(Minghui.org) I am an elderly female Falun Dafa practitioner from the countryside in Northeastern China. I have been practicing Dafa for over 20 years and enjoy good health.

My husband works in another city year-round. In addition to farming and housework, I cultivate, study the Fa teachings, and clarify the truth to help save people every day. I have been very busy, but I know I won’t delay anything important. Master Li Hongzhi is always by my side.

I was held in a forced labor camp and tortured because I would not give up my faith in Falun Dafa However, I firmly believe in Dafa and Dafa’s boundless grace.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Jiang Zemin launched the unprecedented and ongoing persecution against Falun Dafa on July 20, 1999. Hundreds of thousands of practitioners in China have been illegally detained and sentenced since then.

Although my health was compromised due to the mistreatment in the forced labor camp, I did not cooperate with any of the guards' orders or demands.

A guard once assigned me to a team to peel corn in a shed with two dozen other detainees. It was one of the hottest days of the year, and there were no windows and no ventilation in that small enclosed space. I worked the entire morning and began having trouble breathing in the afternoon.

I began coughing very hard and couldn’t work anymore. I collapsed after returning from the shed and did not have an appetite. In addition, my stomach hurt when I swallowed any food or water, so I could not eat or drink at all.

I did not eat nor drink for 10 days in a row. If a normal person did not drink or eat for 10 days, they would likely die.

However, not only did I not die, I still had energy. The captain of the guards thought I must have been eating secretly and wasn’t concerned about my condition at all.

Three days later I asked the captain to release me and let me see my relatives. The captain told me to go to the hospital instead, but I refused to. I said, “I am not going to the hospital since I am not sick. I ended up like this because you persecuted me.”

She said, “You must go, whether you want to or not.” She ordered four detainees to carry me out. I resisted hard as I could, and they simply could not move me.

She called four more detainees but they still couldn’t move me. Another four detainees and two guards then followed.

In the end, 14 people finally picked me up and took me to the hospital. I still refused to cooperate in the prison hospital and returned to the labor camp that night.

Afterward, the captain was puzzled by the fact that I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for 13 days but still had enough energy resist a group of 14 people.

She asked a detained practitioner who had been with me the entire time, “Did she really not eat or drink anything for 13 days?”

The practitioner replied, “She really didn’t. You know, I witnessed her being taken to the hospital that day. At first, four people couldn’t budge her. Then four more people came but still could not move her. In the end, it took more than a dozen people to finally carry her away.

“It was really unbelievable. I can’t imagine anyone having that much strength and energy, let alone someone who’d gone without food and water for 13 days.”

The captain finally believed it. She then changed her attitude towards the practitioners who refused to give up their belief. Whenever she approached a Falun Dafa practitioner again, she was kind and amiable. Her mean attitude from before was gone.

The captain later understood the truth about Falun Dafa, and she started to secretly protect practitioners who refused to give up their faith and were being tortured.

She also treated all the illegally detained practitioners well. After I was released, many of my relatives and friends visited me.

I realized that many of them thought I wouldn’t get out alive after I was arrested. Since my health became poor and my personality is such that I never give in, they thought I most likely would die inside the labor camp.

Some of them said, “I didn’t expect you to come out alive.” Some shook my hand and exclaimed, “You have good fortune. It is good you came back!”

Others said, “You’re not dead. You are blessed by the gods and Buddhas. Falun Dafa is really powerful! It is really a Buddha Fa. Given your health and determination not to give in, it is a miracle you came out alive!”

I know Falun Dafa protected me and that Master Li Hongzhi saved my life.