Pushen L.

Before the persecution of Falun Gong in China

I was very lucky that my mother took me to Master’s lecture in 1994 when I was a little girl just in elementary school. One day, my mother asked me, “Do you want go with me to another city attend a very great Qigong exercises course? But it will take a week to listen the Master’s lecture, you should tell your teacher be off your class.” I didn’t know what exactly it was but there was a very strong faith leading me to answer “Yes!” Then we planned to tell my teacher “I’ve got a fever” for my one-week absence excuse although I had already known one of Master’s principles is “truthfulness”, I felt little guilt about it. Indeed, I started a real fever on the day we left our city to attend Master’s lectures, and it became worse on the way when we took a train. When we got to the place, the temperature was above 107°F and we couldn’t measure it by thermometer because it ran up to the top. I almost couldn't remember anything from then. There were several people living together in the same place, when they saw my condition, someone said to my mother this may be dangerous. At that time my mother and I knew that this was what Master had said and we insisted to carry on and refused to have medical treatment, although my mother was really worried about my health. I didn’t hear the whole lecture because of my final exam, and my father came to get me at the last two days. The fever symptoms lasted for the whole period of Master’s lecture, unfortunately, my mother took me to get an injection at a hospital because I was suffering too much and needed to attend the final exam, although I insisted not to take it. After this experience, I never got medical treatment in the future and my body became much healthier.

In the whole period of my elementary school life, my mother lead me to exercise a lot and joined the Fa study every week, the principles of Dafa deeply taking root in my heart. I kept a diary mentioning Dafa exercises in my Chinese class and everyone got to know it.

Confusion of Persecution by CCP

The persecution began by the time I was still an innocent girl, as most practitioner said, it felt like the sky fell down. I remember it was my last summer vacation day of graduation from elementary school, on the day 1999 July 20th, a broadcasting instructed people to attend the News Simulcast, then all of a sudden, fabricated stories about Falun Gong came out one after another. I didn’t believe it and didn’t realize the situation I would have to face either. The environment turned worse when I went to my junior school in September. One day my class teacher asked if there was someone practicing Falun Gong in class meeting, I raised my hand without thinking. Then she took me to her office and just told me to be careful and then I returned to class, nothing happened, including classmates’ reactions, we still studied happily together. At the end of 1999, my mom went to Beijing the second time, she told me not to worry and then left home secretly. I held my sadness under the surface. On the day she left, I had a dream. There were seven moons in the sky appearing above my house (7 people went to Beijing on that day), all in different shapes, full noon, half moon, quarter moon, and so on. A big helicopter flying toward me with a long vertical banner said “Welcome Home” on it. And then my father took me downstairs to walk around, it was a messy dirty world on Earth, people all exposed on the ground in the dirty mud and all suffering, mad and insane. They were in pain, groaning and moaning, shacking and twisting their body. I told this to my mom and other practitioners when I saw them in the detention center, all of us were thinking about it. I think it meant the process of our cultivation is hard and not everyone would reach the final result, we must take this seriously, as normal people in the world are suffering by the CCP’s fabrication of Falun Gong, and we needed to save them.

After the police released my mother, I went with my mother to send flyers about the truth in our city during leisure time. My mother was forced to attend brainwashing classes twice in 2001 and 2004. During that time period I could not get in touch with other practitioners and my father was stressful and irritable in family, I gradually stopped exercising and studying the Fa, although the principles of Dafa were still kept in my mind. After 2004 my mother was released from the brainwashing class, a very impressive thing happened. It was in the last year of my junior school, I went out to practice my PE examination and had a chalk with me. When I finished and returned home, I saw there were a lot of walls displaying the words “Falun Dafa is Good” in old alleys, I was touched and encouraged. Then I stopped by a narrow alley and took out the chalk, wrote down “Falun Dafa is Good”. When I rode my bike just 100 miters away, a sound yelled behind me. “Stop!” I turned back my head and saw a dark face woman rode following behind me. She suddenly caught my arm and asking crazily “Did you wrote it? Was it you?” “Yes.” I answered honestly. Her eyes turned fierce, “Well, I’ve been spying for several days to catch who wrote it, say, who’s your parents? Where are they? Why did you write this?” I was shocked. I was afraid if I told something the police would take my mother away, again. But I answered very soberly “I saw people wrote those words down, so why can’t I” She yelled “No! You! Cannot! Who are your parents?” I just kept asking her “Why can’t I” and said nothing else. Gradually, we attracted a crowd of people around us, then she realized it was shameful for an adult to bully a child in public. Finally, she said to me “Ok, if you remove the words you’ve written I will let you go.” Then I struggled in my mind. Because I didn’t want to remove it, it was not good. But I didn’t want her to know who my mother was. Then I went with her back to the wall and removed the words. After that, she spoke thoughtlessly “Then you can go”. I got on my bike immediately and galloped away, just hearing her yelling “Hey, you stop! Come with me to the office!”. I never stopped. After I got back home, I told this to my mother and then rushed into the bathroom, turned on the shower and began shaking and sobbing. I felt fearful and regretful about remove the words. However, kindly, Master still protected me just because I said “yes” without thinking every time when people asked me.

Master has always been with me and planned the road that I am walking on. Then I started my art study during my senior high school, but my Fa study and practice was delayed by that time period.

Back to Fa again during my College Study

When I returned to study Fa and practice again, it was the first year of my college. In the winter vacation of 2006, my mother handed me some DVDs and videos of the truth of Dafa, and suddenly I felt I got back again, tears came out uncontrollably and Master appeared in my dream at night. It felt like being back home. I copied Fa articles, Jiuping articles and several truth information from my mother and went back to school, I finished reading the whole Fa articles during my leisure time and dreamed about monsters ruining my college and the red scarf persecuting the elementary students. I talked with my college club members and told them to get out from the CCP and related organizations. However, something evil started to tangle with me.

I also planned to go abroad to study and help our practitioners to tell the truth outside China. However, in my third term of my college, I fell into a relationship with a boy, which slackened the effort of telling the truth to people gradually, and also made me give up the study abroad, and I married him after graduating from university. It grew to be a big mountain in front of me, and after a bad relationship I was facing a terrible situation such as enduring the gossips and bad infighting things in group-activities. Then I got divorced. I started to re-think things and realized I was far away from the Fa and I fell into society for too many years that made me forget how to deal with problems according to Dafa principles. I got experiences and started to change my attitude. Thanks to my mother she never gave up on me and encouraged me to study Fa when I got back home and thus I was improving very fast. I realized my experience of event executive and accomplishment would be helpful in the US with our practitioners, then I decided to go abroad study again. It was a painful time, I was helpless in my city far away from my hometown, although I had lots of friends there, but I knew no practitioners there. Master lead me to make some friendships that really helped me. I studied a lot by talking with them and it also could enlighten me to Fa principles, it was a miracle. Then after I got my offer and my US visa, I left home with my faith. I was very sad and shed a lot of tears when saying goodbye to my parents and friends, even to China, but I knew I had much more important things to do.

Practice and Fa study in the US

When I got to the US, I felt much closes to Master. Everything was moving on smoothly and orderly. I contacted our local practitioners in the US, and described my situation, in hope of joining them. I purified my mind and made efforts to participate in every event that could validate the truth and Falun Dafa. Improving with our practitioners – I felt that was what our Master had arranged for me.

The first thing I attended was the 2016 Shen Yun Performance promotion in Atlanta. That was my first year in Georgia, 2015. One day in November, I got a phone call asking for my help in Shen Yun promotion in Atlanta in December. I was very pleased and put it on my schedule. I went to Atlanta during my winter vacation, helped them with door to door and shopping mall promotion. That was the first time I coordinated with foreign practitioners, I felt so happy. After 16 years of persecution in China, studying Fa together and practicing together really, really moved me. When I saw them put up thousands of calendars by hand for Shen Yun promotion, I felt admiration in my heart. Preserving, cultivation, saving practitioners in China, promoting Shen Yun, they had plenty of things to do, they were very great. I thought I would do as much as I could for the limited time during my winter vacation. One day, I was handing out flyers in front of the theatre after a show, a crowd of people came out. An old woman suddenly recognized my Shen Yun flyer and spoke to me very excitedly, “Oh Shen Yun! I know it! For 10 years, I’ve attend it every year!” Then she disappeared in the crowd. I was standing in the cold wind looking at her silently. Tears suddenly sprung out… I was truly happy to give a hand in about everything I could help with. At the end of my winter vacation, I learned a lot and hoped it would be helpful when I attended next event.

I realized Master arranged me to come to the US must be because I could help more there than in China, so I started to prepare my asylum application. Coincidentally, every time I attended the rally and other events, there was always a photographer who took photos for me, as if Master lead them to me. Once I was attending a candle light vigil in Washington D.C. for the victims of persecution, an Epoch Times journalist came up to me to take a short interview, I thought it would be posted online, but I hadn’t found it the next day, then I let it go and didn’t pay attention to it. When I almost finished preparing the information for my asylum request, one day a girl I met before who works at NTDTV sent me a message, saying she had known me since long time ago (maybe for what I’d done in China), and saw my photo in an Epoch Times interview then got to know that I practice Falun Gong. I was surprised and asked her where she found my interview, she told me it was posted on the English version of Epoch Times, which is why I didn’t find it. I said, thanks to Master, this was not a coincidence. We both agreed with it.

When I’ve been staying in the US for a year, I was in my summer vacation. I sent my resume to one of our projects, and then went to NYC to attend some activities and wanted to help to do our project. I lived in one of our practitioner’s house, we studied Fa every night and I went to group exercise in the morning. I felt like the persecution had never happened and I was in the old days in China. I was very happy with it and improved very fast. A woman, Mrs. Qiurong, who shared a rented room with me, had just decided to stay in the US to join the Dafa projects. We both thought there must be some reason we lived together. We shared our practice experience together and she taught me a lot. She was very smart, she shared with me her dreams and what she thought Master had wanted her to know from those special dreams. She also told me everything is alive, if something moved or was rearranged or changed, it must be related to you, because the things exist for a reason. When I was doing our project at that time, one day I had a dream. There was a big conference hall, crowds of practitioners were waiting for something and standing by the door. Master appeared, and he was walking toward a food table beside the door, cut some mangos and asked us to share. When I woke up I was thinking, in Chinese “Mango” sounds like the meaning “harvest”. I realized Master encouraged me to do a good job in our project. I really improved and never felt any discomfort in my body when I took very heavy duties in our project. Then at the end of those days, Mrs. Qiurong said to me, “I think that’s it. Master lead us together and I’ve done my duty.” Suddenly I felt a little sad. When we sent forth righteous thoughts together on that day, tears came out and I thought we must have had some relationship in past lives, and it lead us to a reunion. As Master said, “Those who really have a predestined relationship and can enlighten will come one after another, entering the Dao and obtaining the Fa.” [Enlightenment, Essentials For Further Advancement] And I think now this is a very special time period that we all practitioners could get together on Earth, working and improving together. I treasure the meeting with every practitioner, and I always remind myself not to be lost. Master is with me.

After summer, I turned to a new year’s Shen Yun promotion for 2017 in our town. I made a big effort and collected all of my experience of last year in Atlanta and what I had done in China before I came here, coordinating with our practitioners. This time I spent all of my winter vacation in Savannah’s mall. By looking the increased quantity of Shen Yun tickets, I kept saying to myself, Master said, every seat in the theatre is arranged for a specific audience, it should not be absent. I thought if I didn’t make effort enough, I would feel regretful. In the end, there was still 30% seat left. I sighed and felt disappointed in myself, I thought there must have been some point I didn’t treat well and I needed to be more diligent next time. However, Master usually is so kind to me. On the day Shen Yun was performing, I was in the security position to watch people enter the theatre and settle down. By seeing the audience fully filling the first floor and not an empty seat left on the first floor, my tears sprung out again by the opening of the show. Suddenly, I strongly felt Master was standing by me and smiling.

Then when I shared experience with other practitioners, I usually search myself first, thinking it must be somewhere I did something in a wrong way or something was not appropriate. When you recognize some point, although very tiny, it can still push you to improve. You may do much better next time. Master said, there was no coincidence in your life, including everything you faced, regardless of being big things or tiny. During these two years in the U.S., I still feel too far away from reaching the end. Indeed, I’m doing my activities on Earth, I must treat everything seriously, every opportunity I am given is a treasure for me. To think about I still have a lot of defects, when I was reading our Master’s articles, suddenly tears came out and felt Master was around by me.

Thank you, Master.