(Minghui.org) My wife began practicing Falun Dafa in 1996 and soon became very considerate and nice. I was amazed at the power of Dafa when I saw that it could change one into a new person in a relatively short time. It also brought harmony to our family. I thought that I would also practice Dafa after I worked for a few more years and made some money.
However, things suddenly changed in 1999 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began persecuting Falun Dafa. The police and people from unknown organizations took turns visiting our home. They threatened us, trying to force my wife to give up her faith. She refused to betray Teacher or Dafa. She was arrested twice. She was taken to a detention center the first time and to a brainwashing center the second time.
When I visited my wife at the detention center, a guard asked me if there were any Falun Dafa books in my home. I said there was one. The guard said he would allow me to see my wife if I brought the book to him. I refused.
I thought, “I need to hurry up and become a Dafa practitioner. It will be too late if I delay any longer.”
My wife had told me that practicing Falun Dafa meant following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, but I didn't quite know what Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance meant. I hid the book Essentials for Further Advancement when I got home.
My wife was taken to a forced labor camp far from our home. Every evening I felt my heart was empty. I took the book from its hiding place and started reading. I cried uncontrollably when I read Master Li's Fa:
“Falun Dafa has for the first time throughout the ages provided the nature of the universe—the Buddha Fa—to human beings; this amounts to providing them a ladder to ascend to heaven.” (“The Teachings in Buddhism are the Weakest and Tiniest Portion of the Buddha Fa” from Essentials for further Advancement)
I cried not because I was sad, but because I felt emotional, like a long lost child who had finally found his way home. I no longer felt confused about life. I knew I would never fight with others again because my life was from a higher and nobler place. I wanted to follow the principles that Teacher taught – Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I wanted to continue to elevate my thoughts and moral character so that I could elevate to higher realms.
I was sentenced to prison in 2002 because I insisted on cultivating Falun Dafa. I did not know what I would face when I got there. I kept reciting one of Master's poems,
“A Great Enlightened One fears no hardshipHaving forged an adamantine willFree of attachment to living or dyingHe walks the path of Fa-rectificationconfident and poised” (“Righteous Thoughts and Righteous Actions” from Hong Yin Vol. II)
The prison guards tried to force me to give up my faith and ordered the criminal inmates to torture me. They put square chopsticks between my fingers and twisted them, rubbing the skin off my fingers. The pain was excruciating.
They scraped my ribs with a wooden board. Not only was my skin rubbed off, but my flesh kept oozing fluid, which caused the wounds to stick to my clothes. I have no words to describe the pain.
They force-fed me with a concentrated salt water solution and managed to pour a small bucket of salt water into my stomach. I was hung from the upper level of a bunk bed, and whipped with a rubber tube. My whole body was swollen and bruised.
On another occasion, I was cuffed to a heating pipe and my joints were hit with a stick. To make it hurt more, an inmate straightened my arms and legs so there was less movement for the joints when they were hit.
One very cold day in late autumn, I was made to stand barefoot on a concrete floor. The inmates kept pouring cold water over me while the windows were wide open. Whenever I blinked, they stabbed my neck with scissors claiming that I was resting.
I endured the ordeal for six days and nights without succumbing to the evil.
I was put in solitary confinement one time. The cell was only 40 square feet. It was lit by a small lamp but had no windows. I couldn't tell whether it was day or night. There was no restroom, no toilet paper, no food, and no water. Jiang Zemin's regime (who started the persecution) followed the policy “Killing a Falun Gong practitioner would be counted as suicide,” so they didn't care if I starved to death.
In the cell, my hands were cuffed and my feet were shackled. The shackle was attached to a ring at the center of the floor.
I didn't know how much time had passed. It felt like years. One day, in a daze, I saw Teacher. He gave me a glass of milk. It smelled so sweet and tasted so good. I had never tasted a better glass of milk. I felt that my whole body was soothed and comfortable after I drank it.
The guards were surprised to see that I was okay when they took me out of the cell. I learned later that I had been in solitary confinement for seven days.
One time, three or four inmates beat me with bed boards. One of them broke his board over my head, which caused a huge lump. It was so big that I could see it when I raised my eyes, but it quickly disappeared.
The inmate torturers were all shocked. One of them said, “I will die myself if I ever hit you again.”
I didn't know if I would die every time I was tortured. If it was not for Teacher's protection, I know I would have been killed.
I always acted righteously when the inmates tortured me. I am a cultivator who knows the truth of the universe. They are poor victims of the Chinese regime's lies. I had no hatred for them. Rather, I felt sorry for them and sympathized with them.
I thought, "What punishment will they have to endure in the future for the crime of persecuting a cultivator despite their ignorance?"
One inmate was incarcerated for stealing. He had no family who cared about him. I gave him some instant noodles when he was moved to another ward. He was surprised and moved by the gesture, not knowing what to say. I told him the principle of “good is rewarded with good and evil incurs punishment,” and told him the facts about Dafa.
He was moved back to our ward a while later. When the guards wanted him to torture practitioners, he refused to comply. His prison term was reduced. Perhaps it was a reward for refusing to persecute practitioners.
An instructor called me into his office one day. He offered me a glass of water as I entered, which was unprecedented. He asked me why I was able to persist in my cultivation.
I said, “Confucius and Mengzi said about 2000 years ago that one should die for a noble cause. If I had to choose between saving my life and saving my integrity and righteousness, I'd rather give up my life. That moral standard is part of Chinese traditional culture. It is the spirit of the Chinese race. But the Chinese regime has destroyed that spirit and those standards in its campaigns, so it is difficult for people nowadays to understand our determination to uphold our belief. I refuse to give up cultivating Falun Dafa because Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is a universal law. It applies to everyone.”
He was extra nice to me when I left the room, showing his respect for a Dafa practitioner.