(Clearwisdom.net) At the recommendation of a friend, I started to practice Falun Gong in 1998. Not long after, my back pain disappeared and my legs no longer hurt. My happiness didn’t last long, though, because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began its persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999. Despite the pressure of my imprisonment, I was determined to share my personal experiences and let people know about the wonderfulness of Dafa. Through my truth clarification, some people entered the door of cultivation and had their illnesses cured. I was also happy to see a couple who had been legally separated for more than 20 years reunite and begin to enjoy a happy marriage again.
Tied and Handcuffed for Seven Days in Wangcun Forced Labor Camp in Shandong Province
One winter day in 2005, Team Four Head Wang Huiying ordered guard Li Ying and a few others to take me to the guards’ office, where they tied my left hand up to a heating pipe and handcuffed my right hand to the bars of a window. Li kept tightening the rope until my whole left hand turned black and purple. The pain was so excruciating that I almost passed out. A few other guards were sympathetic and loosened the handcuff and rope when Wang and Li were not there.
Despite the torture, there was one day when I felt a puff of warm air in each of my palms. The numbness and pain in my body suddenly went away, and I felt extremely good. Later I realized that it was our compassionate Master who was protecting me.
When the guards finally removed the handcuffs and the rope seven days later, my feet were swollen like loaves of bread and couldn’t fit into my shoes. My thumbnails were black and purple.
“I Need to Talk to the Prosecutors!”
I was later transferred to Shandong Province Women’s Prison, where I was kept in the Intensified Management Team. Since I refused to do hard labor, the guards put me in solitary confinement many times. The door and the window of the cell were both kept shut, so the room was extremely hot in the summer. I suffered from heat stroke several times.
One day guard Xue Yanqin ordered criminal inmate Zhu Huifen to grab my hair and that of another practitioner surnamed Cui, in an attempt to force us to watch videos slandering Dafa. I refused to cooperate and Xue directed Qiao Ruimei and a person surnamed Du to choke me. Qiao pressed her knees against my back and yanked my collar backward. While I was struggling to catch my breath, I suddenly saw the surveillance camera and realized there must be guards watching in the control room. I said into the camera, “I need to talk to the prosecutors!” Soon, two prosecutors arrived and advised me to stop my hunger strike. They interviewed me and took notes of their investigation.
In order to “reform” practitioners, the labor camp put up numerous bulletin boards with notices that slandered Falun Gong. They gathered all the detained practitioners together and ordered them to read the notices and write their thoughts afterwards.
I was worried that some practitioners would give in under pressure, so as I walked around the bulletin boards, I kept reminding everyone to not cooperate with the evil. It turned out that many practitioners indeed wrote nothing and remained firm in their belief. Moreover, the display boards were removed not long after.
Master’s Compassion and Dafa’s Might Enabled a Professor and Many Inmates to See the Wonder of Dafa
Shandong Province Women’s Prison invited a psychology professor surnamed Xu, from Beijing, to give lectures in the winter of 2007. Professor Xu started by asking the following questions to everyone present, “What’s the book you want to read most? What’s the thing you want to do most?” When it was my turn, I answered without any hesitation, “I want to read Zhuan Falun most and I want to be a divine being upholding justice most.”
Professor Xu was not against Falun Gong, but he had doubts about human beings cultivating into the realm of Buddhas. I told him a story about Shakyamuni, “One of Shakyamuni’s disciples asked, ‘I can’t see the Western Paradise. How can I believe its existence?’ Shakyamuni guided him into a dark room and told him there was a hammer in it. He of course could not see the hammer. Then Shakyamuni lit a candle and he was then able to see the hammer.” I asked Professor Xu, “So you just don’t believe what you can’t see?” He replied, “Yes, I do believe that things I can’t see may still exist. I have a copy of Zhuan Falun in my home and I’ll carefully study it before I come back.”
Since I often shouted “Falun Dafa is good” and “'Transformation' is wrong,” Professor Xu thought I was depressed. He showed me how to punch the bed cover to relieve anxiety. I replied with a smile, “I cultivate Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and I can’t do this.”
Professor Xu then asked the guards to gather all the practitioners together and instructed me to shout “Falun Dafa is good” in front of everyone. He next signaled me to come to the front to speak about my beliefs.
I walked up to the front calmly and began to share with everyone what was on my mind. Despite the watchful eyes of the guards, I talked about how we all benefited from Dafa and how we stepped forward to clarify the facts and got persecuted as a result. I noticed some practitioners nod at me in agreement.
After I was done, Professor Xu asked another practitioner to repeat what I had just said. This practitioner not only went over everything I had said, but also brought up topics I didn’t cover, just like what Master said in “Fa Teaching at the 2008 New York Conference,”
“Master affirms what Dafa disciples have done. As long as you are doing things out of a wish to validate the Fa and save sentient beings, I will affirm all that you do. And when you go do those things, there will be my Law Bodies or gods there to amplify it and make what you do yet more magnificent and extraordinary, and they will assist you.”
In order to resist the persecution, I kept memorizing the Fa, sending forth righteous thoughts, and looking within every day in the prison. Later I also went on an eight-day hunger strike. Even though I didn’t drink any water or eat any food, I felt no thirst or hunger at all. I just lost a bit of weight, but was still full of energy. Due to my righteous thoughts, the guards didn’t force feed me.
While I was detained at Wangcun Forced Labor Camp in 2005, I met a practitioner who gave in under pressure and in turn helped the guards “reform” other practitioners. Not long after she gave up her belief in Falun Gong, she began to feel dizzy and nauseous. She also lost her appetite and was extremely pale. She needed help to walk around and even had to squat down to take a break every few steps. If nobody was around to lend her a hand, she had to hold onto the wall in order to inch ahead. She went on like this for almost a year and her symptoms didn’t improve a bit, despite the several thousand yuan spent on her medical care.
I was sympathetic toward her, so I reminded her to not betray Dafa, saying “Only Dafa can save you.” I advised her to study the Fa and send forth righteous thoughts. I recited a few articles of Master’s and asked her to try to memorize them. In response, she gently nodded her head.
The second morning a miracle happened: She woke up a completely different person, with a rosy complexion and robust energy, walking with ease and everybody could feel her joy.
There was a middle-aged woman in her late 40s at Shandong Province Women’s Prison. She suffered some trauma in the past and, as a result, always had a blank expression and was very slow moving. After carefully observing her for a while, I came to the conclusion that even though she had no facial expressions, she appeared to be a kindhearted person. Several times I wanted to tell her Dafa was good, but was not sure if she would ever react to it.
One morning I suddenly felt great compassion towards the inmates busy doing their assigned jobs in the workshop, so I shouted to them, “Falun Dafa is good! Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good!” The above-mentioned woman raised her head and gazed at me.
In the afternoon I heard the person in charge of taking care of her yell excitedly, “She’s fine now!” Tears ran down my face and I was truly in awe of the might of Dafa. Master said,
“Cultivation depends on one’s own efforts, while the transformation of gong is done by one’s master. It is good enough if you have this wish. It is the master who actually does this, as you are simply unable to do it.” (Zhuan Falun)
There was a 20-year-old young woman at the prison who always complained about stomach pain before each meal. I had a thought to also help her. To my surprise, the team arranged for her to work alongside me. I approached her, asking, “Have you heard about Falun Gong?” She said an older woman once told her about the practice while she was incarcerated at a detention center. I offered to help her learn Master’s articles, and she followed me sentence-by-sentence as I recited the articles. Later she wrote down all the articles on pieces of paper so that she could work on memorizing them while doing her assigned jobs. Not long after, I noticed she didn’t have to rub her stomach before mealtime any more. She was then able to really enjoy her meals. When I asked if her stomach was indeed healed, she nodded her head and smiled.
I also knew another inmate who lost her mother at a very young age and married three times when she grew up, but each one ended in divorce. She developed heart problems and neurasthenia as a result. She annoyed all her cellmates, because she had trouble falling asleep and tossed and turned all night long. One day she showed up at my cell with all her bedding, saying, “I’m here just looking for you.” Realizing she was another sentient being with a predestined relationship with Dafa, I told her how good Falun Gong is and taught her to memorize Dafa articles. She was very sincere and earnest at learning the articles. Despite suffering from insomnia for 20 years, she slept soundly that night. Not long after, she told me that she often smelled a special kind of scent in the workshop, but nobody else could smell it. One day her thumb was pinned under a needle when she was operating a sewing machine, but the tip of the needle didn’t pierce her flesh. I knew compassionate Master had already begun to take care of her, someone who had already suffered so much in her life.
When she heard about the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners (including myself), she was so sad that she covered herself with a quilt and cried. I also often told her stories attesting to the wonderfulness of Dafa. When I practiced the exercises and sent forth righteous thoughts, she reminded others to keep quiet.
One day when she came back from using the restroom, she said with surprise, “Why has my period returned? My uterus was removed six years ago.” I told her she had received good fortune for supporting Dafa. Other people also commented that her complexion looked so much better. From that day on, she had her period regularly every month.
While in detention, I made sure to memorize the Fa, send forth righteous thoughts, practice the exercises, and look within every day. The rest of the time I spent on clarifying the facts to everyone I met, especially the newly-arrived inmates. Because of my truth-clarification efforts, some inmates quietly helped me and my fellow practitioners pass along Dafa articles. Many expressed the wish to take up the practice of Falun Gong upon their release.
Since I refused to be “reformed,” the prison deemed me a target of “intense management.” They put me in a cell right next to the guards’ office. All other detainees were allowed to change their cells, but I had to always stay in the same cell. Even so, many people asked to move to my cell, but my existing cellmates didn’t want to move out, saying that they felt happy while staying with me. More than half of my cellmates began to learn Dafa from me, including those assigned to monitor me.
The night before my release, many people packed my cell and bid me farewell. They said, “Due to pressure, we didn’t dare to get too close to you, but we all know that you’re a good person and we all like you.” Some asked for my phone number so that they could find me to learn Falun Gong upon their release. Others said, “You’re the person I admire most.” Master said in “Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Boston,”
“You are cultivators, whose conduct is [supposed to be] pure and righteous. There are so many people who think you're great just by having seen how you act.”
On the morning of my release, many people came to hug me goodbye and some even shed tears. They didn’t want me to leave. Someone said, “We’ve never had such a farewell scene in this prison.”
“Let’s All Send Well Wishes to Compassionate Master!”
I remember it was May 13, 2010. During dinner time, I decorated the whole table with delicious food I had saved for special occasions and said to my cellmates, “It’s my treat today.” They asked curiously, “What’s special about today?” I replied, “Today is a sacred day, a day when Falun Dafa began to spread. Let’s all remember this day and ask Falun Dafa to please bless us.” They gave me a warm applause.
One practitioner slipped me a note, “Today is Falun Dafa Day. Let’s all send well wishes to compassionate Master!”