(Clearwisdom.net)

In July 2000, after graduating from my Master's degree program, I went back to my hometown. In the middle of November, I found a local Fa-study group. During the following month, there were many touching stories that unfolded around me. Today I would like to commit them to paper as witness to Dafa disciples' cultivation experiences in the Fa-rectification period.

The group Fa-study room was rented by a fellow practitioner who was an out-of-town migrant worker. The room was used for fellow practitioners to study the Fa together and for dissemination of truth-clarifying materials. It was a simple, small room with about 5-6 square meters (50-60 sq-ft) of space, without any furniture, only a lot of soft mats on the ground for meditation or sitting. Starting from July 20, 1999 to the end of 2000, no matter how evil the outside environment was, all the fellow practitioners from the group study kept going there to study the Fa every Saturday, and never skipped it once. Meanwhile, this place was also the dissemination center for Dafa truth-clarifying materials. Regularly there were fellow practitioners carrying boxes of truth-clarifying materials that would be disseminated among fellow practitioners from the group study. There I got to know fellow practitioners Sister Li and Sister Liu, among others.

Sister Li and her husband along with their little child, rented a place for doing business close by a farmer's market. There were so many people in the marketplace going back and forth that no one paid much attention to the place. That was why practitioners liked to go there to get truth-clarifying materials. Sister Li spent more time helping fellow practitioners validate Dafa than with her own business. Each time I went to her place, I would always run into different fellow practitioners there. Practitioners would either discuss and share experiences, or Sister Li would help fellow practitioners pick up truth-clarifying materials.

I heard that during the same year in July, Sister Li went to Tiananmen Square to validate Dafa. She was arrested by the police and severely beaten and abused. The police used cigarette butts to burn her hands, face, and lips, yet, she did not tell them her name. The next day, after the torture, Sister Li smiled at the officer who burnt her with a cigarette butt and said hello. The officer felt surprised and asked, "I hurt you so badly, but you still don't hate me?" Sister Li answered with a smile, "No, I don't." The officer was so touched. Afterwards, he was very respectful to her, and later, she was unconditionally released.

One time, Sister Li was standing on a busy business street, holding Dafa truth-clarifying materials and flyers and asked loudly to passers-by, "Who would like to read Falun Gong flyers?" Immediately, a large number of people came up and surrounded her to get the flyers.

Sister Li's husband is also a practitioner. He is a very honest and solid person, and he does not talk much. Each time Sister Li went out with fellow practitioners, he would stay and take care of their business, never complaining. One time, I went to see Sister Li, but he was the only one there. Sister Li had gone out with fellow practitioners. We talked a while and he said to me, "[Sister Li] knows many practitioners and practitioners all like to deal with her. I am willing to take care of family affairs by myself. No matter what, I always consider her Dafa things top priority." Then we also talked about the peaceful cultivation environment we had in the past and he told me a story: In the winter of 1998, it was extremely cold. That day there was a big snow fall, six inches deep, but they still went to the practice site as usual and found that everyone was there. When he was doing the second exercise, he opened his eyes unintentionally and saw that there was a big Falun rotating over the practice site. The color was exactly the same as the one on the cover of Zhuan Falun. Then everyone saw it. Teacher was encouraging us!

Sister Liu lost her family and was forced to become homeless because of the persecution. She was originally a university professor. She was arrested in Beijing because she went there to appeal to the Central Government for Falun Gong. She was sentenced to three years in labor camp. Later, she escaped from the labor camp and came to our area. At the time, besides distributing truth materials directly, they were also sending them out by mail. She was in charge of sending materials to this area. She had to write many addresses on envelopes while still coordinating many Dafa things locally. When I met her, she was considering going to Beijing to appeal again.

One week later, when I went to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to unfurl a Falun Gong banner, I was arrested. I was detained in a basement of the Tiananmen Square Police Station, and there I met many fellow practitioners without knowing their names. I saw and heard many touching stories of Fa-validation. Among them, there was an elderly father with his two daughters, a husband and wife, and many others who came there together with their fellow practitioners or who came alone.

Fellow practitioner A was a farmer about 30 years old. One time we could hear from the basement that someone was shouting outside over and over again, "Falun Dafa is good!" Also the police officers' swearing and violence could be heard in between. Later a fellow practitioner who was just thrown in said, "There is a female fellow practitioner who kept shouting ??Falun Dafa is Good!' ever since she was arrested on Tiananmen Square." She kept shouting and was slapped hard in the face by the police. Soon this practitioner was also thrown in and we found out that it was none other than practitioner A herself. Her short hair was very messy from the severe beatings, and her cheeks were red and a little swollen, but she was in good spirits with a smile on her face. Soon after she joined us, she pulled out a banner reading, "Falun Dafa is Good," and hung it on the window of the basement. There were four Chinese characters written on the ceiling of the basement by practitioners that were detained there, which read, "The Fa rectifies the human world." The practitioners were very happy to see the banner and the characters on the ceiling. Later while sharing experiences, I found out that practitioner A was from a northeastern part of China. She started to learn Dafa in May 1999. This was the second time she went to Beijing to appeal and was arrested. The first time she was illegally detained locally for more than four months and her family was fined over 10,000 yuan (this is a huge amount for a rural practitioner). During the first time she was detained, she learned by heart and could recite more than forty short essays and poems written by Teacher.

Fellow practitioner B was also from a northeastern part of China. She looked very young and beautiful. She sat beside me on the ground and we talked. After our chat, I found out that she was already over 30 years old. She had a 2-year-old baby and a loving husband. She told me this was the sixth time she came to Beijing to appeal for Teacher and Dafa. She used to have a job and later she was deprived of the right to work because of her unwillingness to give up practicing Falun Gong. The local government forced her to move out of her hometown while other regions would not take her as resident, so she simply kept the government documents, which would secure her residency, in her own hands. It turned out even better this way. No one was responsible for her and she was doing business with her relatives. The business was very lucrative. Normally, she could have earned 20,000 to 30,000 yuan a year [average yearly income for an urban Chinese worker is 6,000 yuan]. She told me that she would only do business for two or three months, just to get enough money to support her whole family. The rest of the time she spent appealing to the government and presenting the facts. She told that me under no conditions should a practitioner cooperate with the evil and that practitioners should go on hunger strike to protest. She said, "Usually after a few days of hunger strike, they may force feed you food against your will. Force-feeding is torture. Several people have to hold down one practitioner to conduct force-feeding. You should absolutely never cooperate with them. So long as you keep righteous thoughts, they will not be successful."

In the evening, it started to drizzle. We were thrown in a big bus and carried away. On the way, practitioner B was leading us in reciting Lunyu, and a paragraph from Falun Buddha Fa (Lecture at the Conference in Europe):

If you face death today--regardless of what form of death--and are completely fearless, if you aren't concerned about it whatsoever and think, "Perhaps I'll go to heaven after I die," then death will truly no longer take place. The key is a person's mind. Our Dafa cultivation aims exactly at one's mind--to practice cultivation is to cultivate the human mind. If your mind isn't changed, everything else you do means nothing. Outward acts mean nothing.

Sister Xie and Sister Wu were abducted together by the police. Sister Xie was in fact already in her 50s but looked very young. I thought she was just in her 30s. Sister Xie and Sister Wu were the two practitioners who unfurled a banner for the longest time that day on Tiananmen Square. The two managed to hold the banner for about twenty minutes, albeit amidst police officers' manhandling. Later, I had the predestined relationship to be detained in the same cell for four days with Sister Xie and heard her stories as well as those from other fellow practitioners.

This was their seventh appeal for Falun Gong in Beijing. The two unfurled banners in front of two foreign travelers that read, "Falun Dafa is good!" and "Restore our Teacher's good reputation!" The two foreign travelers gave them thumbs up after they saw such a brave act. Quickly their righteous shouts also caused the police to rush over, surround them, and try to take away their banners. They felt at that time that it was like a kid's game. The practitioners were just lightly holding up the banners but the police officers were trying so hard to deal with them in the winter weather that they were sweating all over. Even more interesting, because Sister Wu's voice was not loud by nature, the police officer who was dealing with her was even getting so nervous that he kept saying to her, "You need to shout louder, louder ??"

Sister Wu and her younger brother were both Dafa disciples. Her brother was abducted by local police officers just because he would not give up practicing Falun Gong. He was tied up and paraded through the local streets. In the process, his mouth was gagged and stayed that way the whole time.

There was another thin, female fellow practitioner in her 40s. Her husband was so angered at her practicing Falun Gong and not giving it up, that he poured boiling hot water from a pot onto her body. Under Teacher's protection, the practitioner said that after the boiling hot water ran over her, she not only did not feel the burning sensation but even felt a cooling effect.

The night when we were arrested, we were sent to different police stations in the suburbs of Beijing. The second night after we were sent to a jailhouse, something happened. Because Sister Xie and Sister Wu were abducted so many times, the jailhouse police recognized them and planned to have them taken back home by local police. When the time came for them to be taken away, they could not recognize Sister Wu. Then they asked us one by one who was Sister Wu. No one answered them. Later, one of them took hold of my hand and said that I must be the one. I did not respond. Then another officer said, "How could it be her? Wu was about 42 or 43 years old. She looks like she is so much younger." Another agent viciously answered, "No mistake, it is definitely her. Falun Gong practitioners all look young!"

Twenty days later I was sent to a hospital because of my severe physical condition after being on hunger strike. I was free again and away from my family members' watchful eyes after more than one month. I tried to contact local practitioners again, asking about Sister Liu and Sister Li. I was told that Sister Liu went to Tiananmen Square soon after I went there. Nothing had been heard about her since then. Sister Li's whole family also went to Beijing around New Year's Day with all four of them being abducted, including their 8-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. Under threats from the police, the 11-year-old boy told them all about the family and pointed out who his parents were. Then Sister Li's whole family was taken back home. Their business was searched and all of the family's belongings were thrown into the street. They confiscated her 8,000-yuan savings certificate. Then Sister Li was sent back to her original rural hometown to be illegally detained. Her husband was sent to a labor camp and I lost touch with them. Besides them, there were a few other fellow practitioners, including two female college students who were practitioners. They were both detained because they went to Beijing to appeal. There has been no further news about them.

Today, when I look back at this piece of history, I am still touched by fellow practitioners' righteous actions and efforts, and encouraged by their determination and unshakable spirit from Dafa cultivation. I have not heard any news from other practitioners except that not long ago I read on the Internet that Sister Wu was illegally sentenced to four years in a labor camp and Sister Xie is still on the run and forced go without a home. Maybe they are still in detention, maybe they have already obtained freedom. But no matter where my fellow practitioners are now, here I would like to pay my highest respects to all of you!

I would like to extend my Heshi to all those who are diligently making progressing on their cultivation path during the Fa-rectification period.