(Minghui.org)
1. Struggling through a Weary Life
I was born in 1945. One year after my birth my father was drafted into the army and never returned. When I was three years old my mother remarried and I was adopted by my grandparents, who were too old to take care of even themselves. Later they gave me to a couple from my village but I found it hard to get along with them. Having no way out, my grandparents gave me—then 7 years old—to my uncle and my aunt, who had a hard life because of their physical handicaps.
From then on I spent my days doing heavy work such as leading the cattle to graze, chopping fire wood, firing the wood for heating and cooking, and preparing the food. At the age of 9, however, I was terribly out of shape because of serious sicknesses. My scalp was entirely barren of any hair, I became lean and looked hungry, my belly bulged, and my neck became terribly slim due to extreme malnutrition. When my cousin—who was quite respected among my relatives—visited us, he was astounded by how miserable I looked and could not believe his eyes, that there could be such a child as me in this world. He asked who I was and was told: “She is the daughter of your third elder uncle, now adopted by your parents.” He then asked me about my living conditions and later brought me to see a doctor and bought me some new clothes. Before he left, he emphatically told my uncle and aunt that they must bring me up and send me to school. He promised he would pay for my education. My uncle did what he told them and I was able to finish my elementary education. Yet my further education was disrupted when the idea that studying was useless permeated China. A new requirement decreed that all young students had to work to support their study in the fanatical Maoist political movement of “Enthusiastically constructing irrigation systems for farmers” and “forging steel for industries.”
When I started to understand things my eyes were rankly abused by all the political movements launched by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I lived in an environment filled with fighting; a homicidal and terrifying atmosphere. I saw people being labeled anti-reactionary, then denounced and abused in public meetings, their heads capped with tower-like slogans, and after that paraded in the streets with abusive blackboards publicizing their names hanging around their necks. These scenes desensitized me and I became ignorant of normal human life, and all morality, conscience, and sympathy that define a man. Once I saw a CCP militia head order the son of a labeled “landlord” to dig a rectangular hole in the ground and force his father to lie inside. The son was then ordered to shovel dirt on top of his father's body with a spade till the father died while screaming in agony. I once saw the militia head and his men bind a soothsayer and force him to eat human excrement when I and many other kids were around to watch it. There was no sympathy in me for the victims, because I had seen so much of such violence that I became quite used to it.
People's faith in the heavens was shattered by the CCP's atheism and its devastating political movement of “eradicating the four old theistic traditions and promoting the four new atheistic doctrines.” One day I saw a Buddha statue broken into pieces, but I felt nothing wrong and cudgeled the wreckage of the statue with a sickle, finding it fun and not knowing that I was doing something that would incur karma onto myself.
In such an environment my soul was filled with sinful thoughts and my karma skyrocketed. At the age of 19 I was stricken by paralysis. In the later decades all kinds of diseases began to surface and ravage me. I reached my worst condition in 1993, when I was diagnosed with lumbar inter-vertebral disc protrusion, thrombocytopenia, swollen feet junctions, B-Type hepatitis, rheumatism, skin diseases, left brain slowness, rhinopolypus, congenital poor eyesight, inverse eyelash, lung diseases, ringing ears, black bruises covering my face, hoarse voice, constipation, long-term low fever caused by swollen breasts, and hot face of blood-red color. Finding no hospital to heal me, I resorted to all kinds of qigong practices, only to find my condition deteriorating. Every day felt as long as a year—it was so agonizing that I regretted having been born into this world.
2. Falun Dafa Bestowed Upon Me a New Lease on Life
In late 1993 I saw a tall white-haired man in the street at the side of a train station. In front of his chest he wore an emblem, which was so conspicuous that it attracted my attention. In curiosity I went to him and chatted with him. He told me that he was just back from a Falun Gong lecture held in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province and that the emblem represented the Falun of Falun Gong. My heart was quite moved by his words and I asked him for an emblem, but he had only one and no more. I asked: “Do you have any books, then, or any photos?” I then went with the man to his home, where I saw the picture of Master and the book Falun Gong. I asked him if he could lend me the book but he said no. I then asked him to teach me the Falun Gong exercises. Upon my request he took me to another elderly Falun Gong practitioner, who was teaching newcomers the Falun Gong exercises at his home. I joined in and began to learn the movements. In my eagerness I asked the elderly practitioner if he could lend me a Falun Gong book, but he said he could lend it to me only several days later.
Several days later I received the book Falun Gong by post. When I opened it hastily, upon seeing Master's picture, my eyes flooded with tears, like a kid receiving a letter from her faraway mother. So absorbed by the teachings in the book, I could not put it aside. It taught that the practitioners of cultivation practice must value morality and be good people according to high standards based on “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance,” the guiding principle of the cultivation practice. Upon reading this, I made up my mind: “I will do this practice, by all means.” From then on I focused on learning Falun Gong, convinced by its supremacy. Realizing that to be a person is to be a good person, my hope for a new life was revived.
At that time Master was touring China teaching Falun Gong. Although I was busy with my work I managed to spare time to attend the lectures. I was fortunate to attend four Falun Gong lectures that were taught personally by Master Li in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province; Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province; and Chenzhou City, Hunan Province. With Master's guidance the profoundness of cultivation practice gradually unfolded for me and I was so absorbed in it that I desired even more knowledge. I found Master Li was quite different from other qigong masters that I had seen before. He never accepted any practitioners' invitations for dinner or their gifts or money, while other qigong masters were happy with invitations for banquets and accepted whatever their students gave them. Some could become irritated if they were not given any gifts. Master Li spent all his time teaching the Falun Gong principles and exercises and was very considerate of practitioners who had difficulties. He wanted all practitioners to benefit from Falun Gong as soon as possible.
In the Falun Gong lectures Master purified the attendants' bodies. In a matter of a few days all my diseases were gone. I was like a new person, with a supreme feeling that I had never experienced before. Above all, by learning Dafa my heart was ascending, and the moral values that I had long lost came back to me. I learned from Master's Fa how to be a good person and even a person that transcends a good person; that a person may attain the Tao by assimilating to the characteristic of the cosmos; and that the true meaning of human life is not to be a regular human being but to return to one's true self.
Master's Fa lecture was attended by thousands of people. When people found anything lost by others, no matter how much it was worth, they would pass it to Master. While on stage Master announced the finding of lost items and owners were reminded to retrieve their items right away.
In 1994, I attended Master's Fa lecture in Chenzhou City, Hunan province. That's when I discovered the biggest difference between Master Li and other qigong masters. During the Fa lectures Master asked the sponsors of the lectures to return 20 yuan to every attending practitioner. In my previous learning of qigong practice I had to pay for the instructions and give gifts to the qigong masters. To make more money they divided their courses into sub-courses of preliminary, middle, and high levels. When Master Li left Chenzhou he gave all the money left over from the lecture expenses back to the sponsors, while he charged nothing. In contrast to the qigong masters that I had seen before, he intentionally prolonged the hours of some classes to give more time to practitioners so that they could learn the five sets of Falun Gong exercises completely.
Master exhorted us with his instructions by word and his personal examples. When he left Chenzhou many practitioners went to the train station to see him off, but none of us gave him any gifts nor praised him. It was in July and it was very hot. Master bought some watermelon for the practitioners. After he boarded the train he found that his seat was taken, but he said nothing and simply stood quietly in the passageway. When we went back to the hotel that Master had stayed at, a hotel attendant casually told us his impression of Master: “This man is truly kind. I have never seen such a nice tenant before. He repackaged all the tea that we served every day into small bags and placed them in good order. His room was clean and neat after he left.” I once saw Master prop up the bicycles that fell to the ground, one by one. He was never seen by any practitioners to lose his temper. He by himself represents Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
I was entirely upgraded by Dafa, in terms of my understanding about the world and the ascension of my morals. One day, when I was in a residence registry office in Zhengzhou City, I found a paper packet on the ground with 600 yuan inside. I picked it up and quickly went upstairs to find its owner. It did not take much effort to find the owner and I gave the money back to him. One day, when I was sweeping the floor of a hotel, I saw two wads of 50 yuan under a bed. I did not keep them for myself, although I was quite in need of money then. One time I ordered some wholesale goods from a salesman, but he sent me the goods twice as he forgot he had done it already. I was reminded by Master's teachings that we should be altruistic and consider the good of others before ourselves, so I paid him for the extra set of goods. The same thing happened more than once. Every time it happened I was able to maintain my righteous thoughts and keep my mind unmoved by profit. One day on a bus my finger was cut by the glass of the window close by me when someone promptly moved the glass to shut the window. My finger bled a lot but I did not blame the person. Instead, for fear that he might feel sorry to see my bleeding, I covered the injury with another hand, because I knew that he did not hurt me on purpose.
Why did Falun Gong spread around the world so rapidly, merely through word by word among people, and even when it was under the most vicious attack by the CCP? It is because it is so righteous. Everyone holds the universal values in their minds, which are Truthfulness, Benevolence, Forbearance, and they know what to choose when they meet with Falun Dafa. Dafa blesses all Dafa practitioners. They do the practice out of their own initiative and their faith in it is fortified against all assaults. All practitioners of Falun Gong benefit from it as it purifies their bodies when they decide to step through its gate, with exceptions only for those gravely ill patients who fail to meet the standards of genuine practitioners of cultivation practice. Master said that he did not accept gravely ill patients and mentally disordered patients as his students because they could not meet the requirements on Falun Gong practitioners for not being able to behave themselves with a clear mind. Falun Gong is taught to people who can study the Fa, do the Falun Gong exercises, comprehend what Master teaches, and conduct themselves according to the principles taught by Master. For instance, as a practitioner, one should refrain from killing and drinking alcohol, and exercise tolerance when bullied or misunderstood. A person who fails to do that and who struggles for personal interests can not be counted as a practitioner of cultivation practice. How can such a person be healed if he is not a cultivator? I am a vivid example of such principles. I give Dafa top priority in my life and with such faith I was able to walk my path of cultivation step by step. Dafa gave me a new lease on life free from any diseases. My gratitude toward Master defies description and could be testified only by devotion with my life.
3. Miracles in Danger
Master has saved me from many dangers that fell upon me. One day I was biking home when I lost control of my bicycle and it rushed forward. It was dark and I could not discern the road conditions. The bike suddenly made a sharp turn by itself. When I looked back I saw an uncovered big hole in the road. The next day I passed by there again and saw a three-wheeled wagon trapped in the hole. I knew I would have been trapped in the hole had it not been for Master's protection.
One day, when I was riding my bicycle from the square of my city, the brake suddenly failed to work. It was on a down slope and I rushed down to the crossroads where the traffic was very busy. I thought I could not rush into the cars and people at the crossing, but I could not get the bicycle under control as it sped up. I asked Master for help. At that moment my bicycle stopped right away. I fell to the ground, but was not injured. I could have hit the cars at the crossroads and gotten myself killed, or hit the pedestrians and brought disaster to them, had it not been for Master's help. It was so dangerous! I looked inside to trace the reason for my brake failure. I found my irritable temper and my messy and unstable mentality, which a cultivator should let go of. My poor xinxing status led to my poor efficiency and I got only half the results with twice the effort. I made up my mind to pay more attention to my xinxing cultivation by studying the Fa well.
One day, when I passed by a crossroad, a speeding minibus ran over my feet, crushing them, and I fell. The driver and passengers got off the bus and were scared stiff to see my condition. To prevent their worries I said to them promptly: “I am a Falun Gong practitioner. I will be fine. You just go.” But they simply stood there quietly. As a matter of fact, the crush was truly heavy and it felt like my hip bone was broken. I utilized all my energy to utter the words to them. I warned myself to uphold my xinxing and that my single thought would decide whether the final outcome was good or bad. Certainly they could not understand what I was thinking. I was reminded by Master's teaching:
“Sure, the driver was going too fast. But he wouldn’t hit somebody on purpose. He didn’t mean to do that. But people are like that nowadays, and if you don’t extort money from him, even the bystanders would think it’s unfair. I’d say that people aren’t able to tell right from wrong these days. When you say to someone, 'What you’re doing is wrong,' he won’t believe it. That’s because people’s moral standards have changed. Some people just seek profit—as long as they can get money out of it they’ll do anything. "Life will get the best of you if you don’t look out for number one"—that’s even become a motto!” (Zhuan Falun)
I painfully stood up, carried my stuff on my back, and left. When I was on the road I looked back and saw them still standing there. When I was home I just did my work as usual without thinking about my condition. Not long after, I recovered. Were I haunted by the thought that I was hurt in this or that body part and asked the driver to take me to a hospital, maybe my ligaments would have been torn and my bones fractured, and maybe I would be paralyzed.
One morning I arrived early at the practice site. It began to rain and other practitioners were prevented from joining me by the tempest. I sat alone under the wall of the Scientific Hall to do the meditation exercise, when lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. At the time a wave of hailstones hit the glass on the wall and broke it into pieces. The glass fell onto the ground around me and splintered everywhere, but my spot was like being covered by a shield, as no glass shards hit me.
In the past 18 years of cultivation many miracles have happened to me. I am most fortunate to meet with almighty Dafa and have such a great Master.
4. Remain Faithful to Dafa in Persecution
In 1999, in its purpose to keep the sentient beings away from the blessing of Dafa, to terminate human being's moral values, and to slander the Fa of the cosmos, the vile CCP began its overwhelming persecution of Falun Gong. At this critical moment, to defend the law of the universe, Falun Gong practitioners took their own initiative to appeal for Falun Gong and clarify the facts about Falun Gong to the public, for which they were persecuted with a brutality that is unprecedented in human history.
On October 25, 1999, I went to Beijing to appeal for Falun Gong, for which I was sentenced to 18 months of forced labor. My term in the labor camp was further extended by one year because I refused to give up practicing Falun Gong and resisted the authorities' persecution. I was held in the Baimalong Labor Camp, Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province. Ding Cailan, chief of the prison guards in charge of persecuting Falun Gong, had been sent to training courses by CCP authorities held in the Masanjia Labor Camp, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, which was notorious for its brutality in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. She had been toasted by Li Lanqing, chief of the central 610 Office, and had taken a picture with him. In the training session the CCP's so-called professors and experts taught them how to subjugate the mentality of Falun Gong practitioners using violence and temptation, two crucial weapons to change the custom of a man. Under the circumstance where temptation is insufficient, sufficient violence will lead to failure to change a man, while on occasions where violence is sufficient but temptation is insufficient, the attempt to change a man will also fail. Only when both violence and temptation are fully utilized can a man be changed. Ding was high in spirit for being recognized by the CCP—so much that she forgot that she was a human being. She spared no brutality in mistreating Falun Gong practitioners. There is nothing she would not do. There are only things that she failed to think of.
After she went back from the training session to the labor camp, Ding formed a list of people to form an institution specializing in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. This including the prison guard Zheng Xia, whom she trusted the most, and the deputy chief of the labor camp Zhao Baogui and his wife Lu Yongquan, who, in her position as the chief of the medical section of the labor camp, had injected countless practitioners with drugs that broke down their human mentality. She singled out steadfast practitioners and inserted them into the so-called “strict discipline groups” and “assaulting strongly defended installation groups.” She first forced some practitioners into giving up practicing Falun Gong through deception, intimidation, temptation, and intense pressure. Then she made use of them to “transform” other practitioners. She made use of inmates who were drug addicts to torture practitioners by rewarding them with term deductions. A whole floor of the labor camp building was specially allocated to detaining Falun Gong practitioners.
By all vile means the prison guards tried to force me to give up practicing Falun Gong. Following orders, the prison guards— dozens of former practitioners who were forced into denouncing their faith in Falun Gong—crowded upon me and cruelly beat me. They assigned several strong people among them to lift me up and released me from above the ground, letting me crash down. When I hit the ground I felt like my head was breaking, and my eyes were dizzy. They repeated torturing me that way for long periods of time. As a result, I started bleeding from my private part, my internal organs were hurt, and my ribs were dislocated. They gave a name to the torture “Dahe (harvesting corn).” When they tired of lifting me they switched to another torture. More than twenty people clawed, pinched, dragged, clutched, and slapped my whole body, including my head, so forcefully that my muscles were separated from the bones and I almost became unconscious because of the acute pain. They called the torture “clutching the snake skin.”
They chopped my neck, head and scalp with their palms and slapped my face violently. When they slapped me they hit my ears with both of their palms and my ears could hear nothing except for rumbling caused by the violent strikes. After that they began a so-called “air raid,” in which they connected my ears to two paper pipes and roared on the other end of the pipes. They called this torture “chopping the fox head.” They pinched my sensitive parts, armpits, collar bone, and below my ears, leaving terrible injuries on the pinched parts. They pinched my scalp, pulled my hair upward, and then dragged it forward and downward to cover my face, only to make me look bad and to humiliate Dafa. They fiercely clutched my sensitive parts, like the armpits. The pain was so acute that I thought I was dying.
After several hours of torture my dress buttons were gone, my clothes stunk of the sweat left from their clutches, and my body was covered with terrible bruises.
When they stopped beating me they kept propagating to my ears their abusive words against Dafa, Master, and me. They never let any chances go by to humiliate my dignity. I was tortured that way for 18 days. Consumed by the its poisonous deceit, these people forfeited their will, their human nature, and their morality to the vile CCP, and became its minions, torturing innocent people. When they were beating me, one of them, seeing my ribs dislocated by their violent beatings, tried to stop the beating for fear that I might die, showing the minimum conscience that she still possessed. Another person, showing no mercy, said: “Let her go ahead and launch a lawsuit against Jiang Zemin. Jiang Zemin will say that we are not doing well enough.” I felt pity for what she said. These people used to be Dafa practitioners but now had defected to the CCP, and under its deception, high pressure, and intimidation, were ignorantly committing crimes against Dafa and creating huge karma for themselves. I prayed for them that they could wake up and see the vile nature of the CCP. I thanked Master for his compassionate protection, for which I was not stricken down by the overwhelming tribulation.
The labor camp tried all kinds of torture methods on me but still failed to break my faith in Dafa.
They then resorted to more brutal violence. They confined 17 steadfast practitioners in a confinement cell and placed a case of electric batons and a case of handcuffs at the door of the cell. In the cell there was only a small bucket to contain excrement, but the practitioners were forbidden to go to the toilet. The bucket was too small for 17 people. If they excreted in it, it would be full soon and after that they would have to excrete on the ground. To avoid this they had to stop eating or drinking, but the police found it an excuse to torture them. They stretched the arms of the practitioners to the maximum extent and cuffed their hands to the upper bunks. Then, side by side, their hands were cuffed together, forming a chain of cuffed practitioners where no one could move. The slightest move of one person would cause acute pain in all those cuffed in the chain. When prison guards cuffed us they cushioned our feet with something. After they finished cuffing us in a chain they removed the cushion, making us hang in the air. The cuffs cut deeply into our muscles right away. The pain was so acute that we lost our breath, felt dizzy, and lapsed into a state of shock. Our faces became pale, while sweat burst out from our foreheads. Some practitioners could not help crying out. We were tortured in this way for several hours each day. After several days of the torture the prison guards mustered a group of inmates who were drug addicts and queued us in a line face to face to force-feed us one by one. In their hands were electric batons, flashing forth like the tongues of striking serpents, creating an atmosphere of suffocating terror.
The force-feeding was carried out in a specially allocated room, which was several hundred meters away from the confinement cell. The first practitioner who was dragged out for force-feeding was Ms. Zuo Shuchun. After a long while we still did not see her return to the confinement cell and we were very worried about her. In anxiety we suddenly saw some prison guards carrying a stretcher past our door. Ms. Zuo was on the stretcher, with her hands hanging in the air while her body was covered with a white cloth. We realized that Ms. Zuo might be in danger. We asked the prison guards: “Where is Zuo?” They said: “You will not ask anything about her. She has been released for medical treatment.” We were then dispersed, not knowing the whereabouts of each other. They did that for fear that we would persevere in asking them about the whereabouts of Ms. Zuo. Later I was told by a drug addict who was involved in force-feeding Ms. Zuo about what had happened: They used a bamboo pipe with one end cut into the shape of a thrust, which was widely used to feed cattle medicine, to force-feed her. They pried open her mouth, inserted the pipe into her throat, and fed her a full load of liquid contained in the pipe. While doing so they pinched her nose for a long period of time to keep her mouth open, thus killing her. After some time I went to ask a prison guard about what had happened to Ms. Zuo. He became furious and roared at me like an irritated tiger: “If you ask again you will see how we will treat you. Do you want to investigate her case?” I realized that too many obscure and inhuman means had been taken by them in persecuting practitioners and they were afraid that their atrocities could be exposed to the public. My heart pains even more when I think of how nice a person Ms. Zuo was: she always considered others before herself and got well along with others according to the principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. However good a person she was, she was tortured to death by the prison guards. The heavens will be incensed to unleash anger upon those perpetrators.
The persecution the CCP has done to me is too much to be recorded, and what I told here is only a tip of the whole iceberg. Yet my faith in Dafa remains constant, because I know I am a cultivator of the cosmic law. It is Dafa that has enlightened me to the law of the cosmos and nothing could take its place in my soul.
From the Call for Submissions to Commemorate the Twentieth Anniversary of Falun Dafa’s Introduction
