(Minghui.org) My health was in a truly wretched state in 2013, when I was 35 years old. I suffered from recurring complications of a slipped disc that made movement agonizingly difficult. Even walking a few steps would leave me drenched in sweat. I also had severe asthma, causing me to cough all year round. And I was losing so much hair that I was nearly bald. Gaunt and frail, I lacked the strength to perform even the lightest manual labor. I looked like a withered old man.
That same year, through a seemingly accidental opportunity, I was fortunate to start practicing Falun Dafa (Falun Gong). In just a couple of months, I underwent a complete transformation. I became free of ailments and felt light and energetic. My face was glowing, and my skin was smooth with a healthy, rosy flush. Suddenly I looked 10 years younger. Even though I’m nearly 50 now, people still often called me “young man.”
Every day, in addition to studying the Fa and doing the exercises, whenever I had free time, come rain or shine, I would head out to tell people about Dafa and advise them to quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At night, I hung up banners and painted slogans with messages about Falun Gong to expose the CCP’s lies.
I was the youngest of three children, and everyone in town knew me as a devoted son. My father, a local schoolteacher, passed away suddenly when I was nine, leaving behind my grandmother, my young mother, and us three children.
The burden of supporting the family fell entirely upon my mother’s shoulders. I did whatever I could to help, and she often said I was the most sensible and capable child in the family. At 18, I learned the craft of masonry and led a crew to build a large brick house for my family, which was a rare feat in our village at the time. My mother was so proud of me.
After I started practicing Dafa, however, my mother was deceived by the CCP’s lies, and became so ashamed of me that she couldn’t hold her head up in front of our relatives. Whenever my practice of Dafa was mentioned, my wife would call me crazy. As soon as she scolded me, my mother would beat me.
Tearfully, I admitted to my mother that it was my fault.
My mother shouted, “Quickly, say, what did you do wrong?”
I answered, “Dafa’s Master taught me to follow Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I must not have done well enough and that’s why you’re so angry.”
My mother was furious. “You’re done for. You were already foolish, but this time you’ve gone and proven yourself to be a complete idiot!”
I held not the slightest bit of resentment toward them, as I knew they had been deceived by the CCP.
I was illegally arrested in 2022 and sentenced to 10 months in jail. After I was released, the police frequently came to our home and harassed us. Gradually, my family began to realize that the CCP was evil. They also saw how I had improved physically and mentally through practicing Dafa. I followed Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance in my daily life. My mother and my wife slowly understood the truth about Dafa and the persecution. Later, whenever Falun Dafa was mentioned, my mother would say, “Whatever it may be, it teaches people to be good.”
I was forced to leave my hometown in 2023 to avoid the persecution. My wife took care of my mother at home, and the relationship between them was harmonious.
My mother was proud of me before I started practicing Falun Dafa, and I also considered myself a decent person. However, after reading Zhuan Falun I realized I was far from meeting Dafa’s standard for a selfless person, and only by following Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, could one be a truly good person.
As a mason, my strongest skill was laying tiles. Since I practiced Dafa, I worked conscientiously, constantly striving to be a better person. Gradually, I gained a solid reputation. People from villages within a radius of dozens of miles would seek out our construction team to build their houses, specifically requesting “Mister Liu of Falun Gong” to handle the tiling. I knew it was Dafa’s divine power, and an honor that Master gave to me. The foreman learned the truth about Dafa and asked me to help him quit the Party.
Villagers often gathered around to watch me work, praising the quality of my workmanship. I took the opportunity to clarify the truth. I would tell them that I practiced Falun Gong, and that my Master taught us to be honest and trustworthy, work conscientiously, and never cut corners.
Erecting the basic structural frame of a rural house was tough work, and generally the homeowner wouldn’t nitpick. However, they did tend to get fussy during the finishing stage, specifically when tiles were being laid, in the hope of paying less.
Whenever there was a difficult client, the foreman would send me to handle the job. At every job site, I would tell the homeowner, “Building a house these days is no easy feat. I’m going to do the work meticulously, even if it takes extra effort. If you have any preference, I’ll follow your lead. If not, I’ll proceed according to my own plan. If you spot anything amiss, I will correct it right away. A project of this scale involves a substantial labor cost, so it’s only reasonable to round off the final figure or make minor adjustments when settling up with the foreman. All I ask is that you don’t complain about the quality of my work at pay time and I’ll be truly grateful.” Hearing me put it that way, the homeowners wouldn’t nitpick, and the foreman was able to collect payment smoothly upon completion.
One autumn, we were working for a family in town. It happened to coincide with the autumn harvest, so most of the workers had gone home to tend to their fields. The foreman, knowing that I was a Falun Gong practitioner and a reliable worker, assigned me to tile the place by myself. In the past, we would knock off and head home the moment the sun went down. After I became a Dafa practitioner, I busily worked all day long, only stopping at nightfall when it was too dark to see. Even the homeowner thought I was working too hard and would lend a hand whenever he had time.
One day, an elderly neighbor there said, “It’s already this dark, and you’re still working? You Falun Gong people are so good!” Whenever I ran into him while clarifying the truth, he cheerfully shook my hand and told everyone around that I was a truly good person, saying that such people are all too rare these days.
We were once building a house in a village north of town for a client who was a specialized pig farmer, and was shrewd, capable, and meticulous. He would stay close by and watch over our work every day. He put a great deal of thought into ensuring the house turned out exactly to his liking, even driving to a distant city to hand-pick the interior materials.
The house reached the tiling stage, which was a crucial step that the homeowner was very concerned about. One morning, a coworker and I were tiling the bathroom. All the preparations were done, and we started setting up the lines.
As I hammered a nail into the wall, it went in too easily, and I realized I’d hit a water pipe. Panicked, I quickly asked my coworker what to do. He said, “The homeowner isn’t here today. Quickly apply some glue and cement to it.” Without thinking much, I did as he suggested, and the wall was quickly finished.
The next day was a rainy day off. I stayed home thinking about what happened, and felt troubled all day. I thought, “Wasn’t this just shirking responsibility and trying to fool people? I am a Dafa practitioner! What I did was so unprofessional! It’s not leaking now, but what if it leaks later? If I told the homeowner the truth, wouldn’t he be furious? What about the damage from having to redo it?” After an intense internal struggle, I decided to apologize to the homeowner and take full responsibility for the damage. A practitioner must absolutely not tarnish the reputation of Dafa.
When the rain stopped on the afternoon of the following day, I rode my motorcycle there.
“I am truly sorry,” I said to the homeowner. “The day before yesterday, while I was laying tiles, I accidentally punctured a water pipe with a nail. I patched it up and it’s not leaking at the moment, but I’m worried it might in the future. So you should probably have a plumber fix it properly. I’ll cover the cost, as well as the money for two replacement tiles and your travel expenses to buy them.”
To my surprise, the homeowner replied emotionally, “I am so grateful to you for telling me the truth— I am truly grateful, brother! I’ll cover the cost. You don’t need to pay a thing.”
After the pipe was repaired, I replaced the damaged tiles during my lunch break so there was no charge for this.
There was a gas station just outside the town’s west gate, where I rarely went to refuel. One evening over a decade ago, I rode my motorcycle there to fill up. It was late autumn and bitterly cold, and I was shivering. After getting 10 yuan’s worth of gas, I went to get the money for the attendant. But before I could pay, he hung up the nozzle and ran inside.
It was before I had learned Falun Dafa, so I jumped at the chance to get something for free. Only a fool would pass up that opportunity! I immediately drove away and happily headed off, without the slightest bit of guilt.
After I became a Dafa practitioner, one day at group Fa study, we read this:
“One practitioner works in a textile factory in a city in Shandong Province. After studying Falun Dafa, he taught other coworkers to practice. As a result, the factory has taken on a new look. He used to take home pieces of towels from the textile factory, and so did the rest of the employees. After he started practicing Dafa, instead of taking things home, he brought back to the factory what he had taken home before. When others saw his actions, nobody would take things home anymore. Some employees also returned to the factory what they had previously taken home. This situation occurred throughout the entire factory.” (Lecture Four, Zhuan Falun)
I was startled. Weren’t those towel scraps just factory trash? If the workers didn’t take them, the factory would just throw them away anyway. Why would Master talk about the issue of towel scraps so seriously? I came to realize that taking the factory’s towel scraps was petty theft and selfish, and would cause one to lose “de” [virtue]. At that moment, the scene from the gas station over a decade ago flashed before my eyes: “Just think how many towel ends that 10 yuan could have bought! And how much de I had given away!”
After Fa study, I talked about the incident with fellow practitioners and asked for suggestions. Everyone listened in silence. Finally, a practitioner spoke up, “That’s all in the past—who hasn’t done something like that in the past?”
I kept thinking to myself, “How could I dismiss an outstanding debt, money that I clearly owed, as merely a thing of the past?” I decided I had to return the money to the gas station, otherwise the matter would keep weighing on my mind. Yet, I was held back by a sense of pride—how could I possibly explain this situation? After a long internal struggle, I finally resolved to go there.
Thinking there would be fewer people, I went there one morning. But when I arrived there were so many people getting gas. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, and simply rode off on my motorcycle. Later, I thought there might be fewer customers around midday. But when I went there, it was just as crowded. I asked the attendant if the owner was the same person as 10 years ago, and he confirmed that it was. Once again, I couldn’t bring myself to mention repaying the money. I wondered why it was so difficult. Two months flew by, and the burden of that unpaid fuel bill weighed heavily on my mind, making me feel incredibly distressed.
As autumn progressed, the days grew shorter, and it was already dark by the time I got off work. One day, while heading home, I passed by the gas station and decided that I had to pay back the money. The station was still bustling with people when I arrived.
I found the owner and explained why I was there, “About a dozen years ago, I got some gas here, but you did not collect the 10 yuan payment. Today I’ve come to pay the money.”
Two people standing nearby recognized me, and one said, “Look at him, a Falun Gong practitioner even returns money from 10 years ago!”
“I practice Falun Gong,” I said to the gas station owner. “Our Master taught us to follow Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, to be benevolent, and not take advantage of others. That’s why I brought this 10-yuan note back to you. If I didn’t practice Falun Gong, I certainly wouldn’t be here to return the money. The Communist Party has slandered Falun Gong, saying Falun Gong commits self-immolation and suicide. Those are all lies. There’s absolutely no truth to any of it.”
The owner replied, “Thanks, brother. I believe you.” He added, “Falun Dafa is good! I will treat you to a meal when I get the chance.”
“Filial piety stands foremost among all virtues” is a fine tradition passed down over thousands of years in China. However, since the CCP, that “specter from the West,” seized power, it has all but obliterated traditional Chinese culture. If you were to tell young people today stories from the “Twenty-four Filial Exemplars,” they simply wouldn’t believe them. They would find them laughable, and dismiss them as mere legends.
One morning during the Chinese New Year festivities, our family was sitting together at breakfast quietly. Suddenly, my mother broke the silence, saying, “Son, I have something good for you.”
Everyone turned to look at her. Most of her teeth had already fallen out, and the few remaining ones were barely functional. Just then, she spat out a piece of chicken, slick with saliva, and added, “There’s crunchy cartilage in this piece, but my teeth aren’t up to it anymore. I can’t eat it.”
I smiled, “Since it’s a treat, you ought to give it to my older sister.”
My mother picked up the piece of chicken she had spat out with her chopsticks and offered it to my older sister, who was sitting to her right. My sister made a dismissive sound and turned her head away. As my sister wouldn’t take it, my mother put the piece of chicken on the table. I reached over, picked it up with my chopsticks, and put it in my mouth. Just then, I heard my wife make a similar dismissive sound. I turned and saw her glaring at me. I knew what she was thinking, “How could you possibly eat something so disgusting?”
A moment later, my son, who had just started high school, spoke up, “Dad, in you I see that a person like Emperor Shun from ancient times truly exists. It is absolutely not just a legend.”
In the traditional text “The Three Character Classic,” there is this line, “At birth, human nature is inherently good.” When a person is born, their heart is pure and benevolent. In early life, an infant opens their little mouth, waiting for food passed directly from their mother’s mouth. At that age, no one finds the food from their mother’s mouth to be disgusting. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to do this if I did not practice Falun Dafa. It is Dafa that purified my heart anew.