(Minghui.org) The Chinese Communist regime began to persecute Falun Dafa on July 20, 1999. One year after the persecution began, I bought a desktop computer. The day I got the computer, several relatives came with me to make the purchase. As it was not common to have a computer then, everyone thought it was a novelty. The monitor at that time was huge, rectangular and heavy. I spent nearly 5000 yuan (not a small sum of money then) and a few of us carried the bulky equipment home.
I later contacted a practitioner who had some IT skills. He was delighted to hear I had a computer and came to my home. He stayed for 3 days and two nights, and sat in front of the computer for hours. I don’t know what he did because it was all in English and codes I did not understand. He told me excitedly, “You can get on the Minghui website!” Thus, I established a connection with Minghui.
At that time I did not know Minghui would be my companion for years. I would take on the role of a Minghui correspondent in China, recording the remarkable feats of practitioners during this historic period and assist Master in Fa-rectification. Although these reports are fragments, when countless reports are documented on Minghui, they form amazing chapters.
On the occasion of the 20th China Fahui on Minghui, I’d like to tell you about my unforgettable experiences as a Minghui correspondent in the early years of the persecution. I am grateful to Master for this opportunity.
After I gained access to the Minghui website, not only was I able to read Master’s articles as soon as they were published, I was able to pass them on to other practitioners. I read sharing articles from practitioners in different parts of the country and reports on the persecution. I was afraid to read reports detailing the persecution of practitioners then, because the extent of the cruelty was beyond my imagination.
At that time, Minghui published several open letters written by practitioners addressed to high ranking government officials, telling them the truth about Falun Dafa and how unreasonable the persecution was. Several practitioners in my area copied these letters and wrote about how they began to practice cultivation, the benefits they experienced, the persecution they went through and they clarified the truth to friends, relatives, neighbors, supervisors and coworkers. I read several such articles, they were hand written and deeply moving.
One of them was a practitioner I knew. He was a teacher and a man of few words. On the surface he did not seem special or outstanding but his story was unforgettable.
He was weak and had many ailments since childhood. His father passed away when he was young, and his mother and an older sister were ill for many years. Soon after he graduated from college, his other sister killed herself due to domestic violence. He sought redress everywhere to no avail. Several years later, his mother and sister became ill and passed away. He was lonely and lost hope in life. He suffered from many ailments. He encountered Falun Dafa and soon after he began practicing, he regained his health. He understood the purpose of life, why people suffer hardships and how to view suffering. He became optimistic and jovial and said, “Falun Dafa gave me a new lease on life.”
This practitioner was a good worker and did whatever tasks his supervisor gave him. He was repeatedly awarded best teacher and class supervisor and won an excellent teacher award. He treated his students like family. Although he was not well off, he tried his best to help poor students. When parents gave him presents, he politely returned them, gave the money back or donated them to students. Such a great teacher was forced to quit his job after the persecution began. His students wrote a joint letter to the school asking the principal to keep him. The last time he stepped into the classroom to say goodbye to his students, they wrote on the black board, “Teacher, we love you.”
When I read this, I could not stop crying. It was as if I just got to know this practitioner. I discovered I did not know much about the practitioners around me, the sufferings they went through before they began practicing, what a great people they became after they began practicing, or the persecution they endured. This teacher was subsequently sentenced to prison, and sent to brainwashing class for refusing to give up his faith.
Embarking on My Journey as a Minghui Correspondent
I thought, if practitioners had not written letters about what they went through and presented them to people through the Minghui website, who would know that a group of such kind hearted, good people were tortured by the CCP? The true cultivation stories of practitioners are a witness to the uplifting of their moral values through practicing Falun Dafa, breaking through the lies of the evil and letting people see the real Falun Dafa and practitioners.
We sent these articles to Minghui. The web page for submitting articles to the website was simple then. We simply pasted the files into the dialog box and hit the send button. We could only sent one article at a time.
I remembered clearly that while sending these articles, several practitioners watched the screen, anxiously waiting for a tiny, golden lotus flower that appeared when the article was successfully submitted. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief when the message “successful submission” and the tiny flower appeared. If it failed, we did not have time to be depressed. Instead, we went back to the original page and resubmitted the article until it went through. I sat in front of the computer holding the mouse. Despite the severe persecution, the Minghui website brought everyone together. These articles were soon published after Minghui editors received them.
Encouraged by and with the assistance of these practitioners, other practitioners in my area realized they should tell people their cultivation experiences, expose the persecution and clarify the facts openly. I helped by typing out their articles, and submitting them. If the articles were already written, I typed them up and submitted them, this was the easy part. The more complicated task was to write news about the persecution.
At that time, information was passed on by word of mouth and it was mostly about a specific practitioner was illegally arrested. There was just the practitioner’s name. Sometimes there was no name or the details of the arrest were not accurate and where the practitioner resided was just a region. The greatest difficulty was when many practitioners were arrested but we had few details. I did not know many practitioners were involved, which added to the difficulty of obtaining accurate, complete information. We finally managed to collate complete, basic facts through asking several practitioners.
Some practitioners knew the information but when they narrated it, it was often in bits and pieces. I had to record things as they talked and asked the practitioner to confirm crucial points. Despite various difficulties, I tried to explain things as clearly as possible, express them objectively and accurately so that the Minghui editors didn’t have to spend a lot of time editing them.
With Master’s blessing, my comprehension and writing abilities kept improving. At times, a piece of information was passed on by several practitioners before it got to me. When the practitioner narrated the information, it was not connected and a lot of useless information was included. I was able to extract the main information. I slowly learned to quickly extract useful information. I also learned to ask the right questions in order to write a complete, accurate report.
As everyone progressed in cultivation, gradually, information passed on by practitioners became more complete and accurate. Although these were just small pieces of information, they had a big impact after they were published on Minghui. We clearly felt the perpetrators’ fear after their crimes were exposed. In addition, the support and efforts by overseas practitioners to rescue those arrested made the perpetrators wary of persecuting us. In other dimensions, many evil entities were destroyed and we felt the pressure on us decreasing.
So Many Touching Stories
Practitioners sometimes brought me strips of paper folded into small pieces. They felt damp as if practitioners had been holding them tightly in their hands for fear of losing them. When I unfolded the papers, they were covered in creases. Many were written by anonymous practitioners. Who knows how many practitioners were involved in gathering the information? Most of us were not well off, and public transportation was not widely available. Practitioners walked, rode bicycles, and went through a lot of hardship to gather the information. However, everyone was enthusiastic.
Think of it, without the joint efforts of so many practitioners, how could we pass on this firsthand information to Minghui? We don’t even know their names, but aren’t these practitioners Minghui correspondents in China?
Once, I opened a piece of paper and I noticed it was written in pencil. I realized it was written by a primary school student. He wrote how his mother recovered from her illness after practicing Dafa. After the persecution began, his mother’s workplace and the police station forbade her from practicing and forced her to write statements promising to give it up or else she would be arrested. Neighbors urged his mother: “Pretend to give in to them.” But she refused to concede. Every day when he went to school, his greatest fear was that his mother would be gone when he came home. He hurried home every day and shouted “Mom!” as soon as he entered the apartment building. One day, he called his mother from the ground floor but she did not reply. He ran up the stairs, opened the door but no one was there. His mother had been arrested.
My heart broke when I read this. A child so young had to go through such hardships! I was worried about whether he could withstand it. The practitioner who gave me the piece of paper read my mind. She encouraged me and said, “Don’t be afraid, we have Master!” That’s right, we have Master and Dafa. I steadied my mind, we typed out the information provided by the child on his mother’s arrest and submitted it to Minghui.
After the report was published, the perpetrators were shocked. The child’s mother later returned home. While she was imprisoned, the child was helped by relatives and practitioners and he was not affected by his mother’s arrest.
It does not take much time to write a simple report. However if I wrote about the persecution experienced by a practitioner, I had to arrange a time and interview them.
Most practitioners are simple people and answer my questions honestly. They told me how they began to practice Falun Dafa. Everyone’s experience was extraordinary. They spoke of how they put the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance into practice, and became better people. Their health improved, and their family relationships became harmonious. They worked hard in their jobs and won the praise of everyone around them. These stories made me marvel at how remarkable Falun Dafa is.
When practitioners told me how they were arrested, detained, threatened, monitored, beaten or tortured etc, on one hand, I was angered by the persecution, on the other hand, I was moved by their resilience, peacefulness, and kindness. I often forgot who I was, and it felt as if I was a part of the practitioner’s story.
The people in persecution reports on Minghui, which I previously avoided reading, now stood in front of me. I was no longer afraid of these articles. I was able to calmly record the details of the persecution suffered by practitioners.
A practitioner in his 60s was a laborer with little education. Several family members who depended on his income. He told me before he began practicing, people called him a half dead man as he suffered from illness head to toe. He recovered from these ailments through practicing Dafa and no longer needed medicine.
After the persecution began, his workplace and the police station repeatedly pressured him to stop practicing. He told them he had not done anything wrong. His workplace threatened to cut off his pension if he continued to practice. He was not moved. They sent him to the police station and detained him under false charges. He went on a hunger strike for 5 days to protest the unjust treatment. He was later released as they were afraid he might die in custody. This practitioner was subsequently sent to a labor camp where he went through a lot of hardship.
He was calm when he told me his story. After he was released, the police station forced him to write a statement promising not to practice Falun Dafa when he went to register his residence.
He said firmly, “I can give up my home, but I will not give up Falun Dafa!” I deeply admired his conviction and optimism. Only our magnificent Master and Dafa can forge such a remarkable being. Not only did this practitioner repeatedly expose the persecution, later, with the help of other practitioners, he resisted the persecution through legal means, which shocked his abusers. His residence problem was also settled.
I was always moved by practitioners’ stories. I felt honored to be able to record the details of their stories and experiences, and validate how great Master and Dafa is.
Cultivation Opportunities
My writing skills improved in leaps and bounds with Master’s blessing. Many times, when I reread what I wrote, I was amazed, “Did I write that?” My typing speed also increased. I knew everything came from Master and Dafa. I only have a small wish, to write down things that happened to practitioners. Master gave me boundless wisdom as well as inspiration. Many practitioners I didn’t know came to me. I gradually changed my attitude from writing articles as a favor to practitioners to being grateful to Master for this opportunity and grateful to practitioners for trusting me and willing to share with me their experiences so that I am able to write them out and share with more people.
The most difficult part in those years was, what most practitioners are worried about—whether we had the courage to step out to expose the persecution to the Minghui website and the world under the pressure of the persecution. Practitioners feared that they would invite retaliation and be subjected to even more intense persecution if they exposed the evil.
We had to overcome our fear and anxiety through repeatedly studying the Fa and talking about our experiences. Practitioners around me helped the others negate their fear, reminded them to have faith in Master and Dafa and see things with righteous thoughts. Practitioners let go of their worries and more were willing to come out to expose the persecution.
I moved to another place and took my computer with me. Perhaps it was because my new residence was in a small town, not many practitioners had computers or were able to get onto the Minghui website. Many of my articles were published on Minghui and it made the evil afraid. They began to search for local practitioners who were able to go online and found me. Master protected me and I escaped arrest. My computer was also protected by Master.
I became afraid after the incident. I felt as though I was watched every day, and the moment I logged onto the Internet, I would be taken away. As a result, I was scared to get onto Minghui for a long time. In spite of this, with Master’s help, practitioners in my area did not stop exposing the persecution.
A practitioner who had a well hidden materials site turned out to be someone I knew before the persecution began. We unexpectedly connected. Thus, I was able to help type or write some articles and take it to the practitioner to send to Minghui. More importantly, another practitioner at that time took on my role at the crucial moment, writing reports for practitioners who wanted to expose the persecution. This practitioner kept encouraging me and helped me through those tough times.
The greatest problem I encountered then was whether I should expose the harassment and persecution that happened to me (although the evil did not succeed). I struggled with the fear that if I exposed the evil, the perpetrators would retaliate and I would be persecuted. If I exposed the evil, wouldn’t they know I had a computer and was able to go online? Through studying Master’s teachings, in the end, I mustered the courage and reported the information.
This experience made me realize that although I chose to record this moment in history, I am not just recording other people’s stories off stage, I may unexpectedly be pushed to the front. How should I face the things I wrote about? How should I choose? When my safety is threatened, when what I do has a setback, when what I do is helping Master in Fa-rectification, yet in reality, it appears as if this led to my persecution, will I still have faith in Master and Dafa, deny the old forces arrangement and continue?
In the end, I was firm on one thing: I am a Dafa disciple, a cultivator, so only through practicing cultivation diligently and solidly can I be a good Minghui correspondent in China. Only then will I be able to handle everything with righteous thoughts.
My environment gradually became more relaxed after I exposed the evil. I began to write sharing articles for Minghui again and participated in China Fa Conferences hosted by Minghui every year. When I recalled those experiences as a Minghui correspondent in the early years of the persecution, I recalled many scenes. Although it was hard during those years, I hung on. Under Master’s thoughtful arrangement, many things that seemed impossible were done miraculously.
After more than two decades, I find it hard to maintain the initial state of cultivation I once had. I recently became despondent and did not have the energy to submit an article for the Fa Conference. Master gave me hints in my dream: Master was on the podium in a classroom and we sat below. Master asked everyone to give a speech. I thought: “I really don’t know what to say. I’ll just listen to the others.” However, Master called on me to speak. I stood up, embarrassed....
I take the opportunity of this online Fa Conference to recall my experience as a correspondent for Minghui. I also hope to reclaim the state I had when I first began cultivation. I don’t know how to express my gratitude to Master for everything he’s done for me. I can only do better, practice cultivation right to the end, and be diligent in order to repay Master.
Thank you, Master!
Thank you, practitioners who have accompanied me on my cultivation path!
Copyright © 2023 Minghui.org. All rights reserved.
