(Minghui.org) My husband and I are 53 years old. I started to practice Falun Dafa first and then my husband picked it up. I would like to share how my husband and I strive to be genuine Falun Dafa practitioners by following the Dafa standards both in our family and in our business dealings.
Quite a few people in my family cultivate Falun Dafa: my mother-in-law, my third elder brother's wife, two of my husband's sisters, and me. My mother-in-law and my husband's eldest sister suffered from numerous ailments. Each day was a test of endurance. Taking medicine meant more to them than eating. They saved money on food to pay for pills. After picking up Falun Dafa, they stopped taking medicine and all their ailments disappeared.
I used to have a hot temper and got angry at my husband over trivial things. Then I would stay angry for a week or two. After studying Dafa, I followed the standards of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and stopped quarreling with him. I also stopped whining.
My husband was pleased that his close family stopped living on medications, and they all got along. He told his classmate, “You should practice Falun Gong, too. My wife never argues with me since she started practicing. Even my son noticed and commended her.” My husband had a favorable understanding of Dafa.
My husband is a driver for those in charge where he works. The leaders all know how to drive, so he is only called in for special events. For example, when the central authorities hold national conferences, they place Falun Gong practitioners under surveillance around the clock because they might file complaints. Those are the times he is called in to work. My husband is aware of the truth about Falun Gong. He never keeps an eye on Falun Dafa practitioners and has never done anything harmful to Dafa or practitioners.
My husband and his associates run a concrete mixing plant, and he oversees the day to day operations. The plant, which is registered under his name, has been in business for over a decade. He has been in charge of daily operations, including stocking supplies, paying wages, and job assignments. When the business started, he was not yet a Falun Dafa practitioner, but I encouraged him to follow the standards of a cultivator. I often reminded him that Master said to “do things fairly and act with integrity.” (Zhuan Falun)
Later, he became a Dafa cultivator. But he has all along followed Dafa's teachings when dealing with shareholders, suppliers, clients, and employees. For over a decade he has not taken advantage of anyone or been greedy.
Nowadays when people promote their products, they will adjust the price to benefit themselves personally. And the person in charge in a joint venture is more inclined to do this at the cost of his associates. Some suppliers tried to give my husband cash under the table to guarantee the deal. They also wanted to raise the price so that they could split the extra revenue with my husband. But my husband has kept Master's teaching in mind and firmly refused to cut such deals. If we were not practitioners, we definitely would not be able to act like this – refusing to take money others willingly put in your pocket. Only cultivators do not get greedy when immediate personal gains are at stake.
Although other shareholders do not manage the business directly, they assign their family and friends to key positions like in accounts or procurement or as a cashier. In dealing with clients, a cashier would tell suppliers that there was no cash available for immediate payment while in fact she had enough cash on hand. The one in charge of procurement would embezzle as little as a few yuan at a time, adding up to hundreds of thousands of yuan over the course of a year.
My husband told them what Master said in Zhuan Falun about a law in the universe that says, “'a person doesn’t gain anything if he doesn’t lose'—to gain, you have to lose, and if you don’t lose you’ll be made to lose.” The employees didn't change their ways, which put my husband in a dilemma. He could not easily replace them because of their connections, but he wasn't willing to turn a blind eye to what they were doing.
There are only two concrete mixing plants locally, and the competition is fierce. Most of the time we had to do the job first before getting paid, and even then we were usually paid in installments. It was not uncommon for the plant to have a cash flow problem. When there was extra cash, my husband would call in his suppliers to pay them. Yet the cashiers often made up excuses to delay the payments. This had hurt the plant's business.
In the end, my husband proposed to the shareholders that they take turns managing the plant. They agreed and settled on a three-year term. They were tied up with other things at the time, and business was not going well, so they let my husband run it the first three years. He had to pay the other shareholders 2 million yuan each year.
When they reached their agreement, it was the second half of 2016, and the first half of the year had seen hardly any profit. My husband was still responsible for paying the other shareholders 2 million yuan by year end. From past experience, we knew there would be little business after October. Due to the extremes in temperature between day and night, plus the fact that most developers do construction work at night, they avoid building in cold weather when it is hard to guarantee the quality of mixed concrete. The revenue outlook for 2016 was not good, but my husband and I agreed to the shareholders' decision and started our three-year term as managers.
After changing cashiers and procurement staff, in a few short months and even after paying out the 2 million to the shareholders, we did not owe the employees any wages and had paid all our suppliers in full. By year's end, we ended up with some profit.
Our rule was to follow Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance in dealing with developers, suppliers, and employees. We would make a sample block for the developers in order to guarantee the quality of a job order. For our suppliers, as long as there was cash in our account, we paid them immediately. When an employee ran into something unexpected, he or she would still get paid for the days they were absent. They were paid every month. When there were no job orders, they got 500 yuan each month, plus a year-end bonus, and mid-autumn festival rewards. Drivers who used their own vehicles for transport were paid in full throughout the year. If someone ran into financial difficulty, the plant would give them loans when possible. Employees and contract transportation drivers got free meals. Their relatives or friends who visited on occasion also got free meals at the plant.
The first Chinese New Year after we started our term managing the concrete plant, we put up couplets on the door frames in the plant and calligraphy paper cuts about Dafa on the door. On my husband's office door, the Chinese blessing character said, “Falun Dafa is great; Truthfulness-Benevolence-Forbearance is great.” The couplet on his office door frame read, “Coming to know the facts, one obtains blessings.”
On display boards for World Falun Dafa Day, we put up comprehensive facts about the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) persecution of the practice in addition to information that Falun Dafa has spread to over 100 countries. Nearly all the employees quit the CCP and the Youth League and Young Pioneers. We gave the employees Falun Dafa brochures every now and then. Most of them carried Falun Dafa keepsakes. Drivers each put a decorative “Falun Dafa is great” amulet on their rearview mirror. They all knew that Dafa would bring them safety on the road.
My husband has paid attention to informing people of the facts about Dafa. He would talk to clients from out of town, asking them to quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations. Many business owners who had business with the plant learned about Falun Dafa. They noticed that my husband was no ordinary businessman, that he was honest, kind, reliable, and of high integrity. They liked to give him their business. When we talked about starting a dry mortar plant, some business owners, knowing my husband is a Falun Gong practitioner, remarked, “As long as he is in charge, we will invest in it.”
Several business owners even asked us for copies of Zhuan Falun.
The following year, 2017, the concrete mixing plant's business took off. Customers knew that my husband practiced Falun Gong, that he would not shortchange materials, and that he was reliable. A section of the railroad that ran from Zhanjiakou City to Tangshan City collapsed. Railroad management was not sure how many cubic meters of concrete would be needed to fix the collapsed section. Each extra cubic meter we invoiced them would net us over 400 yuan. Other plant managers told my husband that we could easily overbill them one cubic meter on each truckoad, which would result in tens of thousands of extra profit. If he were not a Falun Dafa practitioner, he might have done that. Yet we are cultivators. Anything that does not meet the standard Dafa has set for us, no matter how profitable, we will not do it. In each and every deal, we have followed Master's teaching to “do things fairly and act with integrity.”(Zhuan Falun)
Of the two concrete mixing plants, most of the job orders came our way in 2017, because we'd earned the trust of our clients and were fair. Of the eight months we were in business, we sold 180,000 cubic meters of concrete mix. Since the plant started operating, an average year was between 30,000 and 40,000 cubic meters, with a record year of 80,000 cubic meters. We know this was because we had followed the standard for cultivators based on Dafa's principles.
By the end of 2017, the other shareholders suddenly proposed selling the concrete mixing plant. We were a year short of our three-year term of management. We had already agreed on the sales figures with developers, which exceeded the record-setting 2017. Faced with such significant profit margin, my husband hesitated. He would have liked to complete the final year of his three-year term. Otherwise, he would forfeit profits amounting to several hundreds of thousands of yuan. The shareholders commented that, if my husband refused, they would not be able to sell the plant.
But we are cultivators who take other people's interests into consideration. Master said in (Zhuan Falun), “Our discipline focuses directly on your mind. When something is at stake, or when you’re having problems with somebody, whether you can take those things lightly, that’s the key.”
As a result, my husband and I agreed with the shareholders' decision to sell the plant. My husband told them, “It's only because I have cultivated Falun Dafa that I could take this step.”
Yes, how could one who has not cultivated in Falun Dafa voluntarily give up such profit?
When the shareholders were discussing the price of the plant, the head of the Land Department called. He said that the plant would now not get a land use permit. Because the plant was close to a state route, it was never given a permit to start with. Without a permit, when the plant fell into the urbanization zone, the owners would get little compensation. The shareholders were concerned that a buyer would hesitate to purchase the plant, so they want to withhold this information regarding the permit.
Again, we are cultivators. We could not mislead buyers, which would be the same as lying to them. Other shareholders could do that, but not us. So my husband and I talked the other shareholders into telling the buyer about the permit issue to avoid any disputes down the road.
In the end, they agreed and told the buyers that they would not be able to get a land use permit. To their surprise, the buyers did not change their minds. They even added one million yuan to their offer. They promised that they would not hold us responsible even if the plant were torn down. They held my husband in high esteem for his honesty. The two sides reached a verbal agreement on the sale.
When we were about to close the deal, the buyers suddenly asked to evade taxes. The shareholders did not agree. In the earlier verbal agreement, the buyers were to pay the taxes. Now they didn't want to or they wanted the sellers to pay the taxes. The shareholders were not happy with the buyers, and, in the end, the sale didn't go through.
Entering into 2018, the shareholders came to tell my husband that, given the agreed-on three-year terms of management, it would be well over 10 years by the time it was the last shareholder's turn. By then, he would be over 70 years old. They were insinuating that they would like to share the management as well as the profits.
At first, my husband and I were wondering whether they knew we were practitioners and wanted to take advantage of us. Even my husband's family and friends thought this would be too unfair to us. The shareholders kept coming up with ideas to sell the plant or to rearrange the management and profit-sharing scheme. We were also concerned that if we went along, we might leave others with the impression that we were timid and foolish and an easy target to be taken advantage of. For a while we could not decide what to do.
Master said in Zhuan Falun:
“One day his company was assigning an apartment to one chosen employee. Management said, “Whoever needs housing come on over, tell me why you think you deserve it and why you each need an apartment.” Everyone got riled up about making a case for himself, but that guy was mute. In the end management decided that he was in a tougher situation than everybody else, and that the apartment should go to him. The other people said, “No way, you can’t give him the apartment. You should give it to me. Let me tell you how badly I need it.” Then the guy said, “Okay, then you can take it.” In ordinary people’s eyes that guy was dumb. Some people knew he was a cultivator, so they asked him, “You cultivators don’t want anything. So just what do you want?” He told them, “Whatever other folks don’t want, that’s what I want.” The truth is, he wasn’t at all dumb. He was pretty sharp. It was just when something of his was at stake that he handled it that way—he let things happen naturally.”
Master also said,
“But you’re a practitioner, so under normal circumstances you are looked after by your teacher’s Law Bodies. If other people want to take your things they won’t be able to budge them.” (Zhuan Falun)
With Master's Fa as our guide, we eased our minds and no longer worried about the possible outcomes. We thought about it this way: “What if we had never had taken over management for this three-year term? There is a saying even among everyday people, 'Joy accompanies those who are content.' Let alone us cultivators.”
We let go of our attachments to fame and fortune and put aside gains and losses. We realized the shareholders were right—they would be getting old based on the current three-year schedule.
The plant was back in operation on March 15 with the arrival of spring and, as if now, there has been no decision on the future of the plant. But now we have no concerns whatsoever. As Master said, “We cultivators always let things happen naturally.” (Zhuan Falun)
We have raised our realm in Falun Dafa cultivation, taken gains and losses lightly, resolved potential conflicts, and avoided harm that such conflicts could bring about.
Falun Dafa has brought joy to each and everyone at the concrete mixing plant.
(Submission to “Celebrate World Falun Dafa Day” 2018 on the Minghui website)