(Minghui.org) A few months ago, I was fortunate enough to have watched the movie Coming for You several times, and every time it touched my soul. The movie was shown in our local theater, and although I sat in the last row, it touched me deeply and made me understand more.
I am more aware of the incomparable compassion of Master, and I understand that as a veteran Dafa disciple who obtained the Fa before 1999, I must value Dafa and cherish the path I have traveled in cultivation.
There is a scene in the movie where the main character gathered with Dafa disciples from all over the country in a residential building in Beijing the night before going to Tiananmen Square.
Everyone sang a song to express their thoughts and determination. After I saw that, it was as if everything in the past reappeared in front of me vividly.
I obtained the Fa at the age of seven and went to Tiananmen Square to validate Dafa at the age of ten. Later, my family suffered long-term persecution. When I went to college, I was lost among ordinary people but returned to Dafa after I left China and came overseas. I gradually matured through various tribulations and tests.
The movie also reminded me of what Master said,
“The Dafa disciples who have made it through from July 20, 1999, should cherish themselves. You are truly outstanding, and even gods cherish you. I hope you will do well on the road ahead. Those who haven’t done well need to be especially careful and treasure the time they still have.” (“Fa Teaching at the New York Fa Conference on the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Dafa’s Introduction to the Public,” Team Yellow Translation)
The Trip to Beijing
One night around midnight, at the end of 1999, I took a train to Beijing with my parents and other practitioners in my hometown to go to Tiananmen Square to validate Dafa. After a few days and nights of sitting on the train, we finally arrived.
After we transferred between a few buses, we waited on the roadside for a Beijing practitioner to pick us up and put us up for the night. It was getting dark, I was hungry and tired, and a sense of loneliness struck me.
The Beijing practitioner took us to an apartment where there were many practitioners from all over the country.
Although I had just met them, I felt that they were very familiar and kind. Some practitioners put their homemade buns and pickles on the table and asked us to eat.
All the practitioners in the apartment ate together, and while eating, we shared our own understandings of cultivation based on the Fa. I felt warm, steady, and sure like never before, even though we were eating cold, hard buns.
Early the next morning, we arrived at Tiananmen Square. It was surrounded by a tense atmosphere. It was especially tense near Jinshui Bridge, where there were many policemen in plain clothes.
We took out our “Falun Dafa is good” banner and unfurled it under the white marble pillar in front of Tiananmen Square. My father held one end of the banner in one hand, crossed the rail under the white marble pillar, and stood under the pillar.
Then my mother quickly unfolded the banner and held the other end. The rest of the practitioners stood under the banner and began to do the second exercise, “holding the wheel in front of the head.”
Time was frozen. History was fixed at that moment.
I will never forget that moment. The sky was so blue as we stood there quietly and peacefully to express our thoughts to the world: “Falun Dafa is good!” and “Master [Li Hongzhi] is great!”
In less than a minute, I heard sirens in the distance. Several policemen arrived immediately.
One of them knocked my father down to the ground, and the other officers began to arrest us.
Blood dripped from my father's face onto the ground. We were taken to a van.
I saw a lady who was leaning against the window of the van, and she looked at us with concern. She held her two hands in front of her chest in a heshi gesture and nodded to us when she saw that we got in the van.
Nobody said a word, but I no longer felt afraid at that moment. Later, I was forcibly stuffed into another police car, and I had to twist in the trunk with a metal net that seemed like it was for police dogs.
We arrived at a police station, where my father and a college student were detained in separate rooms. The rest of the practitioners from my hometown and I were all locked in one room.
After a while, I heard the sound of whipping from the other rooms, accompanied by painful groans.
For a long time, no police officer came to the room where we stayed. Then a few officers came to ask us where we were from. None of us told them anything.
Another group of officers came and tried to intimidate us. One of the officers lifted his fist and threatened a teenage girl.
The girl was unmoved, so he put down his fist. Another officer told my mother to recite Hong Yin, and then he threw a tissue that he had wiped his nose with at my mother's face.
Not only was my mother not angry, but she picked up the dirty paper thrown on the ground. In the evening, the officers began to torture practitioners.
They didn’t allow the elderly or children to go to the toilet, and they cuffed my mother’s and another female practitioner’s hands behind them in a painful position: one hand from the shoulder down and the other from the back up.
This kind of torture can cripple a victim after some time. The lady from our hometown was very slim and looked pale, and her situation worsened during the torture.
My mother suffered a lot too, and the sweat fell from her face. Even so, they refused to tell the officers where we came from.
The third night was New Year's Eve. The police gave me half a bowl of porridge.
When they left, I sat in their chair and took a break. In the early hours of the morning, we were picked up by police from our hometown and taken back. On the way back, I thought about my father, as we did not know where he was. I felt infinitely sad and didn’t know what was waiting for us next.
Clarifying the Truth Amid the Persecution
After we returned to our hometown, my parents were both illegally sentenced to prison.
The police ransacked our house like bandits and even took away money in the safe. The next day, on the way to school, I thought to myself that my life had changed forever and that I would only rely on myself in the future.
At school, I was often called on by police officers. Once, my teacher, out of curiosity, pulled me out of class during self-study time and asked me if Falun Dafa was good.
I told her, “Falun Dafa is good, and my parents are good people.” The teacher said, “I understand. Now you can go back to your class.”
Without my parents around, I went through many tests and tribulations as a Dafa disciple. I once rode my bicycle to my uncle’s home to celebrate Chinese New Year and brought him a gift.
As soon as I entered the door, he said to me, “I want to ask you a question today: ‘Is Falun Dafa good?’ If you answer, ‘Yes’, you can leave my house, and you are not my niece anymore. If you answer, ‘No’, I will treat you to a good meal.”
I blurted out without thinking at all, “Falun Dafa is good.”
Without saying a word, my uncle ushered me, my bike, and my gift box out. Although I was driven out, I was still very happy because I thought this was a test of whether I firmly believed in Dafa, which I passed.
My father was confined in a solitary cell and tortured in the forced labor camp for a long time. His term in the labor camp was prolonged because he spoke the truth about Falun Dafa when local officials inspected the labor camp.
Only a few months after he was set free, he was taken away from home by plainclothes police and sent to forced labor again.
Then my mother was released, and I was very happy to be with her. She always tried her best to clarify the truth to people, even though our family went through so much hardship. On weekends, she took me out to distribute truth-clarification materials.
We carried the materials with us. We rarely took a bus and walked all the way in order to save money. We ate cucumbers and tomatoes when we were hungry, and we usually spent the whole day distributing the materials.
We also distributed materials at night. When we walked down the dark streets, several times we came to a dead end, and some big dogs would rush out toward us. I was terrified, but my mother told me not to be afraid. “Say ‘Falun Dafa is good’ to have the dogs stop barking and be quiet,” she said. Sure enough, the dogs seemed to understand my mother's words and turned away silently.
On New Year's Eve, my mother and I went out to distribute materials as usual. We walked a long way because the next day was the New Year and my mother wanted to pass out more materials for people to read.
Because it was very late, I wanted to finish and go home, and I was a little perfunctory on several occasions. I didn't distribute the material for several households when it was not easy to do so.
My mother always told me that I should take it seriously and not miss anyone. She would massage my feet to make me relax when we walked a long way.
When she saw that I was really tired, she would carry me, a big girl, on her back. I felt that I was the happiest child in the world on my mother's back.
I had such a good mother. It was the happiest thing in the world that three of us in my family were all cultivating in Dafa, although my father was still being persecuted in the labor camp.
About two years later, my mother was reported to police for distributing truth-clarification materials. A police officer slapped her in the face and arrested her.
My mother was once again put into a forced labor camp, and once again I was left alone. I often remembered the days when my mother carried me on her back.
A local practitioner suggested that I write truth-clarification letters and mail them out. When I first decided to write letters, I thought that if I didn’t eat breakfast in the morning, I would save enough money to mail the letters.
As a result, I was not hungry at all even though I didn't have breakfast that day. I thought that Master was encouraging me when he knew that I wanted to save people. Thank you, Master!
Once, I was waiting for a haircut at a hairdresser. I saw many people in the shop and wanted to tell them the truth about Dafa.
The hairdresser had just cut an old lady’s hair, and I praised her skill. She was very happy to hear this.
Then I engaged her in a conversation so I could tell her the facts about Dafa. She was doubtful at the outset and was skeptical as to how a child could possibly understand so much.
When I talked more, she began to listen carefully. She even asked me some questions, which I answered one by one.
During our conversation, her attitude changed from doubt to trust. The other people in the shop quietly listened to our conversation. I felt really pleased for them after leaving the shop.
After a few years, my father came out of the labor camp.
Once home, he started to provide technical support to practitioners in the local area. On the weekends, he took me a long distance to an electronics mall to buy supplies so practitioners could make truth-clarification materials.
My father was full of righteous thoughts and would clarify the truth wherever he went. He spoke with the salespeople about Dafa and gave them DVDs. I learned a lot from him about how to clarify the truth.
He often shared his understandings with me based on the Fa and encouraged me to study the Fa more. I began distributing the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party according to what I had learned from adult practitioners.
People liked to stay outside at dusk and early evening during the summer, so I put some copies of the Nine Commentaries in my bag and went to the lake to talk to people.
I was not afraid because I believed that as long as I was righteous and wanted to save people, Master would protect me. I had never been in trouble for passing out materials and speaking the truth.
Returning to the Path of Cultivation
When I was young, I followed my parents and fellow practitioners in my cultivation. Sadly, my own understanding of the Fa was, in fact, shallow.
When I grew up, especially after I went to college, I lived away from my parents and lost that good cultivation environment. After graduating from college, I worked in a city far away from my parents.
Gradually, I was influenced by ordinary people's desires. My parents told me to study the Fa more every time I went home, but I didn't follow their advice.
Once a cultivator doesn't study the Fa for a long time, the old forces will take them away from cultivation.
One day I saw flames atop my head during a video chat with my friends. I felt it was strange and went to show my father. He didn’t say a word and went back to discuss with my mother.
The next day, he solemnly asked me to sit in front of them. He told me that he and my mother wanted me to study abroad and hoped that I would cultivate diligently in an overseas environment.
Later my mother had a dream in which she passed several mountains.
There was a big mountain in the middle of several small mountains. A child in a black Taoist robe kept bowing to the mountain. My mother felt pity for the child. At that moment, a loud voice came from the sky and said to my mother, “This child will be entrusted to you. Take good care of her.”
Later, my parents prepared for me to go abroad. However, I couldn’t get my visa for a while, and I experienced sickness karma.
I began to realize the seriousness of cultivation. I was no longer the little disciple who followed my parents in cultivation. I had to walk my own cultivation path, and I had to fulfill my mission. I started to read Master's new lectures every night, and I cried while reading them.
I realized that I had missed so much. I said from the bottom of my heart, “Master, please help me. I want to be a Fa-rectification period Dafa disciple. I want to fulfill my vows to save sentient beings.”
I got my visa the next day and left China alone.
I worked very hard, getting up at five in the morning and working until three in the afternoon to make a living. Then I went to school from 4:00 p.m to 9:00 p.m. When I got home from school, I started to make phone calls to China to clarify the truth until 1:00 or 2:00 a.m.
I only slept for three to four hours a day for a whole year. It seemed like a hard life, but I was very happy because I had returned to cultivation.
I have been abroad for five years, during which time I have been through many tests and tribulations.
As Master said,
“Each and every barrier must be broken through,And everywhere does evil lurk.Abundant troubles rain down together,All to see: Can you pull through?”(“Tempering the Will” in Hong Yin, translation version A)
