(Minghui.org) Greetings, Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I have practiced Falun Dafa for 22 years and my younger sister is also a practitioner. The two of us have been running a small truth-clarification material production site for 17 years. We started to print Falun Dafa messages on banknotes several years ago to overcome strict information censorship in China. We can now prepare enough such banknotes for local fellow practitioners to use for truth-clarification. Below are some of our experiences.
Printing Falun Dafa Messages on Banknotes
The first time when I saw the banknotes printed with short messages about Falun Dafa was at a group Fa study several years ago. I thought, “What a great way to tell people about Dafa! Such banknotes can be passed through thousands of people and no one would throw them away. They can be widely circulated and a lot more people will be saved.”
My younger sister couldn’t agree more. Since then, we started the journey of saving sentient beings by printing Falun Dafa messages on banknotes.
Learning Everything from Scratch
Although my sister and I had produced Falun Dafa information materials for years, we had no idea how to print Falun Dafa messages on banknotes.
I went to Tiandixing.org, a practitioner-run technology support website, to learn the techniques. I found that the simplest way was to use an iron to heat and flatten the banknotes. But there was a downside of the method. Almost all banknotes were stained with countless germs and dirt. When we heated the banknotes, the pungent smell was suffocating and made it difficult to breathe. In addition, we processed these banknotes in a small room without a window, which made the smell even worse. We tried our best to quiet our minds and not to be bothered by the smell.
The situation was even harder for my sister, because she was a clean freak. Once she had a dream about us processing the dirty smelly banknotes. Somehow she was eating a bowl of white rice aside. A few grains of rice accidentally dropped to the banknotes, but she picked it up and ate the rice anyway. Surprisingly, it tasted extra sweet. Miraculously, since then, the banknotes didn’t make her uncomfortable anymore, and the smell was no longer unbearable for her. She believed that Master had removed her fear of filthiness. She said the dream was still vivid and she could recall the sweet taste of the rice.
Becoming Efficient
We feed new or almost new banknotes without many stains into a printer after ironing and flattening them. Most of the other used banknotes get washed and dried before being printed. The badly stained ones are washed and disinfected with bleach. Badly stained or deteriorated ones that we can’t use are deposited at the bank.
The more banknotes we processed, the more experienced and faster we became. Later on, we learned to process them in batches. We developed the fastest and most accurate process. We unfold the banknotes for printing like playing cards, set the temperature of the iron to maximum, press the iron on top of the banknotes, and push it from the back to the front. After ironing three times, we turn the banknote upside down and iron it another three times.
After the ironing, we stack the banknotes neatly and put a heavy object on top of them. In 10 minutes, the banknotes are cooled and shaped and ready for printing. The entire process is very fast. While ironing the banknotes, we can also operate the printer at the same time.
Usually we produce six thousand one-yuan bills each week. The maximum we made in one week was ten thousand bills.
Effective Truth-clarification
In the beginning, we always wondered if circulating banknotes printed with short Falun Dafa messages was truly an effective way to help people learn the facts. It is unlike talking to people face to face, which we can tell people’s reaction right away.
We no longer worried about the effectiveness after we read Master’s lecture in Los Angeles.
Master said,
Some people have suggested writing “Falun Dafa is Great” or “Withdraw from the Party” on Renminbi. (Audience laughs) I think that’s a terrific idea. (Applause) You can’t throw away money, and you can’t destroy it. (Teachings at the Conference in Los Angeles)
There are many other fellow practitioners who also print Falun Dafa messages on banknotes. Out of every 100 one-yuan bills we exchanged, about 10 have already been printed with the messages. We often saw that people who were aware of the truth added messages on the banknotes thanking Falun Dafa and condemning the evil Chinese Communist Party (CCP). While there were pro-CCP messages added to some banknotes, this proves that people are reading the messages and some did learn the facts about Falun Dafa.
Many times we also saw people’s signatures left on the banknotes, announcing quitting the CCP and its associated organizations. There were two that we were impressed with the most. One with three signatures each in a different handwriting, and the other with collective signatures of twelve people. Inspired by these signatures, we added a “Quit the CCP signature” field to the current template. Subsequently, we did see some signatures on the field. We were so happy to see more and more people becoming aware of the truth and choosing a bright future.
Looking Inwards, Overcoming Ordeals
There is a fellow practitioner who collaborates with us to exchange processed one-yuan bills with larger-denomination bills in markets. Once we found a counterfeit 100-yuan bill from the pile given to us by the fellow practitioner. After discussing with my sister, we decided to eat the cost without telling the fellow practitioner. We burned the counterfeit one. The same thing happened again. When it happened the third time, we realized that it must be the old forces’ interference. We told the fellow practitioner what happened and the three of us sent forth righteous thoughts together to eliminate the interference. Since then, we have never received any counterfeit bills.
But the old forces didn’t stop their efforts to interfere with us. Once when we worked with some other fellow practitioners on a truth-clarifying project, we encountered a big ordeal and almost lost our lives. Although we passed through the ordeal unharmed with our faith in Master and Dafa, the scene at that time was so frightening that we felt we had a close brush with death.
Some practitioners admired us for successfully overcoming the tribulation, but we were not happy at all because we were clear that there must be a big loophole in us being taken advantage of by the old forces. We spent more time studying the Fa. One day when I read the sentence, “But a true Great Enlightened Being would never show himself so rashly.” (Zhuan Falun), every character was jumping up and down. I realized that Master was enlightening us not to show off.
I shared my thoughts with my sister and we found our loopholes after looking inward: we didn’t pay enough attention to safety. When we delivered materials, we didn’t keep a single line of contact. And we openly exchanged the banknotes with printed messages in our group Fa study. Some fellow practitioners made special trips to us asking for these banknotes, despite the safety concern. These created big security loopholes. In addition, when we produced more and more Falun Dafa materials, we developed more attachments such as showing off and zealotry. We mistook producing a lot of materials as being diligent in cultivation and considered it having strong righteous thoughts not to pay too much attention to safety.
We immediately corrected ourselves. We made sure to keep a single line of contact with fellow practitioners. We stopped expanding the scale of our material site and put Fa study and doing the exercises as top priority.
Eliminating Fear during the Pandemic
After the CCP virus broke out in Wuhan City in 2020, our city was also affected. When we were sorting the banknotes, we worried that what if the money carried the virus? Every banknote had changed hands so many times. But we immediately realized that the thought was wrong and corrected it. We are Dafa practitioners and our bodies are made of high energy substance. The virus won’t survive on our bodies. Then the fear was gone.
Another fear I had to face was that every time when I went to exchange money, I worried about my safety because the surveillance cameras were installed everywhere and my whereabouts were easy to track.
Once I exchanged money twice in one week. The second time when I was filling the bag with the small-denomination bills, a woman suddenly said loudly, “You just exchanged ten thousand yuan a few days ago, and why do you need so many small-denomination banknotes? Where are you from? What do you do?” I was caught off guard and didn’t know how to respond but just stared at her.
Then the woman repeated the questions loudly and aggressively. I calmed down and replied, “I simply need the cash.” Before I left, she said, “Hold on, let me make a phone call to confirm if you have done all the paperwork.” Then she held up her cell phone and pointed it at me.
I told my sister what happened after I returned home. Changing money should be normal at that place, but why did that woman talk to me in such a strange tone? When she held her cell phone high up, maybe she was taking a picture of me? When I thought of this, I was so scared that I wanted to quit the project immediately. Later on, my sister and I shared our thoughts that as Dafa practitioners, the purpose of printing Dafa messages on banknotes is to save more people and we shouldn’t stop doing it; otherwise it would be a big loss for us.
Master said,
“The Buddha Law is a serious thing, however; once a decision is made, once an undertaking is begun, it is to be finished.” (Teachings at the 2005 Conference in San Francisco)
My sister suggested that we send forth righteous thoughts to get rid of the potential crisis. We started to do it for a long time. I thought in my mind to have the woman erase her memory of me and to delete my picture from her phone. The next time, my sister went to exchange money. After she came back, she told me that the woman was no longer there. And later on when I went to exchange money, I didn’t see her again. Everything was back to normal.
Printer Maintenance
We have many printers running at the same time and these printers need maintenance quite often. For safety reasons, we decided to learn how to maintain and repair printers ourselves five years ago.
The first challenge was to install an external ink cartridge to the newly bought printer so that it could print a large number of materials continuously. We had no idea how to do it but we knew we could do it.
We downloaded the cartridge installation tutorial from Tiandixing.org. Everything in the tutorial was new to us. We repeatedly read the tutorial until we fully understood it. Then we followed the tutorial step by step. Surprisingly, we succeeded in one try!
Once a Canon printer needed to be disassembled for repair. Again we went to the same website and downloaded the disassembly tutorial. However, after we opened the printer, we were shocked. The motherboard was filled with a lot of plugs and we dared not touch any one. We took a deep breath and started to look at the plugs. We found out that the size and color of each plug was corresponding to its jack. It was not as complicated as it looked.
In order to put each part back to the right place later on, I took pictures of each step when I disassembled the printer. After I disassembled printers several times, I got familiar with the printer’s structure and maintenance became much easier. When a printer is out of order, we will first check the printer’s manual according to the error message, either fixing it or replacing the failed part. If it doesn’t work, we’ll go to the practitioner-run website to ask for help, and we always receive answers from fellow practitioners.
A common problem we encountered was paper roller wear-out. We tried several methods recommended by the technical support, but they all were temporary solutions and the paper roller would stop working again after a short period of time. We continued to explore better solutions.
A fellow practitioner shared her experience that worked really well. We roughly scrubbed the surface of the paper roller with a tool similar to a wolf tooth stick, then wrapped the paper roller axle with tape. It greatly extended the paper roller’s lifetime. We also found out that applying an imported Japanese lubricant on the ink track could speed up the printers which slowed down after being used for a long time.
Basically we can maintain all printers by ourselves. Most importantly, we realized that the printer’s problems were actually reflecting our problem in cultivation. The printers not only print truth-clarifying materials but also help us improve ourselves. Occasionally when we were unable to repair the printers, we would calm down, clear our mind and focus on studying Fa. And usually the problem would disappear and the printer resumed functioning.
We truly experienced that the printers are also lives. If we did well in cultivation, the printers would have fewer problems. Once a printer stopped after spitting out an unprinted banknote. It turned out that this banknote was old and deteriorated. I put it aside and pressed the printer’s “resume” button, the printer worked again. I realized that the printer was telling us that the old banknote was not suitable to print Falun Dafa messages.
Besides printing Falun Dafa messages on banknotes, we also make various truth-clarifying materials including flyers, posters, amulets, and pamphlets. Our material site is totally independent. We do everything by ourselves, including exchanging money, purchasing printers and various consumables, installing and maintaining computers and printers, as well as encrypting the computers.
Dismissing the “Zero-out” Harassment
In 2020, the Chinese Communist Party launched a new “Zero-out” campaign, attempting to force every Falun Dafa practitioner on the government’s blacklist to renounce their faith. Local authorities ordered practitioners to sign or press their fingerprints on a document slandering Falun Dafa. We have been harassed twice.
In April 2020, my older brother came to my home and told us, “The local police called me for a meeting. They said that there would be an important national conference soon. During the conference, you two are required to have each meal at my home every day and I will take pictures of you and report to the local police. You must cooperate with us.”
I refused to cooperate with the persecution and I said to my brother, “We won’t go anywhere.”
My brother threatened, “Then you will be arrested. If you do not listen to me, I will not help you anymore.”
While my brother did help me in the early stage of the persecution, what I realized at that moment was that as a Dafa practitioner during Fa-rectification, I couldn’t depend on non-practitioners’ help, but should have faith in Master and Dafa.
The second harassment happened at the end of 2020. Once in my dream, I saw a burning coal stove and the flames rose high. A few days later when I was doing morning exercises, I saw a scene: a man was taking pictures from a distance when I was doing the second exercise on a street, and suddenly he came close to me and took pictures of me.
The next day in our group Fa study, a fellow practitioner told us that his home was raided, his Dafa books were confiscated and his family members were forced to sign a document slandering Falun Dafa on his behalf in a local police station. I heard many fellow practitioners in our city have been harassed during the “Zero-out” campaign. It reminded me of the dream I had and the scene I saw when I was doing the exercises, and I believed that it was Master that hinted that we were in danger too.
We had to do something to avoid possible persecution. After my sister and I returned home that night, we checked what we had: six printers, four thousand one-yuan bills with Falun Dafa messages, fifty copies of Falun Dafa information journals, and one hundred copies of Minghui Weekly. How should we deal with all these?
After some discussion, we were clear about what we should do. Producing truth-clarifying materials is the most righteous thing in the universe, and we should continue doing what we do no matter what. We are Falun Dafa practitioners and are looked after by Master.
We reinforced our righteous thoughts and started to take actions for our safety. On the same night we rode our electric bicycle to villages and distributed all fifty copies of Falun Dafa information journals. The next morning we went to the city and distributed one hundred copies of Minghui Weekly.
At noon, I went to the local market to exchange the one-yuan bills with Dafa messages to large-denomination bills. It was the first time for me to do it and it was not as smooth as distributing materials.
It was around lunch hour and there were few people in the market. I first approached a meat vendor, “Do you want change?” He said, “Yes, please give me five hundred yuan change.” Since I didn’t bring my cellphone with me, I couldn’t accept electronic money transfers via WeChat, the vendor went to get 500 yuan for me.
At that time the market became noisy, and many people called me, “Hello!” “Hi!” Soon I was surrounded by dozens of vendors. I asked, “How I can help you?” They said they wanted to change too. Some wanted two hundred yuan and some asked for three hundred or five hundred yuan. Suddenly one woman said, “Look, there are characters printed on the banknotes.” A man replied, “This is exactly what we want.” Within a few minutes, all of the one-yuan bills had been exchanged.
But when I counted the larger-denomination bills I exchanged, there was one thousand yuan short. I had no idea who I should approach to ask for it back so I returned home. My sister was very calm, “Nothing is accidental. We should look inwards to find out what attachment led to the loss.”
And we did find our attachment to money. Part of our fund of making materials was donated by fellow practitioners. We often spent the donation on the materials, without using our own money, which reflected our selfishness. We decided that we would spend our money first in the future.
Next we had to deal with the six large printers. They were hard to hide, and we couldn’t give them away either. Finally we decided not to think about it, but leave it to Master.
In the following week, we didn’t produce any materials but spent all our time studying the Fa, reading the experience sharing articles and sending forth righteous thoughts once every hour.
When I was sending forth righteous thoughts, I felt my body was tall, my mind was pure and my righteous thoughts “have the god-like might to split a mountain in half” (“Fa Teaching Given at the 2010 New York Fa Conference,” Collected Fa Teachings, Vol. XI) At the same time we kept looking inwards to correct ourselves according to the Fa.
Several fellow practitioners who live in the same neighborhood have been harassed by the “Zero-out” campaign. Some were forced by their family members to go to the police station. Some refused to open the door no matter what. We often heard police officers pounding on the doors and shouting, but they never came to our apartment. I told my sister, “It was incredible, absolutely amazing!”
Walking on the Golden Path
One night I had a sweet dream. A pair of eyes in the sky was looking down at the earth. The beings on the earth were like small particles. Suddenly the eyes rushed downward at a great speed and the earth turned into a karma ball, extremely horrible. The next scene was a place beyond the earth and I knew it was my world. It was alive and vibrant with brightly colored lotus flowers blooming everywhere. In the dream, I laughed.
I have been practicing Falun Dafa for 22 years and my sister and I have been running our materials site for 17 years. We filed a lawsuit against Jiang Zemin, former head of the Chinese regime who launched the persecution of Falun Dafa; we were arrested by the police and our home was raided and all equipment, supplies, and materials were confiscated. In the detention center, my sister and I were always thinking and acting righteously, not signing anything or providing any information to the police. Our case was returned to the police by the prosecutor. After we were released, we rebuilt our family-owned material site.
On the path of cultivation, we are not afraid of snow, rain, or wind. We are walking on the golden path of assisting Master in rectifying the Fa and saving sentient beings.
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