(Minghui.org) I am a taxi driver from a small town by the Songhua River in Heilongjiang Province. Although I stopped practicing Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) after the persecution began in 1999, I have continued to believe in it. I often recite, “Falun Dafa is good and Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” and always carry a Dafa amulet in my wallet. I also frequently talk to people about the goodness of Falun Gong.
In the winter of 2005, my car accidentally slipped into the frozen Songhua River. I would have died if it were not for Falun Gong's founder Master Li. On the occasion of the 17th annual World Falun Dafa Day, I would like to share my story with you and thank Master Li for saving my life.
The Frozen Songhua River
The Songhua River is beautiful. It runs about 890 miles across Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces and provides an inexhaustible amount of water for crops. It is also an important shipping route. But in the winter this beautiful river can also bring huge losses in terms of human life and economy when it freezes over.
The Songhua river is usually frozen in winter, yet the water in some sections of the river is deep and continues to flow swiftly. Anyone who falls into the river risks being carried into the icy current.
Swept into the Current
In 2005, in the evening of New Year's Day, I drove a customer across the frozen river. On the way back, I suddenly saw a patch of fog lying ahead of me. I knew from experience that this signaled a swiftly moving section of the river where the water had not frozen completely. Although I slammed on the brakes, my car slid into the current.
When I tried to open the car door, I felt someone pushing me out from behind. The car surprisingly still floated on the water's surface as I was getting out. I tried to swim out of the river, but the strong current quickly carried me toward the main channel. If I had been swept under the surface of the ice, I would have drowned for sure.
Fortunately, my head lodged temporarily in a crack in the ice made by my car, which kept me from getting swept into the main current. I managed to get my hands on top of the ice to support my body. My clothes froze to the surface of the ice and held me fast there.
I finally clambered out of water after struggling for almost an hour. I just lay there on the ice, completely exhausted. Then, when I tried to move, I found that my clothes, including my arms and legs, were frozen to the ice. I struggled several times to sit up. When I finally broke free from the ice, my hands were bleeding badly. I managed to walk to a guard shed on the river bank for help. When I got there, I was too cold to even talk.
When I finally called my older brother, he was surprised that I'd survived. We went back to the river the next day. We could not see my car, just a frozen human shape at the spot where I had climbed out of the water. Two days later, we hired people to pull the car out of the river, which is about 30 meters deep in that area.
An experienced diver said, “No one has ever survived falling in here. Your family must be Buddhists.” I told him that my parents and brother are Falun Gong practitioners. The diver said that Falun Gong must have protected me. He was right. It was clearly Master who saved me.
When I crawled out of my car two nights before, my wallet had dropped out of my pocket. We found the wallet still in the car. The money had been washed away by the current, but the Dafa amulet was still inside the wallet.
