(Minghui.org) I started practicing Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) in 1997 and have experienced a great deal over the past more than 20 years. I want to recall some of those experiences to show just how great Falun Dafa is.
Several Falun Gong practitioners are employed where I work. The Political and Legal Affairs Committee, 610 Office, domestic security division, and the police station often applied pressure on the leaders of our unit. They tried to talk us out of practicing Falun Gong, have us turn in our Dafa books, and to pledge not to practice anymore. They also threatened us with the loss of our jobs and harassed our family members. They sometimes arrested us, withheld our wages, and put us in brainwashing classes or detention centers.
The deputy director of the police department in charge of persecuting Falun Gong showed up at our local police station to check on practitioners around the end of 1999. The police station called our head of security and told him to send one of us over to meet with the deputy director.
The security guy thought that the practitioners in his unit were difficult to deal with since they were all middle-level cadres (civil servants) and were good at expressing themselves. Since I appeared to be simple-minded and didn’t talk much, the security guy thought he would send me over. He later told me he thought I would cooperate and agree to stop practicing Falun Gong after I was threatened.
When the security guy took me to the police station, I didn’t know what was going on. We were in a conference room, with several people sitting around an oval table and a man making a video recording. The security guy sat next to me. Another male coworker was with us. I learned that the police paid him to monitor us at work.
A policeman brought me a glass of water. The deputy director then began to talk about how the Party and the government were “transforming” Falun Gong practitioners using a “gentle” approach. That got my attention, and I thought that, with the video recording, I shouldn’t cooperate with them and stage a show.
The deputy director asked me if I would still practice Falun Gong. “How can I not,” I replied, “given that it’s such a good practice?” I told them that Falun Gong teaches people to follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, it improves one’s morality, and it improves one’s health. The deputy director stood up, slammed his fist on the table, and said, “Don’t you dare say another word! Are you going to practice Falun Gong or not?”
I stood up and declared, “Yes, I am!” I felt a warm current flowing through my whole body after I said that.
The deputy director was so angry that his face turned red and he started cursing. I just sat down and looked at him, thinking to myself, “I can’t hear what he is saying. He is criticizing himself.” Looking back, I believe my thought was combative and lacking compassion. I didn’t fully think on his behalf. But at the time, I really couldn’t hear what he was saying. I just saw that his lips were moving and he was full of anger. Everyone sitting around the table left quietly. The deputy director cursed for a while longer and also left.
A bald, rough-looking man then came in. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and had tattoos on his arms and back. I thought he might be a gangster. What was he doing here? He proceeded to criticize me for 10 minutes. All I heard was one sentence, that he would hit people. I thought to myself, “What does this have to do with me?” After a while, he left, too.
Another police officer came in and said, “You have gall. He’s the director of our branch and is here for a year-end inspection. He is very mean and we’re all afraid of him. Why aren’t you?” I replied that I’d done nothing wrong, so “why should I be afraid?” The officer told me to leave.
After I returned to work, I noticed the security guy in my unit was being very nice to me. He eventually left that position and took the initiative to find other practitioners to learn the truth about the persecution and asked for books to read, including Zhuan Falun.
In the second half of 2000, our higher-level director, deputy director, secretary, and disciplinary committee secretary came to our unit to meet with all four of us practitioners in an attempt to “transform” us.
We told them that Dafa teaches people to be good and how we benefited from practicing it. We also said we did our jobs diligently.
Although some of the leaders in our unit supported us, they would not let us speak on behalf of Falun Gong and tried to stop from talking to the higher-level personnel. But we went ahead anyway and had good results.
The higher-level disciplinary committee secretary was a woman. She started cursing and banged the table with her fist. To keep her from committing sins, the female practitioner she was talking to also stood up and exclaimed, “Falun Gong is a righteous Buddhist practice. The Constitution guarantees freedom of belief, so it is legal to practice Falun Gong.”
Our remarks stunned the leaders of our unit. We walked out of the conference room in solidarity, gratified that we had finally gotten to say what we wanted to say.
I was arrested and illegally detained in the “Legal Education Base,” which was a brainwashing center run by the city’s 610 Office, at the beginning of 2002. Over a dozen practitioners were detained there. The 610 Office agents intended to focus on “transforming” me, so they locked me up in solitary confinement and didn’t allow me to eat or sleep. They also warned me that my decisions would affect my children’s future. They tried every trick in the book, but I saw through their ploys and refused to give in.
They once asked me if I wanted to study the Fa. I said I did, so they brought me a book. I stopped reading it as soon as I saw that it took Master Li’s teachings out of context and included slanderous remarks. Five people came in and told me to study this book with them, that each of us was to read a paragraph. When I ignored them, they said they would read it out loud and I just needed to hold the book and read it silently. I still ignored them. They tried to force me to hold the book, but I threw it on the floor and told them not to force me.
They then started criticizing me, so I thought, “I can’t hear them.” They even surrounded me, with stern expressions and their mouths still moving, but I couldn’t hear anything.
As I was leaving a fellow practitioner’s home in April 2023, two plainclothes officers who had been waiting downstairs stopped me. I managed to escape, but they dispatched police cars to chase after me.
I was riding my bike when a police car came at me from the opposite side and forced me to the side. The officer stopped the car in front of me, rolled down the window, and glared at me with furrowed brows. I looked up at him, my legs still straddling the bike, and thought, “He has nothing to do with me.” He drove away a few minutes later.
I’ve been cultivating Dafa for more than 20 years, and every step of my advancement is inseparable from Master’s protection. Just as Master said,
“Cultivation depends on one’s own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one’s master.” (Lecture One, Zhuan Falun)
Dafa’s mighty power can only be demonstrated when we conform to the Fa’s principles. Thank you, Master, for your salvation!