(Minghui.org) Cheng Hao, a renowned Confucian in the Song Dynasty, had a motto, “Treating ordinary citizens as patients.” That is, as an official, he would take good care of people and avoid hurting them in any way.
In Jincheng County of today’s Shanxi Province, some mobsters robbed passing boats and even made a living out of it. Cheng arrested the gang leaders and learned that they did so because of poverty. Instead of punishing them, he assigned them to work as boat trackers. He also paid attention to education for both young and old. Within a few years, there was no more robbery or fighting in the region.
Emperor Shenzong intended to promote Cheng as a supervising censor and asked him how he’d go about doing the job. “I would be happy to accept the position if my job is to check whether Your Majesty has any oversight,” Cheng replied, “But if my job were to find faults in other officials in exchange for my own promotion, I would not do that.” The Emperor was pleased and also followed his advice.
Later on, Cheng returned to his hometown and many scholars came to learn from him. One of them, Zhu Guangting, studied with him for three months. When asked about his experience, Zhu said it was the best time he ever had. “My teacher was kind and patient. He provided guidance for us to make progress constantly,” he explained, “I learned so much and enjoyed it a lot – refreshed and relaxed like being bathed in the spring breeze.”
Such a tradition of teaching people to be good and become productive and upright citizens continued for thousands of years in the Chinese history before being attacked and discarded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after it came to power in 1949.
Fortunately, the introduction of Falun Dafa to the public in 1992 enabled people to see the importance of traditional values. Millions of practitioners have been striving to be good people by living by Falun Dafa’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
The immense popularity of Falun Dafa was deemed a threat to the CCP, so the communist regime launched a nationwide campaign against the practice in 1999. Since then, Falun Dafa practitioners have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the persecution. Despite the severe persecution by the CCP, they have remained peaceful and treated others with compassion.
The sincerity and perseverance of practitioners have gradually changed people around them, even including those perpetrators involved in the persecution. Below are some examples.
“Heaven Is Watching”
Ming, in his 50s, is the deputy chief of a police department. His main responsibility was to “maintain stability.” As such, he directed the arrests and harassment of many local practitioners.
Some practitioners explained to him that the persecution had no legal basis and that Falun Dafa only teaches people to be good. They urged him to stop the persecution and treat practitioners well. But he did not listen. Practitioners then publicized his phone number on Minghui. After receiving numerous phone calls from overseas practitioners, he became somewhat less rampant.
During the wedding of his niece, Ming met a practitioner who urged him to stop doing bad deeds and advised him to renounce his membership in the CCP. While he was receptive to what the practitioner had to say, Ming refused to quit the Party. “I need a job and cannot do it.”
In 2018, Ming attended the court trial against a detained practitioner. The defense from the lawyer and the practitioner himself made Ming realize the CCP had abused the law to wrongfully persecute practitioners. “But this is China and we live under the rule of the totalitarian CCP. What difference can an ordinary citizen make?”
Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with cancer not long after that. Seeing that several police officers – including some young ones – had died one after another, he remembered the words from a practitioner, “Whatever we do, heaven is watching.”
When the wife of his friend – also a practitioner – urged him to quit the CCP using a pseudonym, he agreed immediately.
One day when seeing a police officer sending a practitioner to a detention center, Ming said it’d be enough to just go through the motions. The police officer understood and, after filling in a form, contacted the practitioner’s family members to pick her up.
In late 2019, Ming’s subordinates asked him how to handle the “zero-out” campaign since police in other areas had been “visiting” practitioners at home one by one.
The “zero-out” campaign aims to force every Falun Dafa practitioner on the government’s blacklist to renounce their faith.
“Can we arrest them if some practitioners refuse to sign documents [renouncing the practice]?” asked one officer.
“How can we do that?!” Ming replied, “This [persecution] seems endless and we need a break.”
As a result, Ming’s officers just made home visits without arresting any practitioners.
After the pandemic broke out, Ming has witnessed many miracles and he believed Falun Dafa practitioners’ words even more.
Story of Another Police Chief
One police officer Gang told a practitioner what had happened at his police department. The police chief knew that none of his officers was willing to arrest Falun Dafa practitioners since they were all aware that practitioners are good people. So the chief hired three people to carry out arrests.
Gang said the three people worked very hard and they would arrest one practitioner every few days. When practitioners remained silent during interrogation, these people would beat them up.
“We police officers often told them not to do this, especially because some practitioners are very old,” Gand added, “We said beatings like this are no good for the practitioners or these people.”
But these people did not listen and continued arresting and beating practitioners. After some time, all of them died from various causes. Gang and other officers attributed the deaths to karmic retribution and no one wanted to attend the funerals.
Later on, the officers were even more unwilling to handle Falun Dafa issues. “All right then. No matter what higher officers say, you don’t need to do this [arrest practitioners], and we will not hire people externally either,” said the police chief.
From then on, more people in the police department used software overcoming the firewall to read Minghui. The police department chief, in particular, now reads Minghui every day.
A Name List
My husband is a government official, so I often came across other government employees.
Once my husband and I went with his friends to climb a mountain. A Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) Party Secretary commented that I looked very fit and asked me what was my secret.
“It is because of Falun Dafa,” I answered, “I was severely ill and had to lie in bed for almost six months. Falun Dafa brought miracles and cured my illnesses. I also became a better person and my bad temper was gone.”
“Really? I did not know Falun Dafa is so good!” he exclaimed.
As we continued chatting, I gave him a copy of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party and some other materials. He agreed to pass them on to others after reading them. He was also willing to renounce his membership in the CCP and so was his driver.
The Party Secretary later gave me a piece of paper with over 10 names.
“All of them agreed to quit [the Party] too,” he explained, adding that his family members and friends also liked the materials I gave him.
I was really happy for them because blessings will come when one chooses conscience over the CCP.
Views expressed in this article represent the author's own opinions or understandings. All content published on this website are copyrighted by Minghui.org. Minghui will produce compilations of its online content regularly and on special occasions.
