(Minghui.org) I'm 77 years old and have cultivated Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) for over 10 years. Fellow practitioners in my area and I have traveled throughout over 700 villages in our county.
We told every household, “Falun Dafa is good” and suggested that they quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations. Our belief in Master and the Fa helped us pull through over so many years. By adhering to the Fa's requirements and helping people while peacefully resisting the persecution, I have also witnessed Buddha's imminent grace from Master.
Here I would like to share some stories of Dafa disciples in my county. I would like to offer this sharing to the sacred online Fahui (Falun Dafa cultivation experience conference). On behalf of the practitioners in my area, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Master.
We also hope that, through our stories, more people will get to know the truth of Falun Gong, and treat Falun Gong practitioners kindly. They may also have a peek at how many difficulties Master and Dafa disciples have overcome in order to offer salvation to sentient beings. Therefore, when the opportunity arises, people may make the right decision for their future.
At the beginning of the persecution, young practitioners in my county were all arrested. We couldn't obtain truth-clarification materials to tell people about the persecution and clear up the lies about Falun Gong.
I anxiously sat at home, knowing that sentient beings were being poisoned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and they hated practitioners because of the lies the Party perpetuated. A practitioner received a flyer from a big city. I took it and tried to make copies for our area.
Several copying services refused to copy the flyer for me; they had received threats from the CCP. We then copied the content by hand. This lasted until a practitioner purchased a printer.
The reach of the evil extended to every level of government in every area. Each agency had to assign manpower to watch every street and alley in the county. The whole county was under surveillance 24 hours a day. Every government office had assigned responsible agencies and individuals to carry out the directives.
As a result, many Dafa disciples were followed or arrested when distributing truth-clarification materials at night.
We distributed flyers to tell people the facts about Falun Gong and the persecution. After we covered the cities for many rounds, we went to the rural villages. I sometimes went alone if I couldn't find someone to go with me. My knees were a little bit deformed due to rheumatoid arthritis, an illness I had before practicing Falun Gong. Therefore, walking was hard for me. I was sometimes exhausted after returning from villages.
Two practitioners saw my hardship, so they asked me to get the flyers ready at home. They rode bicycles to distribute the materials. They usually went out the entire night in the winter, leaving at 5 p.m. and coming back after 7 a.m.. After a while, they were arrested when distributing materials. I then took it over again.
I later teamed up with other practitioners. We sometimes went out during the day and sometimes during the night. We would study the map before our departure. If no bus would take us there, we would take a taxi. Taxis cost over 100 yuan each time. Therefore, we were very thrifty and wanted to make sure that we spent our salaries on the need for saving people.
Traveling in the rural area is hard for people at my age. In particular, there are usually about three miles between villages. We would have to walk from one to another. Sometimes I was too tired to stand and had to lie down when waiting for the bus. I once distributed materials for a night with another practitioner who was over 80 years old. We traveled over 30 miles on foot. I could barely move the next morning.
Sometimes our bodies were numb due to the cold in the winter, and our feet blistered. Sometimes in the summer, the sweat poured off our faces like water.
We would then recite “When it’s difficult to endure, you can endure it.” (Zhuan Falun) We were happy despite the tiredness.
Eleven Dafa disciples including me hired three cars to go to the villages to clarify the truth in January 2001. We were illegally arrested and detained. The county Public Security Bureau dispatched over 20 policemen and tortured us in various ways.
After they got tired, they ordered wine and food for the night and continued to beat us as they wined and dined. Several young practitioners were hung up. The policemen hit their feet with stools, stabbed them with spikes, strangled them with thin strings, and struck their heads with brooms.
As a result, a young female practitioners vomited blood. The head of the Public Security Bureau kept yelling, “Harder! Harder!” He didn't think the other policemen tortured practitioners enough. He came over and stomped on a practitioner's hand with his heavy shoes.
We all knew the source of the truth-clarification materials, but no one gave out the information. No one betrayed other practitioners. Because we all knew, this materials production site was the only one in our area. Practitioners established it by risking their lives. It generated the basic supplies for us to save sentient beings – it was more important than our lives. We would rather die than give out the information.
The torture and interrogation started at 8:30 p.m. and continued until 5 a.m. the next morning. Several male practitioners were carried out on stretchers and sent to a detention center.
Seven days later, the Public Security Bureau sent six injured male practitioners to a labor camp. One of them was tortured to death.
Elderly female practitioners including me were sent home after several days of detention. None of us betrayed fellow practitioners during this persecution or in the following cases.
Almost all the young practitioners in our area were illegally arrested and detained in 2001. Only us older practitioners were left. However, we weren't afraid. I calmed down quickly and made up my mind to help more people know the truth. We formed one body to produce and distribute materials. The evil information blockade didn't work.
We placed importance on sending forth righteous thoughts in 2002. We would do it intensely each time before we went out to distribute materials. We took group action and ended our trips with another round of intense sending righteous thoughts. We did it to cleanse the evil interference.
We continued such procedures in our efforts until 2005. More practitioners in our area had stepped forward by then. We also recovered several group Fa study sites. Although the police tried many times to sabotage our sites, they never succeeded. We shared amongst each other and reached he consensus that group Fa study is the cultivation form Master has left for us. If we do it righteously, no one can harm us.
A large-scale arrest occurred again in May 2005. A lot of police forces were involved. They searched the entire city. One materials production site was sabotaged. Seven practitioners and I were taken to the local detention center. Two practitioners were sent to labor camps. The terror remained as a shadow in many practitioners' minds. We were hindered: we didn't resume large-scale truth-clarification and only distributed flyers in the cities.
In 2007, in order to break through the obstacles and eliminate the evil, we had a discussion among local practitioners. Encouraged by a practitioner from a different town, we decided to deliver truth-clarifying materials to every house in our area. The materials included copies of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, Falun Gong flyers, booklets and DVDs.
We never had such a large-scale material delivery in a systemic way. We were facing all kinds of difficulties: limited time, producing a large amount of materials, financial management, coordinating practitioners, transportation, etc. Meanwhile we needed to help the fellow practitioners who had slacked off in cultivation, and face the interference from our family members. The solution to every problem required enormous effort from practitioners, and we could not achieve it without reading the Fa. So, we all treated studying the Fa as the most important.
It took us eight months to finish this large project. During that process, we didn't have any conflicts. Everybody collaborated with everybody harmoniously, and played an important role in his or her position. The collaboration formed in this project laid a solid foundation for our future projects. Later, in winter 2009 and summer 2013, we launched two similar projects, which only took two months, and involved a small amount of manpower.
We started to clarify the truth face-to-face in 2004. Every day, I talked to people on the street. Later, more and more practitioners stepped out and joined us, clarifying the truth in all kinds of public places and residential areas. Two groups of us visited almost every household in one district of the city.
However, the rural areas nearby had not been covered. Delivering materials to households is not a good way to clarify the truth in the rural areas, because many people cannot read, and many people don't have DVD players at home. I suggested to practitioners that we should go to those areas and talk to people in person. However, some fellow practitioners thought that it was dangerous.
They had their reasons. Talking to people is more time-consuming than delivering materials. It will take hours or even days to go through one village. This means that the risk of being exposed and being arrested will also increase. Even delivering materials sometimes resulted in being arrested. In 2003, a local female practitioner was arrested when delivering materials in a rural area. She was later tortured to death.
I was worried about the rural people who had never heard about the truth of Falun Gong. Master said: “The old forces don't dare to oppose our clarifying the truth or saving sentient beings. What's key is to not let them take advantage of the gaps in your state of mind when you do things.” (“Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston”) I made up my mind: I must do it, no matter how difficult it seems.
I asked a senior practitioner to go with me. We went to rural areas with all kinds of materials in two large bags, and talked to everybody we saw there. We had no experience at the beginning, so we were slow—it took us five days to go through a 300-household village. At the end, somebody reported on us, and we were arrested.
We were jailed in a detention center, where we kept sending forth righteous thoughts and telling the jailed criminals and police officers the truth of Falun Gong. Fellow practitioners in our area exposed our case to the public, exerting pressure on the police. Fifteen days later, we were released.
We tried to look inward for our loopholes. I found that I was too rash and impetuous. I was always worried that there was not enough time to talk to many people, and I was not compassionate enough when talking to people. The senior practitioner, who was arrested with me, also found that she was sometimes too self-centered. When people didn't want to listen to her, she was too pushy, which annoys others. She also found another loophole of hers. Once, a few people asked her: “Old lady, aren't you worried about being arrested?” She said, “I was arrested five times. I can go in and out of the detention center as I wish.” The bragging was a loophole, which the old forces took advantage of.
We adjusted our cultivation state and stepped out on the journey of clarifying the truth in rural areas again. This time, two female fellow practitioners joined us. One of them was 80 years old. We split into two teams, and visited every house in a village. To save time and talk to more people, we even skipped lunch.
In one town, people were badly brainwashed by the government, and had a very negative attitude toward us. We were arrested three times and harassed by local police five times in that town. The 80-year-old practitioner was even beaten and injured by a local villager. We asked fellow practitioners to send forth righteous thoughts for us, and wrote letters and delivered materials to the residences in that town.
The preliminary truth-clarification laid a good foundation, and we found it easier when talking to people face-to-face later.
Just like that, we spent three months and visited every house in more than 50 villages.
In 2009, a practitioner from another town heard about our project. He spent all his savings and bought a car for us. A local practitioner learned how to drive and got a license. The better transportation greatly improved our efficiency. During that period, we had eight practitioners in four teams going to the rural areas every day. Usually we can convince several hundred people to quit the communist party every day.
Once, four practitioners were arrested in our area. Every practitioner sent forth righteous thoughts, exposed the case to the public, and wrote to the police department requesting their release. The arrested practitioners also refused to collaborate with the police. One week later, they were all released.
On June 20, 2009, a local male practitioner was arrested. He escaped the police station the second day, which horrified the local police. They launched a large-scale search. Failing to find the practitioner, the police took his brother away, who was not a practitioner, and ordered his family to trade him in for his brother.
We didn't pay enough attention to it. We didn't try to expose the case to the public, nor did we take action to rescue his brother. Moreover, we didn't realize that a huge amount of evil elements were assembled and pressing down in our area. Six days later, when six of us talked to rural people in a village 40 miles away, we were arrested.
In the police station, we kept silent and refused to tell the police anything. We kept sending forth righteous thoughts and telling the policemen what Falun Gong really was. The policemen didn't know what to do with us. They asked the family members of four practitioners to pay money to bail them out. But they let me and another senior practitioner go. We got home safely that night. This incidence created pressure for some local practitioners, and for a long time they didn't dare to clarify the truth in public.
In September, the local government started an even larger-scale campaign to find and arrest practitioners before a government-run event. I and another practitioner didn't want to stop our truth-clarification project, and we continued to go to the rural areas. However, we didn't pay enough attention to sending forth righteous thoughts. In one village, we were reported and arrested.
We were sent to the county police department. The chief recognized us. He was mad, and cursed us. “You guys are so stubborn, and never give up! You dare to do this when all the law enforcement is looking for you people!” he yelled. He called his supervisors, and threatened us with severe punishment. He tried to send us to a labor camp. Since we were both above 70, which is above the cutoff age for labor camps, he reported our age as 69 in the paperwork. He also asked the 610 Office in my area to exert pressure on my original workplace, telling them to stop paying my retirement stipend.
My heart was not moved. The fellow practitioner also had solid righteous thoughts. We kept telling the police the truth about Faun Gong. I said to them, “Only my Master can make arrangements for my life. What you say will not count.” The policemen said, “What we say doesn't count? OK. We will see. Forget about being released. We, such a large party, cannot handle you? I don't believe it. We will ask your workplace to take you off their payroll. I will see how you can make a living without your retirement stipend.” I answered, “My Master will take care of me. Your arrangement will be in vain.”
I had none, not even a tiny bit of an attachment of fear. Later, we were sent to a detention center, where we kept sending forth righteous thoughts and doing the exercises all day long. We talked to everybody there about Falun Gong. Nobody believed that we would be released, at least not soon. I said to myself, “Nobody can make arrangements for me, except Master. There are still many people outside waiting for me to save them. This is not a place that I should stay. Even if I have loopholes, the old forces should not persecute me. I will walk the path arranged by Master, and correct myself with Master's help.”
The police ordered my daughter to pay money to bail me out. My son-in-law said that they didn't have the money. The police threatened to send me to a brainwashing center and jail me there for a year. My son-in-law said, “As you wish.” The police didn't know what to do, so they asked my son for 3,000 yuan. My son said, “Don't talk about money with me. I am jobless, and don't know when my next meal will be. You are asking me for money?” The police said, “If you don't pay, your mother will go to jail.” My son said, “Don't send her there. You can send me there. I will do it for my mom.” The policemen were out of tricks. One of them called the local 610 Office: “We can't get money from them. Do you want to give it a try? We don't know what to do.”
Under Master's protection and due to my family's resistance and fellow practitioners' work to rescue me, we were released 19 days later. However, a few days later, policemen and the supervisors at my original workplace came to talk to me at my house, and tried to record the conversation. I knew that they were trying to force me to give up Falun Gong by threatening to stop paying my retirement stipend. I was not moved. Instead, I told them about the beauty of Falun Gong and how the practice is embraced throughout the world. My former supervisor said, “Are you still going to practice? All of your words will be documented.” I said, “Yes, I will be practicing, and I don't care if my words are recorded.”
They then went to house of the practitioner who was arrested with me. My fellow practitioner was not scared all. She clarified the truth to them, and even tried to convince them to quit the communist party. A few officers even agreed with her on what she said about the party. Later, all the threats just disappeared. Nobody mentioned it anymore. We still get our retirement stipend, even today.
After so many incidents, local practitioners had a sharing meeting. We all looked inward and found many attachments and loopholes. We also decided to continue the rural area project, and those who could not go to the countryside would send forth righteous thoughts for us. That way, we could form a whole body in this project.
I enlightened that one should not have any impure thoughts when talking to people face-to-face about Falun Gong. Only righteous thoughts can help at the key moments. Here are a few examples:
Once, I talked to a man. He took out a cellphone, and tried to report me to the local police. I smiled to him, and said, “Your cellphone is broken, and you cannot make the call.” And his cellphone did stop working. We continued clarifying the truth, and visited every house in that village.
Another time, four of us went to a nearby village. After visiting half of the houses, it started pouring rain. One practitioner wanted to stop and go home. I said, “When it is raining so hard, everybody will stay home. This is a good opportunity for us to talk to more people.” We decided to continue. To save time, we didn't even try to find umbrellas. All we had was our righteous thoughts, and we forgot about the rain. After we were done, I found that my hair and clothes were not even very wet. Our paper materials were not wet either. I knew that Master had screened the raindrops for us.
Another time, we finished in one village, and decided to go to another, which was a few miles away. I was thinking, “It would be great if a taxi comes by.” And then a taxi drove by with several passengers in it. The driver asked, “Old ladies, where are you going?” We told him. He then asked two people to get out, and gave us a ride to that village. It was almost 100 degrees that day. We spent five hours in that large village, and were soaked with sweat. We were exhausted after it was done, and could not walk back. Then a taxi going back to the city showed up, and took us home. Master had arranged everything for us.
Our project went smoothly. In one year, we visited several hundred villages, and convinced more than 10,000 people to quit the communist party. More and more fellow practitioners joined this project. We usually spent the mornings in the villages talking to people, and the afternoons we spent reading the Fa. At night, we shared our experiences and understandings, and looked for our shortcomings for future improvement.
However, as time went by, we developed loopholes. We didn't pay enough attention to the practitioner who drove for us to the rural areas. His own business took a lot of time. In the daytime he gave us rides, and at night, he had to take care of his business. He had little time to read the Fa and do the exercises. Consequently, his cultivation state declined, and this led to an arrest of several of us on our way back from a village in winter 2011.
I was released after being jailed for 15 days. Several other practitioners were also bailed out by their families. However, the driver practitioner was sentenced to labor camp. I looked inward for my loophole, and cried—I only thought of my plans and saving people, but ignored this fellow practitioner's cultivation state. I didn't consider how much he could handle, and didn't remind him in a timely way to correct some of his wrong thoughts.
Without a car, we were facing a big difficulty. But there were still so many villages that we needed to visit. After a recovery period, we decided to go to those villages on foot. We tried to not waste any second, every day. Time is precious, because Master has to bear a lot so that we can have enough time to save people. I live a very simple life. Every day, all I do is read the Fa and clarify the truth. I talk to people in the city when the weather is bad, and go to the rural areas in good weather. Although we have to suffer a lot, nothing can stop us from saving people.
We have had many touching experiences in the rural areas. Sometimes, after talking to us, the villagers would walk with us for a distance, and didn't want us to leave. Some said, “You are such nice people. I really enjoy listening to you. Please come to my house again.” Some invited us to dinner. Some wanted to pay us for the truth-clarification materials. Some gave us fruit. Sometimes, after we left the village, people caught up with us and asked us for more materials or amulets. Some villagers are even willing to help us to deliver materials.
It has been more than 10 years. We have persisted in the face of severe weather and evil persecution, never giving up. So far, we have almost visited all 700 villages in our county and talked to hundreds of thousand people. Our wish is to let everybody know the truth.
Looking back at my journey of cultivation, I am often in tears. Too many experiences, happy and sad, sweet and bitter. My appreciation toward Master cannot be described in words, and the honor and the greatness of helping Master rectify the Fa cannot be described in words. Our local fellow practitioners have become mature. We will study the Fa better and solidly finish the rest of the journey with righteous thoughts. We won't let Master worry about us.
Thank you, Master! Thank you, fellow practitioners.