What I Witnessed in Hell—True Story of an Ex-Serviceman in 2011

(Minghui.org) My name is Cheng Defu, and I live in Baiyin Road of Dianjiang Town seat, Dianjiang County, Chongqing. I am 75 this year. I joined the military in October 1965 and was assigned to the 42nd Regiment of the 114th Division of the 38th Army, which was stationed in Northeast China at that time. 

The relationship between China and the former Soviet Union was very tense then and we were required to be in the state of combat readiness at all times. My platoon was assigned to guard the ammunition and grain depots 24 hours a day, even when the temperature dropped to -30℃. Due to long hours of standing guard and the icy cold sorghum rice as our daily food, I developed severe stomach problems as a result. 

The army was deployed near Beijing in 1967 to take on the responsibility of guarding the capital city. My regiment was ordered to participate in the dredging project of the Haihe River in Tianjin. It was winter, the temperature was lower than -20℃. Still, we had to work in the freezing cold weather, wearing only a vest and underwear. To fend off the coldness, we were asked to eat sorghum porridge mixed with a lot of chili before we started working. The extremely spicy and hot porridge seriously damaged my throat. Later, when my throat became suppurated and I was virtually dying, the company commander, instead of arranging for me to be treated in hospital, deliberately deducted my ration and gave me only a tiny bit of food each meal.

Fortunately, a senior veteran military doctor treated me during his inspection tour, otherwise I would definitely have died. The surgery on my throat caused me great difficulty in speaking. At the same time, because I always made utmost efforts in whatever I was assigned to do, the harsh working conditions and excessive physical demand took a major toll on my health. I was plagued with all kinds of illnesses, such as rheumatoid arthritis, sinusitis, bronchitis, frozen shoulder, stomach disease, neurosis, etc. My chest felt very heavy as if it were pressed by a stone slab. 

I went to work in a coal production company after finishing my military service. During a business trip, I was in a car accident, in which the driver died instantly, while I incurred serious injuries to my cervical and lumbar spine; my femur was also fractured, plus a bad concussion. All this came on top of my already battered health. The pain and suffering I experienced were beyond description. I went everywhere to search for good doctors and medications, and spent a lot of money. I also learned all kinds of qigong practices, hoping I could somehow be cured, but nothing seemed to work.

I was extremely fortunate when a friend introduced me to Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) in 1997. Only two days after I learned to do the exercises, all my illnesses miraculously disappeared! My body felt light and healthy. I was completely overwhelmed by what I was experiencing and felt extremely grateful to Master Li Hongzhi, founder of the practice.

However, two years later, Jiang Zemin, the then leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and his clique launched a brutal suppression of Falun Gong. The CCP secretary of the local Political and Legal Affairs Committee in our county was particularly mean to me because I once reported his corruption and abuse of power in the 80s when he was head of the local police department. 

He and his followers unlawfully arrested me and put me in a detention center. He also instructed the police guards and death-row inmates to torture me as harshly as they could. Later, I was transferred to Xishanping Labor Camp in Chongqing for further persecution. 

As soon as I was finally released and got back home, I was forcibly taken to a so-called “study class” (brainwashing center) for another round of detention.

Unable to bear the harassment and persecution, my wife and children left me one by one. After the divorce, I married another woman and we lived together for more than two years. During that period of time, I slacked off in my cultivation due to high pressure from the government and the continuing persecution. I also stopped regular practice of the exercises, except for doing them occasionally in the middle of the night. Consequently, I started showing symptoms of some of my old health problems again.

In July 2011, several policemen from the Domestic Security Division of Dianjiang Police Department came to my home to intimidate and harass me a number of times. They also forcibly took photos of me and my wife, and threatened that there would be a study class (for brainwashing) in the county in the next few days and I must be there.

My wife had never experienced anything like this before and she became very scared. In August that year, without consulting me, she wrote a divorce statement, submitted to the local court and left me without saying goodbye. I got so worried about her that for a few days I could not eat anything, except for drinking some cold water mixed with a bit of salt.

I went to look for her in her hometown, but could not find her anywhere. Feeling extremely disappointed, I got on a bus to return to Dianjiang. At around 6:00 p.m. when the bus had just passed a village called Xiakou, suddenly I felt someone patting on my chest three times, and then I felt that two people grabbed hold of my arms and pushed me to go forward, at a very fast speed, and I could hear the wind passing my ears. 

A little while later, I heard one of them shouting: “Here we are. Kneel down!” Then I heard the other one reporting: “My lord, the man you wanted has been brought here.” 

“Raise your head,” I heard a voice saying to me. I raised my head and saw a man sitting on a high platform, wearing light-colored robes, like an emperor. 

“Are you the god of the underworld?” I asked.

“Yes, I am,” he replied, “This is Hell. Those in the upper world do not believe there is a god of the underworld or Hell, so they dare to do all kinds of bad things. What do you think?”

“Now that I’ve come to Hell. How can I not believe you are the god of the underworld?” 

He then asked my name and age. I told him I was 66. “That’s not right,” he murmured to himself. “Where are you from?” he asked me again. “Dianjiang,” I replied.

“You’ve got the wrong man,” he said loudly to the two guards. “Go and get Chen Defu in his 40s in Zhanjiang, not Dianjiang. He has done a lot of wrongdoings and deserves to die.”

As it turned out that the two guards misheard the name of the place and took Zhanjiang as Dianjiang, and as my name sounded very similar to Chen Defu in Zhanjiang, they arrested me by mistake.

The god of the underworld flipped through a big registry book on the table (probably the registry of life and death).

“Here it is,” he said to me with a smile, “They got the wrong person. You are now my distinguished guest. Your name has long been removed from my registry list, so you don’t belong here.”

“Who takes care of me then?” I asked. “Someone high above,” he said.

Suddenly I remembered that I practiced Falun Dafa and our Master once said in Teachings at the Conference in Los Angeles,

“I told you early on that I removed the name of every single Dafa disciple from Hell’s list. Every ordinary person is listed in that registry. I have removed the names of Dafa disciples from Hell’s registry. I had their names removed from Hell. So your names are not there.”

“Now that you are here, you might as well take a look around before you go back,” the god of the underworld said to me, “There are three things you need to do: Firstly, when you go back, you must tell people in the upper world that the god of the underworld and Hell do exist to punish wicked and bad people. Good and evil will always be duly rewarded. Those who have done bad things will definitely receive retribution.

“Secondly, you have a mission to fulfill. You must do more good deeds and save more people when you go back; thirdly, tell people in the upper world what I said and what you see in Hell. If they have done wrong things, they need to amend themselves and must not continue doing evil, so that they might secure a good future for themselves. You must remember what I said.”

“I’ll remember and do what you said,” I promised.

“Then, let these two guards take you to see how wicked people are being punished in Hell after doing evil in the upper world. Since you don’t have time to see all the eighteen levels of Hell, just take a look at the lightest punishment,” said the god of the underworld. 

As instructed, the two guards took me to Naihe Bridge first. It was very narrow, under which was a bottomless abyss. I didn't dare to cross it and was trembling with fear. The two guards had to help me over the bridge in the end. 

“We are kind to you because you are our lord’s distinguished guest. As for those who are here to be punished for the evil they have done, we would just pull them over with an iron chain with no concern if they are scared or not,” the guards said to me.

After we crossed the Naihe Bridge, the guards told me to look at the blood sea. I was almost scared to death. The endless blood sea was filled with people. Most of them were dressed in official clothes or various uniforms for public prosecutors, judicial offices, etc. There were also people in various work uniforms and white gowns. They were soaked in blood, being bitten by crocodiles, snakes, lions and other carnivorous animals. Their hands and legs were being torn apart and eaten by the animals. They were screaming and crying, begging for mercy. The scene was truly tragic and terrifying. I stared at the endless miserable scene and was completely dumbfounded.

“Hurry up and look over here,” the guards said to me. I quickly pulled myself together and looked at where they directed me. It was an even more terrifying scene: I saw a huge square filled with all kinds of torture instruments and each one had someone being tortured on it. 

The first big torture instrument had a tall and fat man tied to it. He looked like a high-ranking official. A torturer was standing on either side of him, with a big meat cutting knife in one hand and a piece of flesh in the other. 

“Why is he tortured this way?” I asked the guards in a trembling voice.

“This guy was an official,” one guard said, “He took bribes and embezzled public funds. No one knows just how much public money he had taken for his own use. Now he is in Hell to pay back with his flesh, to be cut off piece by piece.”

“Can he pay it off this way?” I asked, feeling very scared for him. 

“Everything has to be paid off,” the guard told me, “If one is let off without having paid up all he/she owed, others would complain that the god of the underworld is being unfair by bending the law for favoritism, and he would be punished by heaven himself.”

The next tortured were four men wearing four kinds of law enforcement clothing and hats with the CCP’s national emblem. They were tied to a torture instrument side by side, with a steel rod piercing through the lower backs of the four men. A torturer was standing on either side of them who kept pushing and pulling the steel rod. The four men were screaming in pain and the floor was covered with blood. 

“What did they do to deserve such punishment?” I asked the guards.

“Law enforcement officers should punish the evil and praise the good. But they did just the opposite. They were paid with taxpayers' money, and yet they abused the law and worked for the corrupt officials and the powerful. They did not distinguish between good and evil and went out of their way to harm good people. They broke the law in the name of law enforcement and owed heaps of blood debts. Countless good people were victimized at their hands. This is how they are punished when they come to Hell. Each time the steel rod is pulled or pushed, a blood debt is paid off.”

Then, I saw a medium-built man tied to another torture instrument, with a torturer on either side, holding a small knife and a piece of flesh in hand. 

“He was a businessman,” the guards explained, “guilty of driving up the market price and cheating his customers. He had to pay back everything he owed others with his flesh, with no debt left out.”

On the next torture instrument, I saw a man and a woman tied to it, facing each other. The upper part of their face was cut off, with the flesh flopping backward to cover the lower part of the face. They looked terribly scary.

“These two committed adultery. They were shameless and had no morals,” the guards told me.

I was about to ask the guards what happened to the man tied upside-down on the next torture instrument, but they pulled me and told me to look ahead.

I looked up and was taken aback at what I saw – countless people lined up in many lines, and there was a desk in front of each line.

Those in the first line looked like officials. Each one of them appeared worried and anxious, with tears in their eyes; those in line 2 were wearing various law enforcement uniforms and hats with the CCP’s national emblem. They all looked very regretful; people in line 3 were wearing business suits with ties, looking like public servants; those in line 4 were medical workers in white gowns. There were many more lines of people, too many to count.

Just as I was about to ask the guards why these people were there, I heard the god of the underworld saying, “Time's up. Do you remember the three things I told you to do?”

I told him I remembered them very well. 

“Then, you must hurry up and go back now, otherwise you would be too late.”

The two guards held me up and threw me away. I was so scared they might throw me to the square for punishment that I yelled out loudly: “Ah!”

At the same time I heard someone saying, “He woke up! He's alive!”

“Where am I?” I opened my eyes and asked.

A doctor told me that I was in the Emergency Department of the county hospital. The few people around me all asked me why I was yelling out like that. I told them I had just been to Hell and how scary it was. They were all very keen to know what I had seen. So I told them everything I had experienced in Hell. 

Suddenly, I remembered I was on a bus and asked how I ended up in the hospital.

“I saw you sweating a lot and your face turned pale,” the bus ticket monitor told me, “you collapsed, so I told people to help you up to the seat and asked the passengers if we could take you to hospital first. They all agreed. The bus driver sped up and blasted the horn continuously to warn others along the way. After we got you to the hospital, we sent the rest of the passengers to where they wanted to go. We then took the bus back and came back by taxi to see how you were,” the bus ticket monitor explained to me.

“When we came, you were lying here with no sign of life; there was no oxygen provision or I.V. drip. The medical staff urged us to take you to the morgue a number of times, but we refused. We decided that if you still do not show any sign of life by 11:00 p.m. we would take you to the morgue,” the bus ticket monitor continued. 

I thanked everyone there for saving my life. As it was already 11:00 p.m., I offered to give 20 yuan each to the bus driver, the bus ticket monitor, the doctor, and the nurse so they could get something to eat, and said I would come back to settle the medical expenses the next day.

“There is no charge for the oxygen as it was not used. The bit of I.V. infusion cost only a few yuan, which I'm quite happy to pay,” the doctor said, “Don't bother to pay us 20 yuan each. I believe what the god of underworld said to you, and we would regard what we did for you as the first good thing we have done. Thank you for the offer anyway.” With these words, the doctor and the nurse went back to their duty office. 

When we walked out of the hospital, the bus driver said to me, “We've done a good thing tonight. Thank you, distinguished guest of the god of the underworld, for telling us what you saw in Hell. We will do more good deeds and won't do anything bad, so that we would not suffer in Hell. Thank you, take care, and good bye.”

Tears ran down my face as I watched the bus driver and the bus ticket monitor disappearing in the darkness of the night. I know that they would be good people now that they have learned the truth.