I am a Chinese person residing overseas; I am also a Falun Gong practitioner. I would like to talk about my family's various experiences from cultivating Falun Gong. Just like most of the young generation born after the Great Cultural Revolution, I had no knowledge of the existence of Buddha and Gods; neither did I believe them. I had heard of various Qigong exercises flourishing all over China. I did not think anything special about those exercises except for some mystic feeling. Because my mom was not in good health, she had learnt different kinds of Qigong; however, they never had any effects. So I only regarded Qigong as "a physical exercise with some sort of mystic flavor". In early 1995, I found myself by chance in an overseas job. During the Christmas vacation of 1995, I went home to visit my parents in China. Before my trip, my mom wrote to me and mentioned that she and my dad were practicing Falun Gong. It really surprised me. There was nothing strange about my mom practicing it; however, it was beyond my imagination that my dad also practiced it. My dad was a modernist school artist with a degree from an art college. Painting is his only hobby. He put all of his heart on art research (Modernist Western Painting.) He would sacrifice anything for this cause. Because of this, my mom always quarreled with him. My dad painted more than one thousand paintings. His painting speed is stupendous. His work has been widely praised by many western people. He tried to become famous wholeheartedly in order to leave something behind for his children. However he was never able to achieve it. So he became more and more hot-tempered, and his health became worse day by day. Everyday, he needed to take many medicines for his stomach disorder. Upon meeting my parents, I was deeply shocked by the enormous changes in them, changes which made me extremely happy. They enjoyed a more harmonious relationship. My mom had become more positive. It became much easier for her to climb stairs. Before she practiced Falun Gong it took her a long time to climb the three-story building. It was my dad who had the biggest change: his once-gaunt face had a ruddy complexion. He had also cut his "artist" long hair. The most astonished thing to me is that he gave up the hobby of painting, which had made him so impatient. Except for doing well in his job, my dad used most of his spare time for Falun Dafa cultivation. Upon my arrival, my parents started to introduce Falun Gong to me. Having witnessed the tremendous benefits they had from practicing Falun Gong, I could not help reading Zhuan Falun (the main book of Falun Gong practice). I felt the book was very good after I finished reading it. I found the answers to many questions that had puzzled me. When I asked my father how he could put aside his treasured hobby so easily, I got this answer: "By reading Zhuan Falun, I realized that the original meaning of our lives is to go back to our original self, not to enjoy the life of everyday people. I have the universal law now, so I should make good use of my time in cultivation." As my vacation was short, I returned to work in a hurry and did not finish learning all five sets of exercises. I brought back all the Dafa books with me but did not find an exercise site close to my home. Without a good practice situation, I only read the books in my spare time without doing the exercises. My parents always wrote to me and sent me new articles so as to encourage me in my cultivation. The time was flying, and soon one year had passed. In February 1997, I once again visited China. When I saw my parents again, I could not believe what I saw with my eyes. My dad looked very young with a ruddy complexion and smoother skin; his epilepsy symptom had almost completely disappeared. The most incredible thing to my husband and me was that he was contacting the art galleries and the museums in the Province to donate all the paintings he did before he started cultivation. If any friends wanted to have some of his paintings, he was willing to give them away. However, before he started practicing Falun Gong, he treasured his work so much that he was never willing to let any of his work go. He would not sell them even though some people offered to buy them from him. His action of donating all his work really perplexed his relatives and friends. They thought he had gone insane. However my dad thought it did not coincide with the standard of a practitioner to have his paintings occupy the company's storage space due to the limited space of his home. I also heard from my mom that he was the assistant for the exercise site. Every morning he was in charge of bringing a tape player to the exercise site. No matter it was cold winter or hot summer he never failed. Soon I joined my parents in studying Fa and going to practice at the exercise site every morning. My dad took advantage of the 15 minutes' walk to the exercise the site to recite Zhuan Falun. Practitioners' cultivation experiences shared during group study of Fa helped me a lot. Through the three months studying the Fa and practicing with practitioners in China, I truly experienced Falun Dafa's incomparable sacredness. Just like Teacher wrote in the article "Environment": "The lofty conduct that Dafa disciples have established in this environmentincluding every word and every actcan make people realize their own weaknesses and identify their shortcomings; it can move one's heart, refine one's conduct, and enable one to make progress more rapidly. Therefore, new practitioners or self-taught disciples must go to the exercise sites to do the exercises." Soon my younger brother also started to cultivate in Falun Dafa. After I returned from China, I found a local exercise site with the help of an assistant center in Beijing, and started to study Fa and do exercises with local practitioners. In May 1998, I invited my mother to come here to take care of my little child. Since then, she began to live with me. During the Spring Festival, 1999, my father and brother also came here. Right after my father and brother went back to China, the April 25th incident happened. Upon reading in the local newspaper about the April 25th incident, I called my dad and brother to inquire about the situation. They had just come back from Beijing. After July 20, 1999, the evil forces began the ruthless crackdown and persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners in China. On July 22, they illegally searched my dad's house and confiscated his passport, deposit certificate, TV, camcorder, stereos, computer, etc. They had looted the house almost to the bare walls. They even tore apart a cotton quilt to look for Dafa material, since they thought my family would hide some in it. My dad and brother were illegally detained for one month. Having learnt this terrible news, we wrote to the United Nations human rights organizations to seek for support, because thousands upon thousands of Falun Dafa practitioners in China were detained or sentenced for no reason, and they are enduring tremendous hardships. Practitioners abroad also helped clarify the truth to the people of all countries in many ways. Several months later my dad was once again illegally detained because he had passed on Teacher's new articles and was reported to the authorities by a coworker. My brother was also detained even though he did nothing. In the detention center they were subjected to inhuman tortures: they were electrocuted, beaten, etc. After he was released my dad did not tell us of his sufferings in details because he did not want to get us worried and also because his phone was tightly monitored and his whereabouts were put under close surveillance. I learned about their experience after I read from Minghui net about the crimes committed by the local police precinct. Afterward I called home and verified that everything I read was true. My dad regretfully told me "I did not cultivate well enough, I did not handle some of the tests well. I feel so unworthy of our Teacher." After the detention, my dad and brother had been staying home studying Fa and doing exercises without going out to clarify the truth. After having read "Benevolent and Great Master" and "Serious Teaching" published on Minghui net, they were deeply touched and at once went to Beijing with other local practitioners. My dad and some practitioners unfolded a banner reading "Falun Dafa Is Good" in the Tiananmen Square. My brother and other practitioners went to distribute truth materials of Falun Dafa around in Beijing. Now my dad and brother have been illegally sentenced to three years in labor camp. I am proud of my dad and bother as well as tens of thousands of Falun Dafa practitioners in China who have stepped out to clarify the truth. Their courageous actions have inspired all overseas practitioners to clarify the truth to the people all over the world and to suffocate the evil. Even though we the overseas practitioners have also been interfered with and disrupted to some extent by the Chinese government, we can still freely do exercises outdoors and study Fa together, enjoying the basic rights as human beings. Now, my little daughter is almost 3 years old. She goes to the practice site to practice with us everyday and distributes the materials to passersby. Since January 2001, we have tried to have my relatives in China visit my dad and brother. However, my relatives were told that if my dad and brother would not submit repentance letters no visiting would be allowed, and the officials controlled the information about them very tightly. During the Chinese Spring Festival, my mom got word that my dad and brother had written repentance letters. The real situation could not be verified. We could not understand and felt very sorry for my dad and my brother at that time. But I believe that their hearts toward Dafa are steadfast and unchangeable forever. March 25, 2001 Author's note: Because my dad and brother are still detained it is not suitable to disclose their names here.
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