(Minghui.org) In my 22 years of practicing Falun Dafa, I was often moved by the touching stories that my fellow practitioners left behind. I met some of them only once, and I cannot recall most of their names. These stories are like shining pearls scattered in the depths of my memory, which I will never forget.
Caring for Each Other in the Detention Cell
Jiang Zemin, then leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), launched the persecution of Falun Dafa and used state-owned propaganda to slander the Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) practice and its founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi in July 1999. Many practitioners thought the government did not know the truth about Falun Dafa, and they wanted to clarify the truth by telling people how Dafa benefited them physically and mentally.
Numerous Dafa practitioners went to Beijing to tell the government and people: “Falun Dafa is good!” “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good!” For doing so, these practitioners were repressed, tortured, imprisoned, and some even killed.
Whichever province Dafa practitioners came from to appeal for Falun Dafa, the officials of that province would be removed from their positions. So, many provincial personnel went to Beijing to intercept practitioners headed there to appeal. They usually paid 3,000 to 5,000 yuan to police in Beijing so the police wouldn’t list practitioners from their regions. Of course, the provincial police passed the cost onto the practitioners and their families, and some practitioners were even extorted tens of thousands of yuan. The Beijing police made a fortune from the situation. This was why the police in Beijing did all they could to obtain the names and addresses of Dafa practitioners.
To avoid implicating their local officials and workplaces, many Dafa practitioners did not report their names and addresses. Thus, many people became numbers in the CCP’s database.
My sister and I went to Beijing to appeal for Dafa in June 2000. We were arrested and detained in the Qiliqu Detention Center in the suburbs of Beijing. After being searched by female police officers, we were left with nothing but the clothes we wore. The prison authorities did not sell us any daily necessities, and there was not even bedding in the cell. The conditions were harsh.
All the cells were full of practitioners because so many Dafa practitioners went to Beijing at the time. There were about 20 Falun Gong practitioners held in a 6-person bunkhouse. All the practitioners were very kind and considerate of others.
An elderly practitioner gave her white undershirt to others to use as a towel. We used only two rolls of toilet paper frugally, since we didn’t know when we would get more. Because there were so many of us and so few beds, practitioners slept on the cold floor tiles or beside the smelly toilets, and gave the wooden beds to others. Some practitioners sat against the wall to sleep so others could stretch their legs out while sleeping.
The mosquitoes in the suburbs were big and disease-ridden. The police deliberately removed all the screens in the cell. As a result, the bright lights at night attracted more mosquitoes. We had big mosquito bites all over our bodies. We scratched in our sleep and bled. A short, elderly female practitioner slept very little every night, and swung a shirt to shoo away the mosquitoes for others, trying to help them sleep better.
Practitioner Shed Tears for Police Officer Who Beat Her
There was an older practitioner who was tall and had rosy cheeks. No one could tell that she had many diseases before she practiced Falun Dafa. She looked energetic and young. If she had not told us that she was 72, I would have thought she was about 60 years old.
She once cried after being interrogated. We were concerned and asked her if she had been beaten, as this happened often. She said a young policeman asked her where she came from. Instead, she told him about her experience as a Dafa practitioner. She said that she had recovered from all her illnesses after practicing Falun Dafa. She also said that she became a better person by following the Fa principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and that her family had become harmonious.
She didn’t want to give her name and address because the officials would be affected if practitioners in their area appealed for Dafa. However, the policeman didn’t want to listen and started to punch and kick her. The practitioner looked at the police officer’s vicious face, felt sorry for him, and tearfully said, “I’m over 70 years old, and am older than your mother. You are doing a bad deed by treating a cultivator this way. You will create karma for doing so, and how can you repay this karma in the future?” We all sighed for the policeman and admired the compassion of the older woman.
Walked Barefoot Three Days to Beijing
When I first met this practitioner, she held her hand against her chest in pain. The police at Tiananmen Square had beaten and kicked her, injuring her ribs. She wore the cheapest clothes from the stalls, and showed traces of long years of labor. I thought her life must be very difficult.
Our later conversation confirmed my thoughts. She lived in a mountainous area. She borrowed around 80 yuan for her trip to Beijing. She brought some dry food she made and walked dozens of miles to go out of the mountain area to get a bus. The 80 yuan she borrowed could not cover her whole trip to Beijing. After she got off the bus, she walked barefoot for three days had no food. She finally got to Tiananmen Square, and all she wanted to do was to tell people, “Falun Dafa is good!”
Young Woman: “I Came Because I Should Come”
While I was detained, I met a young female practitioner from southern China. She was quiet and gentle. Her child was just over two years old. One day I asked her if she missed her child. She nodded. She said she was afraid and wanted to be with fellow practitioners to strengthen her righteous thoughts. I asked her, “If you are afraid, why did you come to Beijing?” She said, “I felt, as a practitioner, I should come; so I came.”
We decided to go on a hunger strike to protest the arbitrary detention. Going on a hunger strike was a risk because the police often used forced feeding as a way to torture Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) practitioners by inserting a rubber tube through the nostrils and into the stomach. We heard that a female practitioner died of asphyxiation when being force-fed. However, we didn’t change our minds.
On the fourth day of the hunger strike, the police force-fed us. The police put four handcuffs on the rails of the iron beds to hold us in place. Several male inmates were there to assist the police to force-feed us through our nostrils.
When it was my turn, I kept thinking, “You can’t get it in. You can’t get it in.” As a result, they kept inserting the tube again and again, but couldn’t insert the tube after trying for a long time. I couldn’t bear it and thought, “When is the end of this?” With this thought, they made it. I screamed loudly because of the severe pain. I realized that if I had thought, “Stop doing it!” Then maybe they would have given up on it.
When I returned to my cell, I saw a large footprint on the young practitioner’s light pink T-shirt. She told me, “I heard you screaming in the forced feeding room. I was scared as I didn’t know what happened to you. When it was my turn, I told them I had already eaten, hoping they wouldn’t feed me. However, a man in a white gown still force-fed me.” The police used forced feeding to pressure her to tell where she was from. She said she was afraid but didn’t say anything so her local officials would not get involved. Then the man brutally kicked her.
A few days later, my identity was discovered, and I was taken back to my hometown and held there. Those Dafa practitioners whose names and addresses were unknown after being interrogated for a long time were taken to unknown places by buses. A few years later, live organ harvesting, an unprecedented atrocity, was revealed. I guessed that those practitioners who were taken away in buses might have been imprisoned in secret concentration camps or underground hospitals and become innocent victims of the CCP’s live organ harvesting.
More than 20 years have passed, and I have not seen those practitioners again, nor do I have any information about them. Whenever I thought of them, I wished with all my heart that they were still alive and still walked on the path of cultivation.
Compassionate and Selfless Practitioners
I didn’t truly understand what compassion is when I first began to cultivate. I was rigid and indifferent. I thought being compassionate meant being polite to people, giving a hand when asked for help, and not doing bad deeds. However, through interacting with fellow practitioners, I came to understand what genuine compassion is, and the meaning of selflessness.
When I was detained in a local detention center on October 1, 2000, an official from the Political and Legal Affairs Committee came to inspect the center. Several of us submitted a letter to clarify the truth to him, asking for unconditional release.
Afterward, the detention center started to search the cells in retaliation. They took away all our food, even the pickles our families sent us, saying they threw them away. I was upset and complained that they wasted the food. My sister, a practitioner who was detained with me, calmly said, “It’s fine. I heard they ate all of our food and did not throw them away.” When I heard this, I immediately said indignantly, “Ok, then it was the same as dogs ate them.” When my sister heard this, she said to me peacefully, “Sister, the police are human. The food was not wasted regardless of whoever ate them.” I immediately felt my sister’s compassion and understood the meaning of “compassion.”
I didn’t work because I needed to spend a lot of time on a project in 2016. When I had financial difficulties, a fellow practitioner brought me a bag of rice. She said she received a lot of rice for free from her relatives, and she couldn’t finish it all. I knew she said that, so I would accept it. I felt her compassion. When the New Year was approaching, she noticed that I didn’t have much food at home. She soon asked her sister to bring me pork and fish, saying it was her greetings for New Year’s Eve. I was very touched by the genuine care shown by my fellow practitioners. She made me understand what it means to be kind to others.
I was unconditionally released after I went on a hunger strike to counter the persecution in December 2000. I used to have a good job, but was asked to write a guarantee statement renouncing Falun Dafa to continue to work, which I refused to do. Since then, I had to do random part-time jobs for a living. Many people were sorry that I gave up my good job, but I didn’t regret it. Dafa has reshaped my life, awakened my heart toward kindness, and made me healthy. I could give up my job and even my life, but I couldn’t give up my conscience and sense of justice. I will never give up practicing Dafa because it is what I have been looking for all my life.
A few years ago, when I had financial difficulties, a practitioner gave me two computers worth 6,000 yuan for free so I could work on Dafa projects. Another practitioner lent me 10,000 yuan for living expenses. I didn’t want to use other practitioners’ money, so I spent 200 yuan every month on a phone project and 6,000 yuan on another project.
When the practitioner who lent me the 10,000 knew my plan, she lent me another 6,000. When I saved enough money to begin to repay her, she said, “I will forgive all that I lent you, since you spent it on the project.”
I felt her sincerity. I replied, “I will let you forgive the debt if I can’t earn enough money to repay you in the future, but if I can pay you back, you will have to accept it.”
She told me sincerely, “Money is not important, but people are, and cultivation is. Please don’t think about it anymore.”
Later, I was able to repay her little by little. Whenever I repaid her, she always said, “Oh, you’ve paid off everything. Please stop repaying me.” I knew she never remembered how much I owed her, but how could I forget? I have always been grateful to the people who helped me when I was in trouble.
Support from Practitioners and Their Families
Many practitioners’ families and friends protected practitioners from persecution after they learned the truth about Falun Dafa and the beauty of the practice.
About 10 practitioners went to the countryside to distribute informational materials in the winter of 2001. They were reported to the police and arrested. The police treated it as their most important case. They interrogated the practitioners by beating them, handcuffing their hands behind their backs, and other methods. A practitioner was tortured until disabled. The driver, a non-practitioner, and a practitioner’s son, who also was a non-practitioner, were also detained and beaten brutally. However, they did not tell the police anything about the practitioners.
I did not personally know the driver or the practitioner’s son, but I could imagine the torture they experienced.
One practitioner’s brother was a salesman. He used paper currency with Falun Dafa messages printed on them in his business, and encouraged other people to use them. He always gave practitioners currency to print Dafa messages on them, ranging from 1,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan. Sometimes he gave 5,000 yuan.
He once came to exchange paper bills again, just two days after I had given him some. I was surprised at how fast he used the money. It turned out that he went to a store and told the store owner the facts about Falun Dafa and asked if the store owner wanted to use paper currency with messages about Falun Dafa printed on them. The store owner agreed and exchanged 500 yuan after learning the truth about Dafa.
When he traveled, he told the passengers around him the truth about Dafa without fear. When he met practitioners who told him the truth, he happily said, “My brother also practices Falun Dafa!”
My grandmother and my two aunts understood the truth about Dafa. They supported and protected Dafa practitioners. They quit the CCP and its youth organizations.
My grandma often told her friends and relatives that my sister and I were her best grandchildren. She said we were respectful, understanding, and benevolent. If she heard any news about the persecution, she would tell us as soon as possible and often remind us to stay alert and safe. She once told us to tell other practitioners not to take the bus because the local police department asked the public transit staff to watch the whereabouts of local practitioners and report them if they saw them on the buses.
During these years of persecution, my grandmother also endured a lot of pressure. One year, my county launched a county-wide arrest of all local practitioners. They went to my grandmother’s home first. My grandmother hurried to call my home right after they left, but she was too afraid and anxious, and her hands trembled such that she couldn’t dial the number correctly. No numbers went through. Ultimately, my home was ransacked, and my sister had to stay away from home to avoid persecution. My grandmother blamed herself for not being able to tell us about this.
My grandmother had a surgery for her brain tumors when she was 85. The surgeon said they couldn’t remove the tumor on her main brain nerve, and said she could live at most for one or two years. My grandmother recited, “Falun Dafa is good; Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” and her condition was good after the operation.
She lost her vision at age 89 due to the tumors, and went to the hospital again. The surgeon who removed part of her brain tumor remembered her and exclaimed to my family, “Is she still alive? Based on her condition, she should have lived only one or two years at most, and it has been four or five years.
After my grandmother lost her sight, she often cried because of the discomfort in her life. However, Dafa often showed her miraculous scenes. She often saw through her celestial eye all kinds of flowers blooming in her house. She said she did not know what kind of flowers they were, but that they were simply very beautiful, and in clusters and bunches. She often dreamed she flew happily. My grandma passed away at the age of 91 peacefully.
Both of my aunts supported Dafa and understood us. They helped us in any way they could. One aunt’s husband drove my sister, who escaped arrest, out of town on a motorcycle. My aunt visited her when my sister was arrested and imprisoned, but the prison authorities did not let her see my sister. During those years, my aunts would save money for my sister. Four years ago, my aunt’s bungalow, located in a remote area, was unexpectedly demolished and replaced by two apartments. I knew she had been blessed for protecting Dafa practitioners who were in difficult situations.
There were many other stories that moved me. For more than 20 years, Falun Dafa practitioners have persisted in clarifying the truth to the world while under pressure and experiencing great risk. I hope that all good people will get to know the truth about Falun Dafa and stay safe.
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Category: Improving Oneself
