A Teacher in the Countryside: Feeling Grateful for Falun Dafa

(Minghui.org) I’m a junior high school math teacher from the countryside. In the spring of 1994, my principal invited two colleagues, who were both Falun Dafa practitioners, to introduce the practice to us. They said, “For one to practice Falun Dafa, one has to hold oneself to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, elevate one’s moral values, and do the five exercises to heal one’s illnesses and keep fit.”

I thought that was truly wonderful. I also later learned that Dafa practitioners didn’t say bad words and treated others kindly, so I didn’t have to be defensive when working with them.

Growing up as a young girl in what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) classified as a “rich farmer” family, we became a target of the CCP. I endured all kinds of humiliations. Now that I had such a group of good people around me practicing Falun Dafa, I felt that this was the pure land I’d longed for. I began practicing with my colleagues in the fall of 1994 and came to understand that. as a practitioner, one has to be a good person wherever one is. One also has to do one’s work diligently and be disinterested in fame and self-interest.

Former CCP leader Jiang Zemin started the persecution of Falun Dafa on July 20, 1999. Protected by Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, my family and I have come this far despite tremendous pressure for upholding the truth.

Master Li said,

“When one person obtains the Fa, the whole family benefits.” (“Teaching the Fa and Answering Questions in Jinan,” Explaining the Teachings of Zhuan Falun)

My family, colleagues, and students have all benefited from Dafa and had good fortune.

One and a Half Qualified Teachers

I always wanted my students to get good grades, so I put in a great deal of effort at work. After every big exam, I was always terribly ill. After I began to practice Falun Dafa, I stopped worrying about my students’ academic scores and became very calm. I was no longer ill after the exams were over, and I’ve had no need to take any medication since I started cultivating. My younger colleagues all envied my good health.

Dafa gave me wisdom; I could think very quickly on my feet, and my teaching skills improved greatly. No matter what issue I ran into in my teaching, I could always find a perfect way to resolve it. The teaching aids and coursework that I produced made things clear for the students and they overcame difficulties. I highlighted key points, explained profound things in simple terms, guided my students to find the answers, and greatly improved my lessons. My students’ grades were far higher than those of other teachers. I was later assigned to teach only the math competition class due to my outstanding performance.

The president of the township education bureau came to inspect our school. After he finished inspecting other classes, he and the deputy principal in charge of teaching weren’t satisfied with any of them. They then came to my class and found it enjoyable. At the teachers’ conference afterward, the president said, “There are only one and half qualified teachers in this school.” He was referring to me and a male colleague he counted as “half.”

Highest Marks in the Math Olympics

At the end of the 90s, the municipal educational bureau in my city put emphasis on the Math Olympics for elementary school students nationwide. It regarded the ranking in that competition a key element in evaluating school performance. Therefore, my township also began to pay attention to it. In the fall of 1998, there was a Grade Six Olympics competition class set up in my junior high school. I was appointed to teach and tutor that class.

I faced three challenges: The class was set up quite late, I lacked experience, and the school was short of tutoring materials. Yet, as a practitioner, I couldn’t avoid difficult tasks and followed the arrangement.

I took care of teaching all the sessions from morning till night. From selecting training materials, making handouts and test papers, to teaching, marking exam papers, tutoring, and managing students. I took care of everything! I adhered to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and guided the students to pursue kindness. During our break time, I showed them pictures of Dafa spreading all over the world.

Master said,

“You should now be able to understand an old Buddhist saying that goes, “Bathed in divine light, conduct and thought become right.”” (The Third Talk, Zhuan Falun)

The students’ kind nature was awakened, and they not only did well at school, but also possessed good character. They helped each other and didn’t look down on or compete with each other. When they failed to get good scores, they took the initiative to look for their shortcomings. One time, a boy confessed to me that when he went home after school, he did something wrong and broke a small stick in his neighbor’s vegetable garden that was used to hold up plants.

Thirty students participated in the 1999 National Primary School Students Math Olympics. Out of my class, two earned full marks and received the National Special Award for the Math Olympics, 10 won first prize, 10 won second prize, and five won third prize. The three that didn’t place had been other teachers’ students before coming into my class late.

Their outstanding performance was a first in our township, and it exceeded that of the students from the city. Even within the province, the outcome was quite exceptional. This attracted many students from the city to come to our school to study. As a result, we had a full class.

It was only because of Falun Dafa, which gave me the strength and wisdom to teach eight classes on a daily basis and offer free tutoring. In addition, I made use of my free time to cook lunch for the children who participated in two summer camps for over three weeks. Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance were planted in those children’s hearts, and they began to hold themselves to these values at all times.

Taking Self-Interest Lightly

Schoolteachers’ salaries were quite low in 1999, and they couldn’t even pay us on time. My husband and I taught in the same school. We were only paid part of our salary. In 2000, a dorm assigned to us was to be demolished to pave the way for an auditorium. My husband had to borrow money from his relatives and friends to build a house. After it was built, he set aside just 300 yuan as our monthly living allowance and used the rest to pay off the debt.

Even though things were tight, I still stuck to Master’s teachings and never charged my students a single penny. Parents often treated their child’s teachers to dinner every month, but I didn’t go. Some of my students parents brought gifts to me, but I politely declined them. If they insisted on giving something to me, I’d buy books or stationary of similar value to give to their children to use.

I was quite a celebrity in our area for taking charge of the Math Olympics class, and parents were always asking me to give their children private tutoring. I declined them all and only tried to help their children in class. When students in my class wanted to buy tutoring materials, I had the bookstore manager give them the discounted price; I never took a penny for myself.

Switching to a Private School

After the persecution began, people from the police station and community management never stopped harassing me. I was once pulled out of class to attend a meeting. The secretary of the community management committee swore and defamed Master Li and Dafa non-stop. Afterwards, he tried to force me to write a guarantee statement to give up the practice.

Once, after lunch, someone came to get me to attend another meeting. The director of the police station, two police officers, the management team of the school, and two other Dafa practitioners were there. While cursing, the police director said that they had arrested an assistant of the Falun Dafa Assistance Center and were about to execute him.

He gave the three of us three orders: First, we were to hand in 3,000 yuan as a security deposit. Second, we had to write a 3,000-word “self-criticizing statement” and read it to the teachers at a school meeting. If they didn’t feel the statement was adequate, we’d have to redo it. Third, we had to sign in at the police station every day. The statements had to be completed within three days. I immediately wrote a note, saying, “I’ll take a leave of absence for three days” and left it in the principal’s office before I left.

After I returned home, people from my school and people in charge of the police station came. I thought they might be afraid that I’d go to Beijing to appeal to the government. When they asked me why I was taking a leave, I replied, “There is nothing wrong with my practicing Falun Dafa and adhering to Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to be a good person! I can’t do any of those things you want me to!”

They then asked me to come back to work and never mentioned those things again. But the harassment never stopped. At one point, I was extremely depressed. After thinking it over, I still believed cultivation was right and I’d never give up on that. The next term, I applied for a job in a private school in the township and was accepted. My husband joined me a year later.

At the private school, I began to teach a class of students with low scores. I used my methods to teach them in a traditional way. In the first exam, their scores were much higher than the other classes, and some teachers suspected that the test answers were leaked. In later exams, my students did very well every time. This included a mentally challenged student. I followed this class from 6^th grade to junior high school and was hired as a preparation team leader.

The school organized each teacher to conduct an open class every term. My class was usually treated as an example prior to the open class. The school held a young teacher class competition. The young teacher in my preparation team didn’t do well in her trial run. The director of my grade was worried, so he asked me to tutor her.

This teacher and I got together to discuss how to design the course plan and remake the coursework according to my plan. My husband represented the 8^th grade math team. In the final competition, the young teacher on my team won the championship, and my husband got 2^nd place. The director was very happy with the result. The teacher who won 1^st place said to me in front of all our colleagues, “I admire your design concept, but more importantly I admire your character! Although I was competing with your husband, you helped me just the same. For that, you are truly awesome!”

“What’s mine will be mine; what’s not mine won’t be”

I worked diligently, so the management in my school always had me take on important roles. The awards I received were all school models, but when it came to a pay raise or promotion, nothing came my way. It stipulated in the Department of Education file that neither employees nor students were allowed to practice Falun Dafa. Practitioners were also not allowed to be granted senior titles or be promoted.

A few years ago, before I retired, the department of education was reorganized. I didn’t want to be harassed by the Party, so I chose to work in a small, obscure school. Unexpectedly, I was promoted and given a senior title. My husband laughed and said, “The CCP doesn’t want you to get a senior title, but Master gave it to you!”

To be given a senior title, you had to pass an exam to get computer certification. At my age, I didn’t know much about computers. Only after practicing for a month did I take the exam. However, my computer screen turned black during the first section, and I couldn’t finish the exam. Thus, I failed. But I successfully passed the other two sections.

I thought I’d have to wait for the next year to rewrite it, but I got a notice saying that hardly any teachers passed all three exams, so the Department of Education had to make an exception to arrange for another exam. I passed it a month later.

The quota for my school, however, was only one senior title. A deputy principal at our school was also looking to be promoted. When I filled out the form, the principal said to me, “You have received many awards, the same as the deputy principal. So take it easy.” I was very calm. As a practitioner, I understood that everything happens for a reason. What’s mine will be mine; what’s not mine won’t be, and I shouldn’t pursue it. In the end, I was the one who was given the senior title.

My coworkers told me, “Many passed the exam and earned the computer certification a long time ago but are still waiting to be promoted. Many of them didn’t get anything by the time they retired. You passed the computer exam and got the title in the same year. You are probably the only one in our city!”

My husband exclaimed that gods must have helped me. I said, “Master Li helped me!”

An Auspicious Score of 513

Before my son had to take his high school exam, both my husband and I worked at the private school, and our son still boarded at the middle school where I used to work. His teacher thought it wasn’t likely he would be admitted to the No.1 middle school due to his grades. At that time, both our salaries were very low, and we weren’t being paid on time. If we had to pay extra for him to be admitted, at a minimum, it would have cost us 5,000 yuan, plus another 200 yuan to make up for his grades.

He scored 513. Although it seemed lower than what the teacher thought he needed to get into the No.1 middle school, I told my son, “May 13 is World Falun Dafa Day, and you just got that score. I can assure you that the No.1 middle school won’t charge us anything extra for you to get admitted.”

My son believes Dafa is good, and he’s helped me distribute informational materials to counter the persecution. He also refused to answer the questions defaming Dafa on the politics exam, so I was confident that he’d be blessed by Dafa. After the cut-off score was announced, sure enough, it turned out that his score was nine points above that, and he was admitted.

At first, his grades were about average among his over 70 classmates. He then started slacking off on his studies, so he fell behind. In the final term of his last year, he got a lot more motivated, and his scores got better and better.

Before the college entrance exam, he took the initiative to talk to his teacher about renouncing his memberships in the CCP’s Youth League and Young Pioneers. He also got his file associated with his membership in the Youth League from his teacher and destroyed it. When writing the exam, he had an amulet with the words “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good” on it. In the end, his score got him admitted to a desired university. His physics teacher said to us, “Of all the students in this class, your son did the best! He outperformed himself!”

After my son graduated, he worked for a large foreign company. He made a decent salary and had good prospects. He also often went overseas to work and attend training. Recently, he and a coworker with excellent skills in technology resigned and set up a company together. Their business has boomed, and my relatives exclaimed, “From school to work, he’s had good luck all the way!”

My Husband’s Miraculous Recovery

After the persecution began, my husband was under a great deal of pressure. However, after I began practicing Dafa, he saw that I was in good health and my temper changed for the better, I could tolerate other people’s shortcomings, treated his family kindly, and showed the wisdom granted by Dafa in my work. Gradually, he began to acknowledge Dafa and protected me, so as to lesson the persecution I faced. As a result, he was blessed.

He was riding a bicycle drunk and ended up falling into a ditch. He was taken to the hospital for an x-ray, which revealed he had broken a few ribs and there was massive bleeding in one of his lungs. They cut off his clothes, made holes in the sides of his torso, connected him to tubes, and pumped out a lot of blood.

A few of his colleagues went to the site of the accident to take a look. They saw several large rocks at the bottom of the ditch and said that he must have been protected, otherwise he would have died. He recovered very well. Through this tribulation, he gradually changed his notion of being an atheist.

When the school reorganized, he was transferred to a new post. The work wasn’t demanding, and it was something that he enjoyed doing. He even put a Dafa amulet in his office.

My gratitude for Master protecting me and my family is tremendous! I also would like good people learn the truth about Dafa so they can have a good future!