(Minghui.org) After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, the director of the school where I worked as a teacher pressured me to give up my practice of Falun Gong.
I was threatened with many things, from probation to termination. At that time, I was under tremendous pressure. My salary was about 1,000 yuan per month, and I did not know how I could manage without it.
I was illegally detained and jailed several times. In jail, I was ordered to do forced labor. I realized that the Chinese regime was persecuting me, so I refused to do any of the work.
I came to understand that I should not rely on working for the Communist Party to survive. I thought I should learn to do something else so that I could make my own living. To keep my mind straight while in jail, I recited all of Master Li's articles that I had memorized. I also learned Chinese typing, which turned out to be very useful later.
When I was released, I had been fired from my teaching job.
Save People First; Everything Else Falls into Place
After my family and I moved to a new city, I found a teaching position in a small school that paid me 4,000 yuan per month!
A year later, I started teaching students privately. I made 8,000 yuan per month, and I was free during the weekdays and could study the Fa and do the exercises. When my evening lessons were over, I went out to distribute truth-clarification materials.
During this time, because my family was not registered locally, my son could not go to the local public school. So I transferred to teach in a private school so that my son could attend it. In the evenings, my wife and I went out to clarify the facts.
However, the director of the school did not like teachers to leave the school premises in the evenings, because some of them went out to play mahjong all night long and would return in the morning exhausted.
I needed to go out to save more people.
If I left the job, it would be difficult for my son to go to school. But we knew that saving people should always be first, so I chose to resign.
When we decided to put saving people first, everything quickly worked out.
Soon, I "accidentally" met two very capable teachers, and we started to offer extension classes of our own. One teacher was in charge of making the arrangements, leaving me to concentrate on teaching. This made my work relatively worry-free, and I could earn more than 10,000 yuan per month.
Dafa Brings Good Fortune
When my family faced financial difficulties, my father-in-law often invited us to his home. He would prepare lots of good food and said it was to treat his grandson well. I also knew he was trying to feed us well because we did not have much money.
Other relatives also tried to help us. They sometimes asked me to help them with something, after which they gave me a large bag of food. I knew they pitied us. They knew my wife and I had improved our health and moral standard through practicing Dafa, but they knew we were being persecuted and that life was difficult for us.
They did not know the truth about Dafa, so some of them did not want to learn it even when they were very ill. Moreover, some of our relatives were also persecuted because of our practice.
But I realized that I had to change that situation—I had to show them Dafa was wonderful and help save them.
Now, the situation has indeed changed. In recent years, my family has made good money, so we are able to help our relatives. I have been paying my mother's living expenses. When my eldest brother passed away, I paid a majority of the funeral costs and gave my sister-in-law some money since she did not have a job. I also helped my third brother to buy a house.
My relatives came to understand how wonderful it is to be a Dafa practitioner. Several of them even withdrew from the Party and its affiliated organizations, such as the Communist Youth League and the Young Pioneers. My eldest sister-in-law also wanted to learn Dafa.
Not Being Attached to Money
When we were having financial difficulties, my wife, child, and I had only 60 yuan for food for an entire month. I remembered one evening during the Chinese New Year, when I borrowed an old bicycle from my father-in-law and rode it to a wholesale market. I bought Chinese cabbages and turnips for 2 yuan for the New Year.
Now I earn more than 10,000 yuan a month. Our financial situation has improved greatly, yet my lifestyle has not changed much. Sometimes, I still just cook noodles for a meal.
Through the years, several fellow practitioners have stayed with us when they were being persecuted and could not return home. One stayed with us for a month, and I recalled an interesting incident about that time.
Another practitioner introduced him to me, and I agreed to let him stay with us. I asked if he had eaten, which he had not, so I made him a bowl of noodles. We chatted while he ate, and I noticed he ate very slowly.
Later, when we became better acquainted, he told me that the noodles had no flavor, and that he could barely swallow them. He said he just felt bad asking for salt. No wonder he always made sure to cook for me later on!
Another practitioner made several unsuccessful attempts to start a business. I shared my thoughts with him and said we should maintain righteous thoughts. I also brought up issues like "Why do we earn money? and "What is the money for?"
He did not agree with me right away, but sometime later, he told me that he had met another practitioner who had said something similar to him. "As a practitioner, what's the purpose of earning money?” he asked. “Is it to live better, or is it to save more people? Is it to get out of trouble, or is it to show the goodness of Dafa?"
The practitioner said that, when he had righteous thoughts, business opportunities would just appear, and sometimes his business partners would even offer to loan him the money to get started. After that, he made a lot of money with every business he took on, without much effort.
I came to understand better what Master said about "Wealth with Virtue" in Essentials for Further Advancement. Is this not an example of the wonder of Dafa in the human world?
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