(Minghui.org) A friend of mine was censored by a Chinese social media platform because he often posted messages that touched the nerve of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The local police had their eye on him and deemed him a democratic activist.

Not being able to follow him on social media, I asked him to come out for a chat. When we talked about the movement to quit the CCP, he told me a story that made me emotional.

The following is my friend’s story written in the first person. It is about someone in China waking up to the CCP’s propaganda and lies. It told me that kindness, courage, and justice are on the rise in China.

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I teach in a middle school in a small town in China. The school began to promote computer classes in the late 1990s. Most of the other teachers weren’t interested but I am curious and like to learn new things, so I was asked to teach the class.

I learned how to browse the Internet. Back then, the CCP had yet to control it. I swam in an ocean of information and subscribed to all kinds of overseas news websites. I also made friends with people from over 100 countries. The news and information I had access to would have never made it into China, and the conversations I had with my foreign friends broadened my horizons. I saw Chinese society and lifestyle with different eyes. The seeds of freedom and democracy germinated in my mind.

After the CCP began to censor the Internet and most Chinese only had access to local area networks, I still had access to the outside world because of the computer skills I’d developed over the years.

Many of my Internet friends were in Taiwan. I invited one of them to visit me if he came to China. He eventually did, and I could not have been happier. I showed him many places and we took a lot of photos. After he returned to Taiwan, he posted the photos online, but it did not occur to either of us that there would be consequences.

One day the office at school called me, saying that an officer from the provincial police department was looking for me. I went to the principal’s office, where the officer asked me a lot of questions, including about my dealings with a friend in Taiwan. I was a little concerned but did not hold back on my answers, as I believed that I had done nothing wrong. The officer warned me not to get involved with people from outside of China; they might defame us since our social systems and ideologies were different.

After the officer left, I thought I had settled this issue. Little did I know that they had put me on a special watch list. I found out about it the hard way two years later.

A coworker of mine, Lin, lost her purse with her ID, bank card, cash, and other important items in a bookstore. She was very upset, believing that there was zero chance she’d ever get it back. In her moment of despair, a stranger called, asking if she had lost a purse. The person said that she had gone to the bookstore the same day and found it on the floor. She found Lin’s phone number in the purse.

They met in front of the bookstore. The person made sure that Lin was the owner of the purse before returning it to her. Lin took out some cash to give to the person to thank her, but she wouldn’t take it. “If I’d wanted your money, I would not have given the purse back to you,” she said.

The person walked Lin to a corner where there was less foot traffic and told her that she practiced Falun Gong. It was the time when Falun Gong was being severely persecuted. The police actively sought out and arrested its practitioners, and people who did not know the true situation would report them to the authorities. The practitioner said that she had no interest in her money because she believed in the teachings of Falun Gong and the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.

“The propaganda put out by the CCP to slander Falun Gong wants to convince people that higher beings do not exist. If more people believed that there were higher beings in the universe and wanted to be virtuous, then the CCP’s atheism-based ideology and social system would collapse. That is why the CCP came up with such vicious and cunning measures to slander Falun Gong in the media around the clock—to turn the public against the practitioners,” she said. After she finished talking, she hastily said goodbye to Lin and disappeared into the crowd.

Lin told me and several coworkers in the office her story. It saddened everyone that the state television and newspapers were all in it together, spreading lies about a group of good people. How could an ordinary person see through all the lies?

At the time I did not fully understand what Falun Gong was and why the CCP attacked it without holding back. I posted an article about Lin’s story from a third-person’s perspective on an overseas social platform. In just a few days, the local police found me at work and asked what motivated me to write such an article. I told him I only stated the facts. The officer said that it was more serious than I thought because, as a teacher, I should not glorify a group that was against the Party. After that, the authorities deemed me a dangerous member of society and put me on a blacklist.

The more the authorities tried to cover something up, the more I wanted to find out about it. I made a special effort to get on Minghui.org, a key Falun Gong website the CCP targeted, and learned more about the practice. After reading the articles, I realized that the practitioners were kind, peaceful, and morally sound. I also understood why the CCP initiated the persecution. When I read about the purpose of quitting the CCP and its affiliated organizations, I quit the Young Pioneers and the Youth League.

Over the years I remained in contact with the world outside of China and continued to spread the censored information within my abilities. I cannot remember how many times the Internet police have warned me or blocked my accounts. The CCP has fallen into a doomsday madness because the number of people who are seeing through its lies is increasing by the minute.

Because of what I did, many of my friends and coworkers deserted me. Luckily, I made a dozen friends whom I confided in. They quit the CCP and its affiliates after I told them why it was so important. Some of them used to believe everything the CCP said and had a rude awakening.

No matter what happens to me, when I see a burning building, I will do what I can to alert the people inside. It is up to them whether they want to believe me and save themselves.