Two Decades of Persecution, One Shattered Family (Part 1)

(Minghui.org) In her 58 years of life, Ms. Jiang Tao has experienced quite a lot. Arbitrary detention, forced labor, imprisonment, torture, her husband’s suicide, a mentally ill grown son, and financial difficulties—all of her ordeal was directly or indirectly inflicted by the Communist regime because of her unwavering faith in Falun Dafa.

Ms. Jiang Tao

Falun Dafa, also called Falun Gong, is a spiritual practice based on the universal principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. It was first introduced to the public in China by Mr. Li Hongzhi in 1992. In several short years, it had gained such popularity that Jiang Zemin, the then leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) felt threatened. He banned the practice and launched a nationwide persecution against its practitioners in July 1999.

This two-decade-long persecution has seen hundreds of thousands of practitioners arbitrarily arrested, detained, sentenced, tortured, and killed. Some were even murdered for their organs to supply a state-sanctioned organ transplant operation. While the practitioners pay a hefty price to uphold their faith, their families also suffer and sacrifice.

Ms. Jiang from Pingdu City, Shandong Province, is no exception. Having been targeted for her belief since the onset of the persecution, Ms. Jiang has gone through the unimaginable—multiple arrests, detention, forced labor, torture, and imprisonment. Her husband and son were marginalized, discriminated against, and harassed for being related to a Falun Gong practitioner, which is common practice in today’s China due to the CCP’s hatred inciting propaganda campaign. Two decades of it has taken a heavy toll on her husband and son’s mental health.

Ms. Jiang’s son Mr. Zhao Xiaodong has suffered from mental illness since his early twenties. He dropped out of college and has been in and out of mental hospitals, but his mental state still wasn’t stable enough to hold down a job.

With tremendous pressure and the weight of taking care of their mentally unstable son while Ms. Jiang was imprisoned from 2017 to 2020, her husband chose to take his own life during Chinese New Year in January 2020, about two months before Ms. Jiang was released.

Ms. Jiang was devastated to hear about her husband’s death when she came back home.

Now Ms. Jiang is working hard to care for her son while struggling with tremendous financial distress as the family’s savings have been taken away by her parents-in-law.

Ms. Jiang and the Family Benefiting from Dafa

Before taking up Falun Dafa, Ms. Jiang suffered from many illnesses including arthritis, frozen shoulder, neck pain due to worn spine discs, migraines, and heart problems. She had visited many hospitals and tried a variety of treatments such as electrocautery, acupuncture, both Chinese and Western medicine, but nothing worked. Despite spending a fortune, Ms. Jiang still suffered a ton. By chance, she was introduced to Dafa and started practicing. Within six weeks, all of her symptoms had disappeared.

Ms. Jiang had a happy and harmonious family. Her husband was an optimistic and hard-working man and their son a sweet and kind boy. Ms. Jiang worked at the New Age Mall first as a salesperson, and then was promoted to accountant.

In a personal statement, Ms. Jiang’s husband described his wife’s dramatic change after taking up Falun Dafa. “After starting practicing Falun Gong, my wife quickly recovered from all her illnesses and even her temperament improved. She became more considerate of others. She used to get into many arguments with others and caused a lot of trouble for the management at work. After cultivating in Dafa, she no longer focused on others’ shortcomings and instead always looked for her own mistakes. Everybody witnessed the dramatic change in my wife. She gained praise and recognition from her supervisors and co-workers alike.”

As a true cultivator of Dafa, Ms. Jiang tried to apply Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance in her daily life and constantly improve her moral character. The bathroom drain at work was backed up one day and water flooded the bathroom and the hallway. People put down bricks to make a path to walk on so that they could still use the bathroom, but nobody bothered to fix the problem.

Ms. Jiang remembered Master Li Hongzhi’s teachings that practitioners should always be considerate of others in whatever they do. She found the blocked drain under eight inches of dirty water by touch and removed the trash that caused the blockage. The dirty water was quickly drained and she sighed in relief. When she turned around, she saw a few managers and employees watching her in disbelief.

Ms. Jiang used to live in an apartment unit provided by work. There was a well at the bottom of her building. The mall management needed to bring the well water to the commercial mall that was in front of the apartment buildings. However, neither the office director, the head of security, nor the head of the warehouse who lived in her building wanted the pipe to go through their basement. When the management asked Ms. Jiang, she thought, “I am a Falun Dafa practitioner that cultivates in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.” She agreed to have the pipeline laid in her basement.

Dafa changed Ms. Jiang from the selfish person she used to be to a considerate and kind person. Her family life was more harmonious and her husband and son were convinced that Falun Dafa is a wonderful practice. In firmly believing so, they too benefited from Dafa.

When Ms. Jiang’s son, Zhao Xiaodong, was eight or nine years old, he had a persistent high fever above 104 degrees. Ms. Jiang’s husband first gave him fever reducers and kept a wet towel on his forehead, but it didn’t bring the temperature down. He then thought of Dafa and told his son to meditate with Ms. Jiang. The boy ended up meditating for an hour and 45 minutes with his legs double-crossed.

The next morning, his fever was gone and his temperature back to normal. He came home after school and told Ms. Jiang, “Mom, what happened to me? My body feels so light. I was almost floating when I came up the stairs. I feel like I could leave the ground anytime.”

Ms. Jiang’s husband was by nature an outgoing, upbeat, and hardworking man. He was a skillful electrician at a state-owned enterprise and was able to diagnose problems and fix machinery and equipment big and small. He also invented an automatic water pumping system that was awarded a patent. In his free time, he repaired home appliances.

Zhao Xiaodong was a smart and active boy. He was kind, considerate, and always happy to lend a helping hand. He performed well academically and was popular among his classmates. His friends told him, “We all like hanging out at your house. You’re always so happy and your mom gives you the freedom to do whatever you want.”

Mr. Zhao’s elementary teacher once shared a story with Ms. Jiang. “I offered Xiaodong a ride on the back of my bicycle on way to school this morning. When we started climbing the big hill, he jumped off and helped me by pushing the bike. Even my own child had never helped me going up the hill.”

When Mr. Zhao was in middle school, there was a new kid in class who had just transferred from a neighboring province. This boy’s parents divorced and he boarded in the school dorm. Worried that he’d be lonely and sad, Mr. Zhao invited him to live with his family and so did the boy for an entire semester. Ms. Jiang provided him room and board and transportation and bought him new clothes. The boy’s mother was so grateful.

Mr. Zhao was a very independent child. Even before entering school, he took the bus by himself to visit grandpa and grandma in the countryside. He also rode a long-distance bus route to visit his uncle who lived 60 miles away.

While going to college in Korea, Mr. Zhao worked in his free time to cover as much of his tuition and expenses as he could, knowing that his parents were not doing well financially. He worked hard and lived frugally to save up enough money to buy a 5,000 yuan worth gift for his father. His father was very pleased.

(To be continued.)

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