(Minghui.org) I accompanied my daughter when she listened to Master Li's lectures for the first time in 1997. During the lectures I saw a giant white fan with a tornado-like shaft spinning above my head. After listening to all nine lectures, all I could remember was Falun Dafa, also called Falun Gong, teaches one to be a morally upright person. My neighbor, who is a practitioner, told me that the enormous fan I saw was a Falun law wheel. She said I had good inborn quality and advised me to practice diligently. In July, I followed her to a Falun Dafa practice site and truly became a practitioner.
I was teaching at a middle school at the time and held part-time positions at three universities. I was extremely busy. I followed the Falun Dafa principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance and was well regarded by my co-workers and students.
However, I had trouble getting up in the morning to do the exercises – at 4:10 a.m. every day. The heater next to my bed would start beeping gently. If I still didn't get out of bed, my bedroom door would start banging loudly as if someone was kicking it. Since then, even when I was forced to leave home, and wander around to avoid being persecuted, the sound of wooden percussion would ring every morning, and I knew that Master was reminding me to wake up and do the exercises.
I had a car accident two months after I began practicing Falun Dafa. The doctor sewed four stitches on the right side of my head, and my collar bone was fractured. I made a full recovery within a month and went back to work.
My daughter, who suffered from severe rheumatism and was paralyzed due to muscle atrophy, was given a new lease on life after listening to Master's lectures. She regained partial mobility.
I went to the provincial government to appeal for the right to practice Falun Gong when the Chinese communist regime outlawed the practice on July 20, 1999. I was taken to the police station. I was devastated by the government's vilification of Falun Gong and knew that they would be unscrupulous in persecuting practitioners. Yet, the thought of giving up my belief was unacceptable. Life would be meaningless if I could not practice Falun Dafa.
I was arrested six times, my house was ransacked countless times, and I left home for four years to avoid arrest. However, not once did I give up practicing Falun Gong. During such difficult times, fellow practitioners and I persisted in awakening the kind thoughts of many sentient beings. We clarified the facts about Falun Gong to police officers who came to arrest us and ransack our homes, discussing the benefits of practicing Falun Gong, and saw that these people had a kind side.
I was arrested for the second time on January 19, 2000. The next evening, the director of the police station summoned me. He chastised me as soon as I stepped into his office. I had never been reprimanded like that before in my life. I wept and said to him, “You can ask my school what kind of teacher I am. Do you know why I practice Falun Gong? My daughter contracted a family hereditary disease when she was studying at the university. I spent all my money and sought treatment from many doctors in China but no one could treat her illness. Someone suggested we try Falun Dafa and in the end my daughter recovered from practicing Dafa.”
He kept quiet and recorded every word I said. However he still took me to the detention center, except I was not made to wear handcuffs on the way to prison.
Many police officers interrogated me on my second day in the detention center. I told them I didn't care who stopped us from practicing Falun Gong, or what Jiang Zemin, the former head of the communist regime, who initiated the persecution of Falun Gong, had ordered—I would not give up my faith. An officer smiled and said, “Why don't you write down your experience of practicing Falun Gong?” I wrote about why I began practicing Falun Dafa, and the benefits it brought to me and my daughter. The officer took a look and said, “You are singing the praises of Falun Dafa.” He smiled and walked away with the piece of paper I wrote.
I was arrested for the third time two months later, while I was taking a graduation photo with my students. The reason for my arrest was that I had gone to a practitioner's home and stayed there for five minutes.
I was asked a lot of questions about Falun Dafa. I spoke to the officers until 4:00 a.m., but they still took me to the local police station. On the way, an officer said that he had heard others say how wonderful Falun Dafa is, but he did not know much about it until he met me. He truly understood the virtues of the practice from my experience.
After I was arrested at school, police officers broke into my house and ransacked it. My daughter was the only one at home. I asked the police about my daughter. An officer told me my daughter had cried and begged them to leave her a copy of Zhuan Falun. I asked if they acceded to her request. He said they did.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was going to hold a key meeting in Beijing, and I had designed some petitions to appeal to the government to address the issue of Falun Gong. I left some blank forms sandwiched among my teaching materials at home. When I returned home, I saw the forms placed on top of the materials. The police had found the petitions when they searched my place but did not confiscate them. When I subsequently met one of the officers, I said thank you, and he immediately knew what I meant. He said that he did not see anything.
At the police station, a person who brought meals to prisoners recognized me and called my name. From then on, I received two dishes and many steamed buns in my meals. Of course I shared these with fellow prison inmates and practitioners. Upon my release, I bought a dress and gave it to the person to thank her for taking care of me.
During the National Day celebrations, on October 1, 2000, I was arrested again for protesting at Tiananmen Square. Many practitioners including myself were taken into a car. We opened the window and tried to hang a banner with the words “Falun Dafa is Good” outside the car. The driver tried to stop us and wanted to beat us. Several of us grabbed his hands and said, “Young man, don't do this. A hundred million people practice Falun Dafa in China because it is good. We are peaceful protesters and have not done anything wrong. The constitution says we have the right to freedom of belief. At our age, we are like your senior family members. You shouldn't hit us.” The guards listened and stood there quietly.
The principal at the school I taught at was a young man. When I was arrested during a graduation ceremony, the principal broke the lock into my office, took my Zhuan Falun book and kept it in a safe place. He and several department heads went to the police station to ask for my release. He said, “This teacher is a good person, and everyone misses her at school. I come here today to take her home.” The police turned down his request. He asked them to give him a phone call when they released me, and he would come and pick me up. He also left 1,000 yuan for me to buy daily necessities.
When I returned to work after being detained for two weeks, he returned the Zhuan Falun book to me. I was taken to work in the secretary's office where all I had to do was sweep the floors and boil a kettle of water. The secretary and principal never made things difficult for me.
This principal was transferred to another prestigious middle school after the summer holidays. He was replaced by a female principal. When I was arrested for holding a banner at Tiananmen Square, this principal sent the supervisor of the logistics department, and a security guard, to take me home. The police officers said I had spent 300 yuan on a taxi ride and asked my workplace to pay for it. I told the supervisor that I did not take a taxi, and asked the school not to give the police any money. The supervisor said, “The principal told us to give into any of the police officers' requests, as long as they release you.”
When I returned from Beijing, it was already past eight p.m. It was quite cold that day, but several co-workers were standing outside waiting to see me. They were afraid I would be taken to prison in another area and they would not get to see me. The head of the security department at my workplace took me to the interrogation room and instructed the interrogator to go easy on me. After the interrogation I was taken to the detention center.
I saw the new principal and secretary when I came out of the interrogation room. They treated everyone at the security department to a meal. By rights I should pay for such expenses, but the principal told me that she had claimed these expenses as reimbursement for my business trip.
A police officer told me afterward, “Your principal phoned and asked us to release you. Every time she made a phone call, she reminded us not to hit you. Other workplaces would fire their staff upon learning their employee had taken part in a protest. It's strange that your workplace would want to take you back.”
This female principal was subsequently promoted. She was the highest ranking officer at our workplace.
I went back to the same school to ask for my wages in 2005. Another male principal was in charge then. He paid my wages for the 39 months I was forced to leave home to avoid persecution. The department above him had instructed the school to pay me a minimal sum but the heads of different departments and the principal had a meeting and decided to pay 75% of my wages. The former female principal made a phone call to the secretary and told them to pay me everything in full. At that time, if a staff person took sick leave, he or she would be paid 75% of the wages, but I received the full amount.
Subsequently the female principal mentioned an incident that only the two of us knew about. Many years ago, someone brought me a silk blouse from Shanghai. I tried it on and it was too small. This principal had just graduated and started work at the same school I was in. I sold the blouse to her. She wore it once and it shrunk after washing. As it was real silk, it was quite an expensive piece of clothing. She had just started her first job and was understandably upset that she could not wear the blouse after just wearing it once. I asked her to return the blouse and refunded her the money. I had forgotten about the matter, but she remembered. A kind act can awaken the kindness in another person.
During one of my arrests, a police officer whom I did not know said to me that one of his co-workers told him that I was his teacher. The officer said he regarded me as his teacher and treated me kindly. A practitioner who was with me was three months pregnant, yet the police poured cold water on her. I told the officer about the matter and he found someone who could help. The practitioner was soon released.
I held a hunger strike to protest my arrest and began to vomit blood the next day. I was taken to the hospital. Coincidentally, the hospital I was sent to was part of the university where I used to teach. The supervisor of the logistics section, head of the CT section, doctors, and so on were my former students. They rushed over to greet me.
Later on, as more and more practitioners were taken to the same hospital, we were detained in a big room, and the hospital's police force monitored us. I had taught the police force before and everyone from the captain to the cook in the squad had been my students. Every practitioner admitted into the hospital was free to move around and anyone could visit them or send things.
The director of the local 610 Office came one day. He looked stern and swore at me. There was a young lad behind him. I recognized the young man as a student I had taught at the university and called his name. He came over and said, “Teacher, it's you!” I asked him where I was going to be taken to. He assured me he would try and release me.
After 56 days I returned home without writing any statements promising to give up my belief. Subsequently I never heard anyone mention that this particular student was involved in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners.
After I was arrested in Beijing the head of the police department took me back to my hometown. He actively participates in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners. I asked Master to help me awaken this man's conscience. I told him a personal story.
I told him that I was 15 years old during the cultural revolution. A teacher at my school named Guan Min was accused of being a traitor and publicly humiliated. I could not bear to see my teacher being tortured, but a male classmate went on stage to press the teacher's head. I scolded the classmate and forbade him from doing such things.
Mr. Guan was a good teacher, and we took the same path to school. In spring the melted snow from the mountains flowed down and formed a small river. We could not cross the river and Mr. Guan used his bicycle as a stepping stone for us to walk to the other side. When I graduated and joined the workforce, my workplace was in Mr. Guan's hometown. He was recuperating from an illness at home, and I went to visit him at night. My classmate who took part in humiliating him became bedridden from a stroke before the age of 40.
Mr. Guan's injustice was subsequently redressed and he became head of the education bureau. I got married and lived apart from my husband, who was a soldier. When Mr. Guan learned of my situation, he asked where my husband was stationed and said that his former classmate was mayor of the city where my husband was. He wrote a letter to his classmate and asked me to post it. A month later I was transferred to the city. I was a village teacher, and in 1974 it was not easy to be transferred to a city. I spoke out for my teacher at the young age of 15. I was repaid for my kind act.
The head of the police station was touched by my story. He said, “I will help you as much as I can. Even if the maximum is 100 percent, I will help you 120 percent.” I heard later that he had stopped persecuting practitioners. On the contrary he tried to help whenever he could. He subsequently left his job claiming to be ill.
Two weeks later, this man came to pick me up from prison. My husband was released after 40 days in detention. At that time no one dared to speak up for Falun Gong. The director of the Domestic Security Department wondered who I had asked for help, but of course I did not ask anyone to help me.
My family moved to a different area in 2004. I never regarded the police officers or anyone as my enemies. Those whom I met while being persecuted understood the truth. There are others to whom I could not clarify the facts. I hope that practitioners in my hometown can tell these people the facts about Falun Dafa, and stop them from getting involved in the persecution.