(Minghui.org) I am 65 years old, and started practicing Falun Dafa in 1996. Since taking up the practice, I have never stopped living by the Fa principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
I used to smoke, drink and gamble, and was very grumpy and unforgiving—everyone was afraid of me. However, after practicing Falun Dafa I changed my character totally around. People were then no longer afraid of me.
When people stole vegetables and cotton from my fields, which was very upsetting, others suggested that I take action against them.
Master, the founder of Falun Dafa, taught practitioners not to fight back, so I decided to take the situation lightly. Perhaps, because my xinxing had met the Fa's requirements at that level, the problems stopped.
A woman once swore at me. I tried to talk to her calmly, but she didn't want to listen. So I went home. She later sat outside my house and cursed at me, and did this intermittently for three days.
Her house caught fire one day, so I immediately took buckets of water over there to help put the fire out.
The woman was very embarrassed and came over with her husband to apologize and thank me. From then on, her family turned into strong supporters of Dafa, and we have become good friends.
After the persecution of Falun Dafa began, I was taken to a drug rehabilitation center for brainwashing sessions in early 2001. The authorities assigned three drug addicts to monitor and mistreat me. I refused to go along with their attempts to force me to renounce my belief, and just recited the Fa in my heart. They couldn't “transform” me, so I was taken to a forced labor camp.
A camp guard ordered me to memorize the prison rules as soon as I arrived. I told them that I was illiterate. The guard then asked if I refused because I did not want to learn the rules or if I was truly illiterate.
“For both reasons,” I replied. “Falun Dafa has cured all my illnesses. Could memorizing the prison rules do that?”
I kept talking to the guard about Dafa, and finally she agreed that I didn't have to memorize the rules. But I still had to attend a “study period,” during which time I was forced to watch videos that slandered Dafa. Afterward, I was told to write something that slandered Dafa, but I refused.
The guards still tried to pressure me into writing something. I said in front of everyone, “Let's see who is good and who is evil. Dafa does not force anyone to practice it, whereas the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) tries to force you to do what they want.” One of the guards called her supervisor, but he couldn't get me to change my mind either. This was the last time anyone asked me to write down my thoughts.
The guards tried everything they could to “transform” practitioners in the labor camp. For example, they tried to force every Dafa practitioner to learn Tai Chi. I refused, and said, “I am here because I practice Falun Dafa. If I learn Tai Chi and one day the CCP says Tai Chi is banned, then I would be incarcerated again!”
A guard was still trying to get me to do Tai Chi, so I said, “In 1996, over 1,000 Dafa practitioners held an experience sharing conference in the City Sports Square. And it was there that people from the municipal government, the Municipal Political Commissar, the municipal CPPCC, and the Municipal Sports Commission attended. Moreover, the Mayor himself gave a speech to wish the conference a great success.”
The guard no longer asked me to learn Tai Chi.
After my release from the labor camp I was told that my husband had died on September 23, 2002, from internal bleeding after being beaten by the police. I cried my heart out, but I did not fall into depression or self-pity. Instead, I kept up my spirits and continued on my cultivation path.
I discovered a large bag of Dafa informational materials among my late husband's belongings, and decided to distribute them that night.
I contacted another practitioner and discovered that he also had a large bag of materials, which he had not distributed. He admitted that after my husband died, practitioners became discouraged and no longer distributed Dafa materials. So I visited all of the practitioners in the area and asked for their Dafa materials. Another practitioner and I then distributed them to every household within a radius of about five miles.
We re-established the Falun Dafa exercise practice site and Fa-study group. Through Fa-study and experience sharing, other practitioners in our area began to talk to people about Dafa again.
Because of the persecution, my home was empty and my fields were deserted, so I moved to the city to find a job. From 2002 to the beginning of 2006, I worked as a home care worker to look after kids and the elderly.
When I told my employers about Falun Dafa and the persecution they were shocked. None of them wanted me to move to another job either, because they were worried that they wouldn't be able to find anyone as good or reliable as me.
I worked in the kitchen in a computer school starting in early 2006, and I talked about Dafa to the students.
A lot of students were blessed for believing that Dafa is good. One student passed the civil service examination after graduation. Many who failed the exam had higher classroom grades than him.
He later became the director of a police station. He never forgot what he had learned from me and recited “Falun Dafa is good” as often as possible. He often helped Dafa practitioners to keep them out of danger.
Another practitioner once said to me, “You didn't go to school, so how can you talk like an intellectual?”
“Indeed, I didn't go to school,” I replied. “It's the Master of Falun Dafa who has opened my wisdom.”