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How Hatred Has Entered One Home
By Wang Yifeng
(Clearwisdom.net) I believe that the Chinese ruling Party is good at making
things up, especially fabricating the most indecent and shameless tales,
hypocritically playing upon the last vestiges of human decency and morality and
then forcing people to listen to lies and lose their faculties of critical
thinking in order to instigate hatred. How does the Party manage to accomplish
that? It was only a few days ago that I began to understand the process a little
bit.
Both my parents lost their fathers to the Communist Party. One was executed
with a bullet and the other persecuted to death. My parents were considered by
the Party as "children who can be re-educated despite questionable lineage" and
allowed to go to school and receive a good education. Both of them graduated
from college in the 1950s. But both of them did suffer a lot because of their
"questionable lineage." My father was singled out for "special treatment" and
was almost driven to commit suicide when he was a youngster. People who grew up
the way my parents did invariably are afraid of getting involved in "politics."
They just want to be left alone. When my sister and I were young, we were taught
to be good people, be diligent in our studies and keep to ourselves. We were
very good students. We witnessed what a difficult time my parents had while we
were young. After we grew up, we tried very hard to be good to them and
frequently bought them expensive gifts. My parents were very proud of us, and
their reputation as good parents spread far and wide. People asked for parenting
advice from them constantly. Even after I came to the US, my Mom often told me
to write letters to children of so-and-so and offer them advice on how to be
good students and how to be good to their parents. That went on for more than 10
years.
In 2000, my parents came to the United States to visit my sister and me. I
had not seen them for many years. At that time, even though I had just been
practicing Falun Gong for a short period of time, I had already recovered from
my prolonged stomach ailment. I became very cheerful and full of happiness and
wished to share the beauty of Falun Gong with everyone. How was I to know that a
violent upheaval in the family was about to take place? I was totally unprepared
for it. For many years, I was the pride and joy of my parents and they depended
on me heavily. Before that, I had made a number of choices that my parents
didn't agree with. For example, when I lived in China, I once had a stable job
at a state-owned enterprise in China, a job that was practically guaranteed for
life. I got bored with that job and decided to resign and start a business on my
own. My parents couldn't understand why I would give up a secure and stable life
but they trusted my judgment and supported my decision. Therefore, I was shocked
and dismayed to see that when the topic of "Falun Gong" came up my father
climbed immediately to the pinnacle of hysteria. I did not expect that the
filthy lies spread about Falun Gong, that most poisonous deceit, would have
seized my father, hook, line and sinker! I never expected that no matter how I
tried to explain things to him, he would not accept a single word of what I
said.
The thing that shocked me the most was my father's deep hatred of Falun Gong.
I thought he knew the true nature of the ruling Party because of his own
experience. When I first left for college, my father had told me about his own
family's history. After the Party executed his own father, he and his mother
were left in despair. When he was eighteen years old, he was left with no choice
but to leave home and try to start a new life for himself. His mother also
decided to leave home and try her luck in the great wilderness of northern
China. She wasn't quite 40 years old yet and her hair had turned gray. On that
day that he left home, she hurriedly caught up with him and handed him a
cylindrical roll of freshly wound silk. That was the only possession of hers
that was worth even a penny. When he told me the most sorrowful stories, he
seemed sad but not hateful. Even when he spoke about how he nearly committed
suicide, he just laughed it off. He said that he often lay in the open and
desolate wilderness at night and cried his heart out. He often thought about
committing suicide then but always dropped that idea when the stars appeared in
the sky.
Because of his hatred toward Falun Gong, my father became a different and
strange person to me. Even though we had not seen each other for such a long
time, we still corresponded through letters and by telephone. My highest monthly
expense was my telephone bill. When I tried to clarify the facts about Falun
Gong, I begged him to listen to me because of his love for me, but I did not
succeed. He was burning with rage. His abusive language left me groping for a
reason. I was at a total loss when he repeated the slanderous lies that the
ruling Party had spread about Teacher. I just couldn't listen to him anymore. I
lost my temper and yelled, "You'd better not bring the filth of the ruling Party
to the United States; you should at least talk with some basic reasoning. If you
keep repeating groundless personal attacks against my Teacher, our relationship
will end here."
Later, I lent him a copy of Zhuan Falun (1) to read. I valued the book
deeply because it had been published in China and there aren't too many copies
of that printing of the book left. I had hoped that after reading the book he
would realize he was wrong about Falun Gong and Teacher. When my parents left
the United States after their visit and went back home, I opened the book [that
I had lent him] and was utterly shattered... Even today, as I write about this
experience, I can't stop my hands from trembling.
My father had used a ballpoint pen to write the most spiteful words in all
the empty spaces in the pages. I felt extremely heartsick. How could my own
father have been so heartless? I was hopelessly heartbroken. I called him and
said: "Why did you trample upon the most cherished beliefs in your daughter's
heart? You can at least show some respect to me and others." I asked my mother
whether she knew what he had done. My mother replied that on the issue of Falun
Gong, she had quarreled with him on several occasions. Even my mother felt that
he had gone too far.
As time passed, I still continued to ask my parents about how they were, but
we could no longer behave with the same affection as we had in the past towards
each other. My father never regretted what he did. They returned to the US to
visit my sister and me two more times. During both visits, the issue of "Falun
Gong" remained like a time bomb about to explode at any time. My father
frequently used innuendoes to attack Falun Gong and I was always trying to
clarify the facts. It was as if we were fighting a protracted war. My mother was
always trying to patch things up and reconcile the two parties. She only hoped
that her daughter would no longer be hurt (but having been influenced by the
rumors and fabricated propaganda, she definitely doesn't see eye to eye with
Falun Gong on a personal level either). There were several occasions when she
was about to kneel down before my father to calm down his anger; and those
moments shocked me greatly. For as long as I remembered, it was always what my
mother said in the family that counted. She had been the head of the family.
I didn't know how to control the situation. I lost my right to speak and
explain [the truth] in the house. To this day, the longest I have been able
speak and explain the situation about Falun Gong is not more than half a minute.
My father is fine as long as we talk about anything else. The type of hostility
that my father held against Falun Gong is incomprehensible.
As a scholar, my father has two addictions. First, he enjoys helping the
people that he has interviewed (mainly people who were considered right-wingers
and were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976) to get
justice. Secondly, he worships and has blind faith in modern science. I told him
jokingly that his worship of modern science is a result of having read too many
science articles by those who don't understand science themselves, and many
concepts he has about science are wrong. He wasn't offended at all and said that
he wished he had my two Master's degrees in Science. I then said, "You know that
my knowledge doesn't end with just science. Have you forgotten that I used to
study the Analects of Confucius and had memorized it so well that when you wrote
your essays and needed to quote Confucius, you used to consult me? My knowledge
of classical Chinese is such that I was so absorbed in reading Bainian Gudu
(Century of Isolation) as to forget about eating or sleeping and you could not
even understand the classical Chinese language used in the book?" He agreed with
that assessment as well. Then I tried to say, "Since I do know a thing or two,
you should at least listen to what I have to say on the subject of Falun Gong."
But before I could even finish my sentence, his countenance suddenly changed and
his enmity instantly appeared. I asked in despair, "Why would you rather believe
in the Communists, who murdered your father, than in your own daughter?" He made
a rather outrageous statement, "I have never believed in the Communists, but
this is a different matter!" Why is it not the same? Can a wolf that feeds on
sheep change to feed on grass?
Five years have passed by in a flash. It wasn't until practitioners filed a
lawsuit in the US against Zhao Zizhen for "inciting hatred" that I began to
study "The Tales of Li Hongzhi," a program that Zhao and others produced. I
cried after I watched it. The loathsome slanders against my Teacher are too
shameless, brazen, outrageous and farfetched. The program was filled with
blatant personal attacks and attempts at character assassination! Many such
programs and articles have been broadcast to all levels of society in the name
of the nation. It actually duped my father, who is generally recognized as a
good person, a man with more than thirty years of involvement in the news media,
and a man who has the title of professor. Why? It is because the filthy and
despicable concocted lies took advantage of the last vestiges of conscience and
the small bit of righteousness left in people, in order to instigate the hatred.
Because of such lies, people can no longer calmly and rationally think things
through for themselves.
When Judas betrayed Jesus, he was permanently branded with shame and
disgrace. In his program, Zhao found several "Judases," former students of
Teacher who were expelled from the practice due to severe defects in moral
character, to vilify Mr Li. Why do people believe in the things that those
"Judases" said? Why don't people think about the motives of such people?
When Jesus was spreading the gospel, were the religious elders not enraged
with jealousy towards Jesus? Did they not mock Jesus as being only a carpenter,
thus slandering and vilifying the truth?
For the last several years, my Teacher has silently borne all injustice and
has never uttered a word in self-defense. I have attended virtually all the
large-scale Fa Conferences since 1999 and have seen Teacher on many occasions.
On each occasion, whenever he lectured to his students, Teacher has time and
again taught us to be good people, and to be even better people. He has
continually reminded us to be kind and benevolent towards those who have been
deceived by the poisonous propaganda about "Falun Gong." We have been taught
never to quarrel with others, and never to harbor any hatred against anyone, but
to treasure the better part of those people by clarifying the truth to them in
the hope that they will eventually change their hearts.
As I read those fabricated lies and poisonous attacks about my Teacher, I
suddenly realized why my father was so impervious to reason when discussing the
issue of "Falun Gong." It was because Jiang and his clique misused the state
apparatus in the most rotten, sinister and venomous way to plant hatred into the
minds and bodies of people who did not know the facts about Falun Gong. The
hatred is like a toxin that has gradually pervaded the blood, the marrow, the
brain, and eventually completely gained control and manipulated the people to
lose their individual reason.
It appears that if I do not clarify the facts about Falun Gong, I will lose
my father forever. I must expose the lies of Jiang and his clique, as there are
still many people in China like my father who are being hoodwinked into hatred.
They assist Jiang and his hoodlums in their evil deeds, murdering innocent
people, and will eventually be destroyed by their own hatred. Can someone say
that I am getting involved in politics? I am about to lose my father. How can I
just remain silent?
Note: This article was first translated from Chinese and published in English on the Pureinsight website. Translated from:
http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2004/7/21/28316.html
English version:
http://www.pureinsight.org/pi/articles/2004/9/6/2515.html |