time of the visit, but had not yet been allowed visitors.
I found the chief officer and told him why I had come. He said, "The second-in-command here is in charge of Falun Gong prisoners. He knows you."
"I've never met him," I said. "Does he know me because I fasted to protest a survey denigrating Falun Dafa during my imprisonment? Has that incident made me famous?" The chief laughed.
Just then, the second-in-command entered the room, having received the chief's call. The moment he came in, he pointed to me and said with a laugh, "Look! Does she look like a sick person?" In desperate condition, I had been released from the labor camp only six months before to seek medical treatment. I was now healthy and energetic again.
"Yes, how can Falun Gong practitioners be sick?" I said. "They only get sick because you harass and torment them. If you release all the practitioners here and let them read the Fa and do the exercises, they'll return to health within a few days."
The second-in-command smiled. "Because we persecuted them? We're not the ones who arrested you. We're just keeping you here."
"'Keeping' them here?" I repeated incredulously. "Your way of 'keeping' them here has pushed healthy, good-natured people to the brink of death, and even killed them in some cases!"
The second-in-command changed the topic. "Who are you to talk? When you were released for medical treatment, the provincial government didn't approve, but we sent you home anyway."
"Then you've done a good deed and accumulated great virtue," I said. "If you had waited for the provincial approval, I would have been sent home as ashes. In that case, even if my own family did not blame you, the law of the universe would never have forgiven you: Good will always be rewarded with good, and evil will incur evil."
"Let's stop there," the second-in-command said. "You can visit your sister."
"How will I contact you in the future?" I asked.
"Call us," the chief said.
"I don't know your number."
"What do you mean you don't know?" the second-in-command said. "The phone has been ringing off the hook with you people calling. We even have to take calls from overseas."
I then realized that the relaxed and pleasant atmosphere had been created by the effort, ingenuity, and benevolence of our overseas practitioners.
"Overseas practitioners have explained what is really going on and are bringing you great fortune from the other side of the ocean," I said to the two officials as tears streamed down my face. "They desire nothing and ask for no reward, only wishing the best for you and your families, hoping that you'll pull through the upcoming disasters. As long as you believe that Falun Dafa is good, you'll have chosen a wonderful future. You must treasure this opportunity."
"We know," the chief said in this most serious voice. "Quick, go visit your sister. We'll be getting off work soon. I'm calling the visitor's room right now. Go there now."
I later heard that some real changes had occurred at the labor camp. The rules were less strict, incidents of police beating practitioners had declined, practitioners were given the opportunity to interact with each other, the buns in the canteen weren't as disgusting as before, and the prices at the prison store started mirroring the prices on the outside.
Due to the coordinated rescue efforts between practitioners inside and outside of China, my sister returned home after only eight and a half months. Once again, I wish to thank overseas practitioners for their help.
August 23, 2009.
