(Minghui.org) I heard about Falun Dafa in 1994, and I began practicing in winter 1996. Various types of qigong were popular at that time. I repair home appliances, and I helped those who practice qigong adjust their audio equipment and other devices. I also helped Falun Dafa practitioners adjust their equipment to play videos. I initially thought that Falun Dafa was just another form of qigong. However, Falun Dafa practitioners looked kind, calm, and I felt comfortable around them, but I did not think of practicing it.

I Begin Practicing

In winter 1996, an elderly Falun Dafa practitioner came to my shop to have his television fixed. We were having lunch at the time. He looked at us and smiled. After we finished eating, he asked me, “You don’t seem to be enjoying your food. Are you ill?” He was right.

My sinuses had been inflamed for eight years and I’d had a mild nervous breakdown. My nose was blocked and it affected my ability to talk, eat, and sleep. My complexion was sallow. I took medication and tried many unorthodox treatments, but nothing worked. I eventually found a solution that relieved my symptoms. I had to apply the solution every time before I ate and slept. Because my nose was congested, I had difficulty swallowing and I frequently woke up gasping for air. I even had to apply the medicine before a long conversation with someone, or I couldn’t talk. I became reliant on this medication and I always carried with me.

When I told the practitioner, he said, “Why don’t you practice Falun Dafa?” I thought this was just a type of qigong that was popular in society. I’d tried other qigong practices before, but it was useless. I did not think Falun Dafa could help me but I was curious about the demeanor of practitioners.

I said, “A village Party secretary who is highly regarded practices Falun Dafa. Like other practitioners, he looks kind and peaceful and he isn’t arrogant. How does Falun Dafa make people become kind?” He said, “Falun Dafa is not just any qigong. It’s not just doing the movements. There are also books that talk about being a good person, from the simplest thing to very profound principles. They explain why people become ill, suffer, and encounter problems. They talk about the structure of the universe and many other things. Practicing Falun Dafa can change your view of life and the world.” I listened attentively.

I was very interested: “Wow! It turns out Falun Dafa is so profound! I must read the books.” He said, “I’ll drop them off when I come by again or you can ask the village Party secretary to lend you one.” We chatted all afternoon. He said, “I’ll leave this television with you and collect it when I drop off the book.”

I did not want to wait for him to bring the book, so I went straight to the village Party secretary’s house. I said I wanted to borrow a Falun Dafa book and he agreed to lend me one.

My wife and I started to read the book when I got home. My wife was keen to learn. We read the book for two days. But, because I was busy with work, I stopped reading. My wife continued reading the book. One day, she said, “I’m going to the village Party secretary’s house to do the exercises. I’ll teach you after I learn the movements.” She went to the practice site every day and taught me the exercises when she returned home. In this way, both of us started our cultivation journey.

Gains From Practicing Falun Dafa

I soon learned all five of the Dafa exercises. One day, my wife said, “Practitioners know why one has illness. It’s because of something called karma caused by bad deeds done in the past. They understand that taking medication and injections is not the only way to cure illnesses. If we follow Falun Dafa’s requirements and cultivate our character, we will eliminate karma. Furthermore, if you are sincere, divine beings will help you, and you will soon recover from your illness.”

Through my work, I knew of some of the most cutting edge scientific advancements. Therefore I thought science is omnipotent. I didn’t quite believe in high level divine beings, whether gods or Buddhas. I was skeptical about what my wife said. But I thought, “When I do the exercises, one must shut one’s mouth. I cannot breathe through my nose, and I often have to open my mouth. Wouldn’t this be against the requirements? It would be great if my nose wasn’t congested.”

I told my wife my thoughts and she said, “Why don’t you throw out the medication.” I got all my medicines and placed them in the burner. However, at night while sleeping, my nose was so congested I could not sleep well at all.

The next day, I said, “I need to buy the medicine or else I cannot sleep.”

The weather that day was terrible. My wife said, “The weather is so bad, you better not go out. Why don’t you try and hang on for one more day.”

I listened to her. Miraculously, on the second night, my nose was not so blocked and I could sleep. I thought “this truly works.” By the third day, my nose was completely fine. From then on, to this day, my nose has never been inflamed again.

This extraordinary experience loosened my stubborn notion that science is omnipotent: Can it be that there are higher level beings than humans in this universe? Thus I started to study the Falun Dafa books seriously. I realized Zhuan Falun is amazing. It answered many questions I had, and I read it every day. I’ve read Zhuan Falun more than 1,000 times. When I read it, I still feel a sense of joy.

Before I began to practice Falun Dafa, every summer, I had a rather serious flu followed by stomachache. The doctor said it was a form of gastroenteritis. Every summer, I had to take pills and injections and it took several days to recover. The second year after I began practicing, I had similar symptoms again in summer and I vomited. However what I threw up was not food but a lot of brown-black fibrous pus. It even had a fishy smell. I’ve never had the flu again.

I know Master purified my body. Not only did I recover from these two types of sickness, other diseases such as mental fatigue were gone too. I truly experienced what it feels to be free of illness. In the nearly three decades since, I have not taken any medications.

Besides the physical benefits, I also experienced how Master protects practitioners. I will share two incidents.

Once, while repairing a refrigerator, I needed to disconnect the pipe, drain the system, and add the refrigerant. As I was busy that day, I forgot that I’d just disconnected the electricity. The high pressure pipe was filled with high pressure gas and I rushed to use an oxy-acetylene torch to directly heat the interface of the dryer filter to try to disconnect the pipe from there. Just as the weld was about to melt, the dryer suddenly exploded right in front of my face.

The desiccant filter is a copper tube 10 cm long and 2 cm thick, filled with desiccant (hard, sand-like particles larger than millet grains). I heard a very crisp, loud bang, then I couldn’t hear anything. I was stunned and stopped for 30 seconds before coming to my senses. I subconsciously touched my face with both hands. There was no blood and it did not hurt. I blinked my eyes.

Just then, a male practitioner happened to come to my house. He heard a loud sound just as he stepped inside and came running over in fright. He shouted, “What happened? What happened? Are you all right?!”

I turned my head to look at him. Because my eyeball moved in his direction when I looked at him, it was only then that I felt something in my left eye. It felt a little painful. I ran into the house at once and looked into the mirror to see what had happened. Only then did I realize that a dessicant particle had gone into my eye but not all of it was in my eye, half of it was outside. I tried to remove it with a towel but it did not come out. What should I do?

There was a clinic and a surgeon worked there. I went to see him at once. He looked at my eye and said: “Go to the hospital quickly. You must not move. Otherwise it will damage your cornea. One moves one’s eye involuntarily, while removing the particle, it will damage the cornea, you will become blind then. You can only go to the hospital. They have a kind of solution, once it is applied to the eye, the eyeball will not move then the particle can be removed.” When I heard I had to go to the hospital, I thought, “Forget it. Master is protecting me, I will be fine.” I decided to go home to send righteous thoughts.

Several practitioners and I sent righteous thoughts for a while. A female practitioner came to ask me to do something just then. Without disturbing the other practitioners, I went out and spoke to her for a while. While talking, I felt as if my left eyeball was pricked with a needle and then it stopped hurting. I moved my eyeball and did not feel anything rubbing against it. After the female practitioner left, I quickly went into the house and looked into the mirror. There was nothing at all, not a trace. I looked everywhere, from the corner of my eye to the socket, but I could not see the particle. I did not know where it had gone.

One time, I rode a motorcycle to another town. In the past when I rode the motorcycle, I never wore a helmet. That day, I don’t know why, but I decided to wear one. As I reached the town, my motorcycle struck a brick. As my speed was quite fast, the motorcycle bounced up then crashed down before sliding out 6 or 7 meters away. It was early spring then, so I still wore quite heavy clothing. The scraping wore through the knee of my left trouser leg and a huge piece of the left side of my helmet broke off. That was close! If I hadn’t worn a helmet that day, I probably would have died from the accident.

I quickly stood up but my left leg actually bent backward when I used force. As everyone knows, one’s leg should only bend forward not backward, but my leg bent backward. I realized at once that probably my leg was broken or dislocated. With great effort, I used my right leg to support my body and lifted the motorcycle. I used my hand to lift my left leg onto the motorcycle, got on it, shifted gears with my left hand and rode home.

My wife helped me into the house. I endured great pain and did the sitting meditation. My left leg hurt so much I could not sit in the lotus position, so I simply left it straight and sat in the lotus position with my right leg. I did not think of going to the hospital. Every day I did the standing exercises leaning against the wall and stretched out my left leg while doing the sitting meditation.

Two weeks later, I was able to go out with the help of a crutch. Over 20 days later, I was able to walk without a crutch. A month later, I’d recovered completely. There’s a saying: “It takes 100 days to heal injured muscles and broken bones.” Even if one goes to the hospital, it would take three months to recover. Yet after doing the exercises for a month, I was able to walk briskly. Besides, I could carry 40-45 kg bags of grains.

How Dafa Transformed Me

Before I began to practice Falun Dafa, because I used to own a shop on the street, I got to know all kinds of people. Back then, I did not have a standard to judge who is good or bad. I also implicitly accepted the current definition of good and bad people: at times when evaluating a person who is incompetent or not too smart, I would say “that is a good person.” This is also a kind of cunning language people nowadays use, because calling someone “incompetent” would hurt them. I used “good person” instead, that’s why when someone said I’m a good person, I felt humiliated; I would call those who commit adultery, cheat, or flatter others as “quite capable,” and call those who do all sorts of bad things “a good man.”

Many “capable, good men” came into my social circle, too. They stole people’s chickens at night and brought them to my place to cook; in autumn, they stole beans from the fields and came to my house to cook them. I used to think they were capable.

The customers who come to my shop know nothing about repairing appliances. I removed parts that were fine and I replaced them with new parts and then charged customers high prices. Who knows how much karma I accumulated that caused my health to become so bad. Besides the inflamed sinuses, I also suffered from mental fatigue. I often had headaches, drumming in my ears, and the back of my neck was frequently tense, stiff, sore, and tired.

My headache started the moment I stepped into my shop. I played games with the neighbors to distract myself so I could feel better. I got into the habit of playing cards every day. One night, my wife and I went out to play cards after our 5-year-old daughter went to bed. We returned home late. When we opened the door, my daughter was crying. Her face was red and her voice hoarse. We picked her up and wanted to cry. I thought in pain, “What is the matter with me? Am I still living like a human being?!” I felt like a lost boat, drifting along in the endless ocean.

In winter 1995, I finally obtained the Fa! I began to practice cultivation! Falun Dafa changed me completely. Not only did I become free of illness, I was happy. My wife and I woke up every morning to go to the practice site and do the exercises. We were just like two carefree birds flying in the vast sky. At night we read Zhuan Falun. After studying the Fa, we discussed our cultivation experiences and how to improve our character.

My health improved, I felt happy, and became more peaceful in treating people as well as dealing with things. I also stopped cheating people when I fixed their appliances. One time, I went to an elderly man’s house to repair his television. As I could not immediately determine what the problem was, I asked the man to look for the circuit diagram in the instruction manual. The old man was a retired teacher who was straightforward but meticulous. He sometimes spoke rudely. When I asked him to hand me the circuit diagram, he said rudely: “Don’t give me that crap! I know people in your line of work. You’ll find the problem as soon as I leave and you’ll want me to pay for replacement parts right? I’ll watch you fix it today.”

Seeing his attitude, I did not ask him to look for the circuit diagram. I found a similar diagram among the materials I had brought with me. While I repaired the television, I said, “I practice Falun Dafa. I wouldn’t do such things.” He was a little surprised and said, “Falun Dafa can make one a better person? This is incredible.” He asked many questions about Falun Dafa and I answered them one by one.

I fixed the television and I charged him very little. When I parted ways with him, he smiled. From then on, a nearly 90-year-old man and I have become best friends. Every time he goes out, he comes to see me in my shop.

Soon, many people knew of my transformation. Most of them didn’t know my name. They simply called me “Falun Dafa.” Just mention repair home appliances and they would say: “Just call that ‘Falun Dafa,’ he is good and doesn’t charge unreasonable fees.” As many people got to know me, the way I handle things, my peaceful mindset, every time I was out on the street, many people greeted me warmly.

Persecution

The persecution of Falun Dafa began in July 1999 and we lost the environment to practice our belief freely. The precious books we read every day were snatched away too. We were monitored, harassed, and forced to write statements promising not to practice.

In January 2000, six practitioners in our town went to Beijing to appeal and were sent back after they were arrested. The town government arrested them along with over 20 practitioners in our area and locked all of us in a student dormitory in a secondary school. There was a large communal sleeping area in the dormitory. There were no blankets, only a hard wooden board. Everyone was given a roll of toilet paper to use as a pillow and we were detained for nearly a month. We were given a bowl of tiny corn porridge every day, a small bun, and a bit of pickles. Besides beating the six practitioners who went to Beijing, the guards tortured practitioners who refused to give up the practice, including beating them with electric batons.

One day, an official brought a stack of paper and pens and ordered everyone to write a statement expressing regret for practicing Falun Dafa. No one did. I wrote a long statement. I wrote about the positive changes that I experienced after I began practicing, and my determination to practice cultivation. When the official returned to collect the statements and saw that no one wrote anything, he was furious. When he saw I had written something, he smiled and said, “See, so-and-so has been good, he wrote something.”

When he took the paper and read what I wrote, his expression froze. He shouted at me, “What is this you wrote? Read this to the superiors!”

He dragged me to another room. There was the town mayor, the Party secretary, the head of the police station, and several subordinates. He gave me my paper and said, “Why don’t you read it to the leaders!” I hesitated, a little afraid, but I thought this was indeed my real experience and I should report it to the leaders. I took the paper and read it from beginning to end in a loud voice. No one interrupted me. Everyone listened in silence.

The head of the police station raised his head when I finished. He gestured to the guards with a look in his eyes and I was taken out. I was pushed to the ground and several people kicked me violently, shocking me with electric batons. One of them swore at me while beating me: “You think you are more powerful than the town mayor? No one greets him when he walks on the street! How come everyone greets you when you are out on the street?!”

When we were released after over 20 days, everyone had to pay 300 yuan for meal expenses. My wife and I had to pay an additional 6,000 yuan. As for the other practitioners, some were extorted for 6,000 yuan, some 4,000 yuan, or 2,000 yuan. Practitioners in over 20 villages in the jurisdiction of the town were illegally detained as well. They too were made to pay fines adding up to over 200,000 yuan. We were monitored, harassed, and made to report to the authorities every day even after we were released.

At the end of autumn in 2001, my wife decided to go to Beijing to appeal for Dafa. I was forced to leave home to escape persecution. I asked my daughter’s aunt to take care of her. After my wife was arrested in Beijing, she was sentenced to a labor camp for one year and six months. I was arrested while I moved from place to place and I was imprisoned for 11 months. While I was away from home, the police station issued an arrest warrant. To force me to return home, the town mayor ordered the school to expel my daughter, who was then studying in primary school. This incurred the wrath of teachers, the principal, and fellow practitioners. Many practitioners wrote to the county mayor and city mayor, posted information about Falun Dafa along major streets, and exposed the way the town government persecuted practitioners.

When the county Party secretary learned of the matter, he yelled at the town mayor on the phone: “In recent years there is the policy of emphasizing nine years of compulsory education, yet you made a primary school student go home?! You better bring her back!” The town mayor sent a deputy Party secretary to personally drive my daughter back to school.

Two decades later, my daughter, who is now married, returned home to see us. My wife looked at her and asked, “Those years we left you with your aunt... Do you hate us?” She answered firmly, “No.” Then she said, “Mom, do you know how I became nearsighted? It wasn’t caused by studies but from crying. After you left me, I missed you terribly. I cried every night, but I did not want my aunt to see, so I wept under the blanket. I missed you and my father terribly, but I didn’t hate you. I know it was not your fault. It was the government’s fault. It is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who made us suffer. I am very grateful to my aunt and her family for taking care of me. There were also my grandparents, as well as the head teacher of my class who always cared for me.”

My daughter said that that year, after the head teacher learned of our family situation, she sympathized with my daughter and often gave her pocket money as well as snacks. She also frequently asked about her well-being. My daughter is in her 30s now, yet the head teacher asks how my daughter is when she sees me. We are very grateful for her kindness.

The CCP has been persecuting Falun Dafa for 27 years and I have practiced cultivation for nearly 30 years. Whenever someone says, “Aren’t you stupid? Why do you insist on walking this path under such huge pressure? What is it that makes you do it?” I tell them, “It is my faith in Falun Dafa that helped me get through this.”

(Selected submission in celebration of 2026 World Falun Dafa Day on Minghui.org)