(Minghui.org) I started practicing Falun Dafa in 1998 when I was 31 years old. I had wanted to find a solution to the family conflicts that I was having, and Dafa seemed to hold the answer.
Unfortunately, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started its persecution of Dafa less than a year later, and I became afraid. I hid the books away even though I knew Dafa is good, but when I stopped practicing, I felt like my life lost its meaning.
I resumed the practice in secret.
As my family had opened a shop at that time, I would take out the book to read when there were no customers and hide it away when people arrived. But I decided to read it openly when I thought that no one would know what book I was reading.
Later, I got to meet some fellow practitioners, who gave me Master's new articles and copies of Minghui Weekly. When I saw news of Dafa disciples being sentenced and persecuted to death, I asked myself if I still wanted to continue: The answer was a resounding yes!
Below is my experience of how I maintained my righteous thoughts through various trying situations.
Saving Sentient Beings
In 2004, over 40 practitioners in my local area and the city were arrested after they drove to a remote area to distribute Dafa materials. With most of the coordinators in my area now arrested, I started to take on the role of a coordinator to lead the remaining practitioners.
Looking back, I didn't dare to think how I overcame those days.
I woke up at 3 a.m. every day to do the exercises before going out at 5 a.m. to pick up goods for my shop. I paid for the goods with bank notes with my handwritten messages about Falun Gong. During the trip, I would also deliver Minghui Weekly to practitioners and do some coordination work.
To distribute materials, I bought clothes that would serve as camouflage at night and shoes that were soundless. I was initially afraid and put the materials in my clothes, but after my righteous thoughts became stronger, I started carrying a big bag of materials to distribute throughout the night.
Later, practitioners started stepping forward to cooperate with me. I worked with an elderly male practitioner who was familiar with the rural areas; when there was a young practitioner who could ride a bike, we went to a remote area to distribute the materials.
Most of the practitioners in my area have worked with me before. But because I would walk the entire night to distribute between 300 to 400 flyers and hang banners, some practitioners became too tired after distributing for one night and refused to cooperate with me again.
Just before Chinese New Year one time, practitioners gave me six boxes of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party books that had to be distributed during the period.
I found a practitioner to go with me, but she got too tired from carrying the box of books and refused to go the second time. I ended up distributing them myself by putting them at an elderly practitioner's house, carrying two boxes at a time, hiding them in a safe place, and returning to them whenever I needed a refill. I would return to the practitioner's house after I've finished distributing them all.
I finished distributing all six boxes by 5 a.m. When I returned to the practitioner's home, she felt so sorry for me that she cried.
Regardless of how busy or tired I was, I would make sure to keep up with chores around my own house.
Once, I returned home at 5 a.m. after distributing the materials the whole night. I cleaned the house with my husband, as he didn't know that I had gone out. I only retired to bed at night.
My husband and I don't live in the same house, as I have to open our store early and don’t want to wake him. Thus, he did not know that I always went out at night until he woke up one morning to find truth-clarification materials in my house.
However, regardless of the changes in the environment, I have never stopped distributing the materials.
My husband and I lived with his mother and older brother after my shop was seized after I came back from the labor camp. Living with them made it inconvenient for me to validate the Fa. I had to wait until they had gone to bed late into the night before I could go out to distribute materials.
Breaking Through Human Notions
It is Dafa that has changed me into an extraordinary person, and during the process of stepping forward, I had to break through many human notions.
The winter in Heilongjiang is extremely cold. When I want to step out of the house, the attachment to “cold” would interfere with me, making me think of the negative temperatures outside. However, when I broke through this notion of “cold,” everything changed.
This is especially the case when I want to step out of the house after sending forth righteous thoughts at midnight and had the attachment of fear. But when I broke through this notion, there were no words to describe the relaxed feeling.
Once, when my husband was cooking and I was reading a book in my shop, he asked me to bring in some firewood from the yard. I agreed to do it but didn't feel like moving, as it was very cold outside.
However, later I decided that when I was to do anything, I should just do it without having any notions about the task. I realized that, when I didn't have any notions, I could complete the tasks quickly.
I once went out with a practitioner to put up posters. I prepared the posters as I walked and pasted them when I reached a pole. I was so quick that the practitioner didn't notice my actions.
Since I started reading Minghui Weekly, I would write down the sentences and phrases that practitioners used to clarify the facts and memorized some of them for my own use in clarifying the truth. People I talked to often asked me the school that I had graduated from and praised me for being smart, saying that I should be a lecturer.
When I was detained in 2016 for filing a criminal complaint against the former Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin, I worked with a practitioner who was also detained two days earlier. I used the phrases that I noted down to clarify the facts. When a police officer heard me, he asked the practitioner if I was a lecturer.
Detained and Sent to Labor Camp
I was arrested three times and would like to share two of the arrests and how I resisted the persecution.
Released from Detention Center in Eight Days
I was reported to the police in 2011. Officers raided my home and confiscated my computer, truth-clarification DVDs, and banners. They took me to the police station, where I saw all my confiscated materials on a sofa. When officers came to examine the items, I took the opportunity to have them read the materials.
Officers from the police department came, took me to a room, and asked if I had gone to Beijing and where my materials came from.
I asked them, “Which law says practicing Falun Gong is illegal? It is not wrong to follow the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance to be a better person.”
They were speechless and later brought my son over to persuade me.
My son had no choice but to say, “Mom, if there's anything you have to confess, please say it!”
I told my son that I hadn’t broken any laws and asked him to go home and tell his grandmother that I would definitely return home.
As the officers could not get any information from me, they sent me to the detention center.
When I went on a hunger strike at the detention center, the head of the center asked me why I refused to eat. I told him of the police's unfair treatment of Falun Gong practitioners. When he tried to persuade me to eat and I refused, I was hit twice.
With no choice, he told the police department and I was dragged to the hospital to be force-fed. When I walked into the hospital in shackles, the police said they were doing this to make an example of me.
But I thought otherwise.
“I'm very honored to practice Dafa. The happiest thing in my life is to practice Dafa!”
They later inserted the feeding tube into my nose. When they were not looking, I took it out. Seeing my resistance, they took me back to the detention center.
The next day, seven agents from the 610 Office came to persuade me to eat. When I refused, they started to talk about what would happen to my son if I died. I told them how people in history were willing to be beheaded just for speaking the truth. Unable to respond to my words, they dragged me to be force-fed.
I was force-fed three times before being released on the eighth day.
When I was still in the detention center, the police went to my house and demanded that my husband pay for the force-feeding, but he refused. He later told my son that I had gone on a hunger strike, but my son had faith that I would soon come home. He had righteous thoughts because I often read Dafa books to him whenever he had the time. Now that he is in high school, he helps me a lot when I do Dafa work.
When my family came to pick me up on the eighth day, they thought that I did not eat anything during that period. They were relieved when they saw how energetic I was after drinking water and I told them what had happened in the detention center.
My husband told me that when he went to the police station to ask about my whereabouts, the policeman there said that Falun Gong is truly amazing because his phone kept ringing with overseas calls on the night of my arrest. My husband also told my neighbors how strong I was when detained. He was filled with admiration for Dafa and Dafa disciples.
A Year in a Labor Camp
It was in 2012 when I was arrested. As they were afraid that I would go on a hunger strike again, they sent me to Harbin Rehabilitation Center for two years. I was locked in a room with an inmate assigned to watch over me and help the police “transform” me, or force me to renounce Dafa.
A guard came to speak with me every day. To make me “transform,” they even humiliated me. Without strong righteous thoughts, it would have been hard for me to overcome this obstacle.
When I was first sent to the labor camp, my mind was blank and I could not recall any of Master's teachings.
It was after I remembered a paragraph from one of the truth-clarification DVDs that I began to have righteous thoughts. I could gradually recall much of Master's Fa.
Once, when the instructor told me that I had been sentenced to two years in a labor camp, I thought to myself that what they said didn’t count.
At the labor camp, we had to write a composition once a week, but I refused to cooperate. I wrote down my reasons for disobeying their orders and also explained to them the value of true traditional Chinese culture because they had tried to use a distorted version to brainwash us. I also wrote down Master’s poem “Drinking The Wolf's Brew” from Hong Yin III.
When I showed what I had written to the inmate, she was shocked and said that my term would be extended if I handed this in. However, the guards were speechless after this and treated me slightly better. They tried to make me take it back, but I told them to put it in my case file instead.
When one officer came to talk to me, I told her that those words she spoke didn't come from her. She then walked away while saying, “Yes, that was not from me. It was from the evil spirit.”
I refused to take any medicine after I had symptoms of high blood pressure, cerebral infarction, and heart disease. I told the guard that even though the doctor said I needed medicine for this, Falun Dafa could solve the problem completely.
When the guard heard this, she took me to the police duty room and tried many ways to coerce me, but I was not moved. She had no choice but to ask me to go back to my room.
Later, the head of the labor camp personally came to take me to the medical office, where I saw a row of policemen standing there while the nurse was preparing for the injection. I knew that they wanted to forcibly inject medicine into me, so I told them I would go on a hunger strike if they give me the injection.
As I had symptoms of heart disease, they didn't dare to touch me and took me to a room. I was not allowed to have my meals with others. I later found out that they had put medicine in my food; I stopped eating.
That night, the leader of the labor camp came to talk to me and said, “Just take two pills first. The head of the labor camp said that you will be taken out of camp to see a doctor in two days' time. If you fit the criteria, you can be released on bail.”
“Do you think I wanted to go out? I want to remove this illness. I won't take any medicine even if you take me out to see a doctor,” I said.
The next day, they took me out to see a doctor, who diagnosed me with high blood pressure, cerebral infarction, and mild heart failure. The doctor said that I had to take medicine.
I knew the police did not dare to keep me any longer as I saw them preparing for my release. They also called for the 610 Office to take me away.
The police were afraid and called my husband to take me home without paying a single cent. On the way home, I clarified the facts to the officers and told them how I resisted the persecution at the labor camp. They replied, “Practice secretly at home and don't go out to distribute materials.”
That afternoon, we went to the local police station to have a record on my case, but as the officer in charge of household registration was not in, they told me to return the next Monday.
On the next Monday, I returned and saw the same officer. He asked if I still practiced, to which I said my life depends on Falun Gong.
He said, “Practice secretly at home and don't go out to distribute materials.”
When I asked who saw me distributing materials, he kept quiet and asked for my family and personal details. Then, he told me to sign and press a thumbprint on a document.
I refused, so he told me to copy some words said by Wen Jiabao (Premier of China at the time), but I refused again.
With no choice, he told me to go to the director's office and explained the situation to the director. The director said, “Get her into the labor camp and let her die there!”
I kept silent.
“Do you want to go in there again?” he asked.
I said, “I don't want to, but I have no choice if you insist!”
They then called the police department to inform them that I refused to cooperate. But the department told them to think of a way.
After hanging up the phone, the director changed his tone and said that I would be finished if I go in again. I started to clarify the facts to him. He commented that I knew a lot.
With Master's protection, I returned home a year into my two-year labor camp sentence.
After returning home, I studied the Fa and did the exercises as usual. All my illness symptoms disappeared in three months. This was witnessed by my family and friends.
Thank you, Master, for your protection and salvation! Being able to cultivate in Dafa is the highlight of my life.
