This June, like many other Dafa practitioners in my local area, I prepared to go to Beijing to appeal again. On June 23^rd, because someone had leaked out information, a few dozen practitioners, including myself, were arrested at home, at the railway station, or on the train. We were forcibly taken to detention centers, drug-abstention centers, or asylums. Later on, some of the practitioners were put into labor camp. Maybe it was because of my strong will to not be taken by the evil force and my righteous thought of going to Beijing to appeal, I successfully walked out of the local police station and went to Beijing by transferring a few times.

At that time, after reading Teacher's article Towards Consummation, I thought that no matter where a practitioner comes from, and how many times he has stepped forward to validate Dafa, he should do an even better job in stepping forward to uphold and validate Dafa. He should not think even a little bit about what he will get in return. Moreover, Teacher has said in "Towards Consummation": "Sins will no longer be allowed to continue." I realized that we Dafa practitioners also have responsibilities in the process of rectification of the Fa in the human world and that there won't be many opportunities left for us to do our duty.

On the third day, another practitioner and I chose to go to Tiananmen Square together. There were small groups of Dafa practitioners everywhere along the boulevard. We signaled to each other that we are Dafa practitioners by hand gestures. From our conversation, we knew that they had also overcome enormous difficulties to break through the dragnet of their local police to come to Beijing. While we were talking, the police came up to beat and kick us and dragged us into the police vans. I took an opportunity to open the window and unfurl a banner saying "Truth, Compassion, Forbearance" outside the window. I also chanted: "Falun Dafa is good!" The people on the Square all watched me while I kept chanting. The police rushed to me, violently beat me up and tried to take away the banner. Two other female practitioners inside the van cried loudly: "Police are beating people!" and so they were also beaten brutally. After the police took away my banner, I said to them with a smile: "We Dafa practitioners are good people. For example, I have no hatred at all toward you even though you beat me like this." I paused a while and continued: "We have endured enormous tribulations to " At that moment, our van arrived at the center of the Square. To my surprise, the driver suddenly stopped the van, grabbed an iron rod as thick as a thumb from under his seat, and leapt towards me and beat me with the iron rod.

The first strike fell on my arm, followed by two strikes on my back. I immediately fell into my seat and became nearly unconscious. But in my heart I was still conscious: "The suffering of my flesh body is not important if it is for Dafa." The other two practitioners asked me: "Are you OK?" I recovered a bit and the driver went back to his seat. I thought: "I'm a Dafa practitioner, I shouldn't fall down, I must stand firmly." After I moved around a little bit, I almost fully recovered. A few minutes later, we arrived at Tiananmen Police Station. Many policemen, some of whom seemed to be officials, were standing at the door. I noticed that my arm had become swollen and a bloody lump with the size of a duck egg appeared on my arm. I therefore went to one official and said: "Please take a look" Before I could finish, the driver and those policemen who had arrested me beat me up fiercely once again, just like those sinister gang members on TV. They were cruel and merciless. They intentionally beat my chest, neck, head, stomach and waist. I was disoriented and almost fainted once again. In a daze, I heard a voice saying: "Stop." Later I was taken to a room and the policemen who arrested me followed me into the room. They tightly wrapped my banner around my neck and forcibly dragged me by my neck toward the door, shouting: "Let me see you unfurling your banner!" I almost fainted once again. In the daze I heard another policeman saying: "That's enough, let's stop." I struggled to stand up again and saw a small-sized policeman holding a notebook and a pen asking me repeatedly: "Where do you come from?" Upon hearing this, my compassion suddenly burst out and I replied, almost choked with sobs, "I come to attain Dafa from the universe." He asked: "Then, what is your name?" "I don't want to tell you because the local government will always treat the practitioners who go to appeal with condemnation, labor education, fines, and confiscation of their property. So many practitioners' families have been broken up and some have been tortured to death" He didn't say a word for a while, and then he waved his hand and told me to go to another side.

I went to the other side. It was a long and narrow backyard packed with Dafa practitioners. They were standing there and doing the "Holding the Law Wheel" exercise. I put down my bag and joined them. As soon as I closed my eyes, I felt the Law Wheel spinning at the bloody lump on my arm. About half an hour later, I did the meditation exercise and felt that some energy was massaging my back and lots of bubbles were emitting from the flesh hit by the iron rod. I knew that Teacher was helping me but I also realized immediately that nonetheless, our sufferings for Dafa are well deserved from our lives having become impure and that we must pay back the debts. Everything that Teacher bears for us comes purely from his great compassion. I felt ashamed for involving Teacher in bearing my karma and almost burst into tears once again.

After about another hour, the police ordered us to stand in lines to be transferred to another place. The reason was that there were too many practitioners and some of the practitioners would be sent to the jails in the suburban area of Beijing. I was the first one in the line. When I went into the van, I found that it was exactly the same van that took me here. I smiled to the driver and said: "Comrade driver, something I said last time was not appropriate, I shouldn't have said" He replied uneasily: "You go sit down at the rear of the van."

After we got off the van we found that we were at the Tiananmen Public Security Bureau beside the Tiananmen city gate tower. The ten of us were those who didn't tell their names. By 6 pm, the head of the Bureau came and instructed: "You are welcome to tour Tiananmen; but you are not allowed to unfurl banners here. If you just practice in your homes, nobody will interfere" I immediately replied: "You are saying that nobody will interfere if we practice at home, but this is not true. For example, we want to read Dafa books but the government disallows the publishing of the books and we cannot buy the books from the bookstore, isn't this interfering? Isn't this restricting our freedom of belief? We are all genuinely practicing cultivation and striving to be good people, but the government says that we are a X [evil religion'], making the people believe this and regard us as being abnormal. Isn't this seriously hurting our character and our spirit? We are peacefully appealing to the Central Government according to the Chinese Constitution and related laws. Instead, the National Office of Appeal has become an "Office of Arrests" or the "Entrance to a Jail." Many innocent, kind practitioners have been beaten severely and even to death. Many have been sentenced to jail or forced labor. Many practitioners' families have been broken up and the elders and children are left unattended. A year has passed and the Central Government is still continuing on its own way. Isn't this committing crimes against the people? If you think about this with your heart of kindness, you will find that a small group of the current leaders of the Central Government have become extremely evil!"

"Previously, we all told our names and addresses when we came here to appeal, and we didn't unfurl banners, instead we submitted appeals to the National Office of Appeal. However, after we returned home we were persecuted endlessly. Think about it: Jiang Zemin has committed wrong deeds but he didn't take any responsibility and pushed the responsibility totally on the local government, causing the local police, local work units and the relatives of Dafa practitioners to blame and hate the practitioners. Isn't this making the people fight against each other? It is exactly true. So, to awaken people's righteousness and conscience, to prevent such evil deeds from persisting, we come here to rectify the Fa with our lives. Whoever labeled us an "evil religion," we come here to look for him, so we will not tell our names" I said all this without a break and all the policemen were silent.

At this point, another policeman who looked like a low-ranking official interrupted me: "Hey, what rank of official are you in your hometown?" I replied: "I don't hold any rank, I'm just an ordinary person, a molecule among the Great Law of Truth, Compassion, Forbearance. The only difference between me and you is that I am genuinely practicing cultivation and striving to be a good person while you are suppressing us." He mocked me: "What people? I think you are just a straw person!" I said seriously: "'Straw person' is an insulting name the feudal monarchs used to call the people. The Communist Party claims that it serves the people and that the people is the master while the Party is the public servant. What you are saying now is" The previously mentioned high-ranked official sighed: "Serve the people, you all refuse to tell your names, and we are busy all day and night, who serves us?" I said: "You are not right. The people are also serving you. We all are workers and taxpayers. The money from the people's labor feeds you but you are not doing your duty. You are not comprehensively and objectively reporting the appeals of the Falun Gong practitioners to the Central Government. You are not distinguishing the good from the bad and you are persecuting goodhearted people---" The whole afternoon, my voice and tone was filled with benevolence and kindness. Although I exposed their weaknesses several times, they didn't beat me and only punished me by making me stand on the cement ground for over an hour under the sun.

Around 8 o'clock we were taken back to Tiananmen Police Station and surprisingly the driver was still the person who had hit me with the iron rod. I smiled to him and said: "You must be quite exhausted today." He kept silent. I found his face was all dark. Moreover, there were two big black circles around both of his eyes.

At night the police locked us, over 40 practitioners, in a room with iron railings. It was hot and crowded. The left side of my back was against the wall and because of the pain, I let my right hand and the right side of my back dangle there. Two practitioners lay down to sleep and it became more crowded for the practitioners around them. The practitioners around them couldn't sit in lotus position and had to fold their legs, stoop down and bend their knees to sit there. When I saw this, I thought about the words of Teacher: "At birth, one is assimilated to the characteristic of the universe. Yet as the number of lives increases, a collective form of social relations develops in which some people may develop selfishness and gradually their level will be lowered" I realized that we Dafa practitioners were able to care for each other and be selfless under ordinary situations because the environment was not severe and it was easy to do that. Now that everyone had a very limited space, wasn't this a test for us, the future enlightened beings? Wasn't it a test to see if we could still keep the pain to ourselves and leave the comfort to the others and get rid of all the selfish thoughts under such a harsh environment? Thus, I determined that although I was beaten the most seriously, I would not lie down to sleep and I would let my body of flesh be refined and reborn in the "molten steel" of pain.

After over 2 hours, the practitioners felt more and more distressed. Two policemen came up and I said to them: "Comrade police, we request to be separated into two rooms. It is too crowded and we cannot sleep." They cursed back: "You are even giving requests at this place!" and left the room. After about an hour they came back and saw somebody reading <>. They shouted: "Don't read anymore, we're going to take a rest." I stood up and told the fellow practitioners: "Let us sit separately on two sides, male one side, female the other side, and try to let the elders sleep" The two policemen immediately pointed their fingers at me and shouted: "You, come out!" When I walked to the corridor they kicked and beat me and cursed me for "making trouble." After the beating, one of them said: "Go fetch your bag." After I fetched my bag, he said: "Go." I thought he was going to single me out to torture me and I was thinking in my mind: "I don't know if my body can still endure this. But no matter what, I must pass the test even if I die, so just let them do what they want!" When I was at the door I asked him: "Where do you want me to go?" They ferociously hit me on my back and neck with their fists and said: "Go away!" Thus I was driven out of the police station at midnight.

I initially planned to stay longer at the home of a Beijing Dafa practitioner and go to Tiananmen once again on July 22nd. The Beijing Dafa practitioners urged me several times to go back home to study Fa, so I could only return home. Around July 22nd, the thought of going to Tiananmen Square a thousand miles away to rectify the Fa was once again in my mind. The local practitioners repeatedly advised me not to go and I began hesitating. On that night I had a dream. In the dream I saw a huge Falun spinning and covering the whole sky. Many Dafa practitioners were flying toward the sky and I also flew up. After I woke up I couldn't keep idle anymore. The next afternoon, I put down my farm work and went to Beijing to rectify the Fa for the third time. This time, Jiang Zemin and his pawns fully exposed their bandit-like habits in their extreme and nervous methods of harrassing the people. They deployed public and secret posts at all railway stations in the nearby provinces and on all the highways leading to Beijing. They forcibly searched the bags of all the passengers arriving in Beijing and required that the passengers to show their ID and speak their local dialects. They searched the passengers' pockets and even their underwear. Any Falun Gong books or scraps of paper were immediately taken away. The daily floating populations of a few hundred thousand were all searched over. I myself have witnessed a county official from a province outside Beijing telling people that even he could not enter Beijing. Many passengers dared not to speak while they were being searched. After being searched, they would blame the government loudly for being hooligan government. Many long distance buses with Dafa practitioners on board were also detained. One driver said that there were four more road blocks in the city of Beijing on the thoroughfares leading to Tiananmen Square. He had transported four full truckloads of Falun Gong practitioners from Beijing in those few days. The practitioners who were detained in Beijing were all sent to jail and tortured, forced to tell their names, and then they were escorted back to their hometowns to be sentenced.

I was detected by the police at a place near a suburb of Beijing and detained along with a few dozen other Dafa practitioners at an open-air cement ground. The other practitioners were mostly peasants from mountainous areas far away from Beijing. They were very poor, wearing ragged clothes, and they lacked information. This was their first appeal and they told the police their names and addresses. They regarded this as taking a test, and they thought that they must pass the test to achieve Consummation. I realized that Teacher may have arranged me and another female practitioner who also went to Beijing to uphold Dafa three times to be there in order to help them improve. In the meantime, I was also encouraged by their perseverance in Dafa and spirit of not fearing any persecution. After three days' discussion, we all had big improvements. At 8 am of July 22nd, after we did the exercises, we suddenly found that the sky was cloudless and very blue and two white clouds formed the shape of "22". After a while, another huge symbol of "7" appeared in the east. We applauded right away. The police also watched this scene. It disappeared after about half an hour. The police searched me three times but failed to find my banner. I discussed with these peasant practitioners: "When we hold the banner together later on, we should form a circle and protect the banner from being taken away by the police.

At noon, 20 leader-like people with three cameras showed up. I raised the banner and the practitioners immediately formed a circle and chanted loudly: "Falun Dafa is good!" Police and those "leaders" all came over and hit our heads fiercely. They dragged me down to the ground, stamped on me and handcuffed me. Since there were not enough handcuffs, the male practitioners were all locked up. I promoted Dafa to the police and those visitors. One policeman said to another: "Go get an electric baton for me." I thought: "At most, I give up my flesh body." I kept on talking. Another practitioner was a veteran who had received many honors. When he was talking, those policemen were all silent. To my surprise, the police took off our handcuffs after about ten minutes and kept us under the sun. At this moment, a few more practitioners were sent here. They also refused to tell their names. The police initially planned to send the practitioners who refused to tell their names to mental asylums. At 4 pm, the local governments of those peasant practitioners dispatched special cars to take them back. The police then forcefully stuffed us into these cars after beating us once more. We were thrown out of these special cars at a desolate hill a few hundred kilometers away from Beijing

After I returned home, I saw that my fellow practitioners had been sentenced to labor camp or jail one after another and I was very sad and pained. I thought, how could I continue on so lonely and in such degradation? Later on I read Teacher's new article "Rationality" and I realized that Teacher had pointed out the right direction of upholding and validating Dafa for the practitioners in the future. During the process of clarifying the truth of Falun Gong to the vast people, I became clearer about the dividing line between evil beings and ordinary beings.

"They will distinguish the righteous from the evil, receive the genuine teachings, lighten their bodies, enhance their wisdom, strengthen their hearts" (Essentials for Further Advancement)

Dafa practitioners in Mainland China

October 2000