(Clearwisdom.net) I am a Falun Gong Practitioner who began practicing Falun Gong prior to July 20, 1999.

I previously practiced the Falun Gong exercises at the East China Normal University practice site. When the persecution began on July 20, 1999, I had finished graduate school and gone to another city with my husband, to accept a teaching position at a school. The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) took my husband's life away for practicing Falun Dafa and left his family behind forever.

The CCP has persecuted and sometimes killed practitioners from the East China Normal University practice site. Those killed include:

Mr. Li Baifan A teacher at East China Normal University
Mr. Li Yuanguang - Took a teaching job at Daqing Education Institute after graduation
Mr. Dong Xingnan - Born in 1976. After graduation from the Mathematics Department of East China Normal University, he started teaching in a middle school in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province. He passed away in 2005
Wu Dianhui - Started teaching at Changzhou Normal College, which has been combined into Changzhou Industrial Institute after he graduated from East China Normal University

Three graduate students, including Zhu Kuihua from Shandong Province, Li Xia from Hunan Province, and Zhang Hongying from Shandong Province, have been arrested several times. They were forced to leave the school between 1999 and 2000. Zhu Kuihua and Li Xia were sent to forced labor camps afterwards.

In addition, many practitioners from the East China Normal University site were sent to forced labor camps. They include:

Yuan Shunhua - A student in 1999
Wang Binke - Took a teaching job at a middle school in Shanghai after he graduated in 1999
Lin Cuixia - A teacher in a college in Shanghai
Lai Xiaohui - Took a teaching job at a middle school in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province
Jiang Desheng - A graduate student
Jiang Yun - Library teacher at the East China Normal University was sent to a forced labor camp.
Zhang Yuxia, who took a teaching job in a middle school in Shanghai, was sent to a forced labor camp for distributing Falun Dafa truth clarifying materials. She was eventually expelled from the school.
Liu Peng and Zhang Xumei - The persecution experiences of this couple was exposed on the Minghui website several times.

I would like to share the wonders of Falun Dafa and expose the persecution by the CCP that we experienced for practicing Falun Dafa, so that people will quickly come to understand the truth and help stop these evil crimes by the demonic Party spirit, where lies are used to lead many innocent Chinese people to a state beyond redemption.

1. Experiencing the Sacredness of Dafa

Before I entered graduate school, I was possessed by an evil specter after I had burned incense in a Shanghai temple. Master guided me to read Zhuan Falun, to help me understand the seriousness of worshiping Buddha and the true standard of being a human being. I was then able to eliminate the nightmare of being possessed by an evil specter. During three years of graduate school study I spent most of my spare time reading Master's Buddha's Fa, and I truly experienced the sanctity of Dafa. I was bathed in Master's immense compassion and in the boundless power of Dafa almost daily at the practice site. I knew deep in my heart that I had obtained the Fa of the universe, and that I needed to safeguard it with my life.

An outstanding young teacher named Li Baifan, who later died as a result of the persecution, was the East China Normal University practice site assistant. He always viewed himself as a cultivator. Mr. Li took the lead in improving the practice and group study environment as one body. This peaceful and quiet environment built by practitioners' serene minds was maintained until July 20, 1999.

Because every Falun Gong practitioner follows the principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance" in daily life, everyone at the college campus was aware of the wonders of Dafa, including me. Three students shared one dorm room at the time. When I practiced the exercises before 6:00 a.m every morning, I always took thermos bottles downstairs for my two roommates. After breakfast I brought the bottles full of hot water back from the furnace room for them to use. We also never needed to have an on-duty arrangement for cleaning our dorm room. Because I was a practitioner, our dorm room was always the cleanest in our class. I also got along very well with all classmates. Everyone recognized me to be a most trustworthy and kind classmate.

My husband and I fell in love due to our mutual belief in Falun Dafa. My professor complimented my husband several times, saying he was kind and sincere. He was in charge of the graduate students' building at the time. Because he always followed the principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance" that Master had taught us, and always thought of others first, he was recognized as one of the outstanding graduate students at the university. When the classmates talked about life in the future, they all anticipated that we were going to have a very happy married life because we had harmony in our relationship, and were considerate and tolerant of each other.

Our classmates did not practice Falun Dafa, but they all understood the wonders of Dafa. A roommate whose parents were high-ranking officials in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province told us a moving story in 1998. He had a roommate whose parent was an official with the Disciplinary Inspection Committee. He contemplated for three days after he learned Falun Dafa and became a practitioner. He then went to his workplace with one million yuan, and told his manager that this one million yuan was the amount of bribes he had taken since he took the position. The principles of Falun Dafa had made him truly understand the standard for being a human being and made him decide to repay the money. Friends in official capacities did not understand his behavior. To them, it seemed that the practice had caused this official to become irrational, returning this much money. It was obvious that the depraved CCP culture is the root cause of deviated social notions and demoralization of the nation. This is an example of a life that had once been corrupted by the CCP system, and now after obtaining Dafa, this person manifested a true cultivator's kind behavior.

The Dafa principles are like a truth-revealing mirror. The righteousness of Dafa gives the non-righteous factors and evil spirits nowhere to hide, which is why Jiang's regime has slandered and framed Dafa. Falun Gong practitioners have clarified the truth and validated Dafa for more than seven years now, effectively resisting the evil and causing the evildoers' plots to fail.

2. My Husband and I were Locked up in a Mental Hospital

My husband and I graduated in July 1999 and left Shanghai. We got our marriage license in mid-May. The CCP began the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, not long after our graduation. We were confronted with a life and death choice - persist in cultivation or give up our belief. My husband and I were already blacklisted before we left the university. Several days after July 20, 1999, the school leaders pressured us. Before long, because I let my students read Zhuan Falun, some students who did not know the truth about the persecution reported me. The city Politics and Security Office chief came to our school to record us in their files. They removed me from my homeroom teacher's position.

The persecution and framing then worsened. More and more practitioners were arrested and persecuted. My husband, a neighbor practitioner, and I evaded the police and went to Beijing to validate Dafa. The second day, we went to Tiananmen Square. Uniformed and plainclothes police were everywhere. Because we admitted that we were practitioners, they pushed us into a police car and took us to the Tiananmen Police Station. A uniformed police officer slapped my husband's face, making his face swell and his mouth bleed. I tried to stop the police from beating him, but they pushed me to the ground and pulled my hair.

By the time we were transferred to our local government's liaison office, more than two hundred practitioners had been incarcerated in the Tiananmen Square Police Station. The youngest was an 8th grader, and the oldest was over 70 years old. A practitioner from Beijing had been in and out of the Tiananmen Square Police Station four times. Some practitioners were handcuffed tightly. The police continually berated practitioners.

After being transferred to our hometown, we were isolated in a motel for interrogation. People from the police department Politics and Security Office forbade my husband from leaning on anything [for support] and made him stand in one position for three days and nights. My husband's face was badly swollen. We ended up in a brainwashing class.

After our return from that brainwashing class, my husband and I, who were both highly educated and had been hired as teachers, lost our teaching jobs. My husband was assigned to clean bathrooms, pick up garbage and cut trees. I was assigned to work in the copy room. Not too long after that I became pregnant with our son. The mean principal had no intention of moving me out of the copy room. The co-workers in the same room made mutual snide comments about my giving birth to a retarded child. The strong pregnancy symptoms, standing from morning to night doing the copying work, the daily toxic fumes from the copier, the machines' repetitive, droning sounds - all made me feel that cultivation practice was so hard. I constantly encouraged myself, and reminded myself that I was a practitioner. No matter how challenging this cultivation situation was, I vowed to always use my best mindset to treat and handle all the difficulties, and try my best to do my work well and get along with my co-workers.

Right after my husband and I graduated, we experienced the disaster that the CCP had brought on the Chinese people. Most of our co-workers did not know us very well, and due to all of the CCP's slander, defamation and framing of Falun Dafa, and our trip to Beijing, our school was also implicated and criticized. Other than the students we taught during the first two months, who had a good impression of us, other coworkers looked at us with hatred in their eyes. It was extremely challenging to establish our own cultivation environment.

With the official persecution policy being "Destroy their reputations, bankrupt them financially and eliminate them physically," my husband and I could only maintain our lifestyle by borrowing several hundred yuan per month. In the meantime, due to the school leaders refusing to pay us a housing allowance, we always lived without a permanent residence. By late 2004 we had moved nine times.

My husband and I came from the countryside. Only country people know the hardships that countryside children must go through to attend school. The CCP utterly destroyed our dream of more than ten years of hard work at school, and hopes to change our own as well as our parents' living standards. But when we and the evildoers crossed swords and they tried to exchange material benefits for our betrayal of Dafa and Master we firmly resisted.

In early 2000, the principle took away our jobs. We appealed several times with the local education department and the Appeals Office, but we received only unreasonable blame and scolding. Therefore, we decided to go to Beijing to appeal.

In April 2000 we took a petition letter with several dozen practitioners' signatures and again went to Beijing. When we entered in the National Office of Letters and Appeals we found that the police were closely monitoring appeals and detaining practitioners. After we had submitted our letter, I realized that we should leave the office with dignity. So I told my husband my thoughts, but he did not respond. Due to my usual dependency on my husband, coupled with the fact that we did not understand the Fa from the basis of the Fa, we lost the opportunity Master had arranged for us to escape. We were later transferred to the local government's liaison office and then sent back to our hometown. Our letter of appeal shocked the local government officials. My husband and I became the local focus of the persecution, and my husband was arrested. I was not, due to my being pregnant. My husband and I were eventually sent to a mental hospital. Following that, my husband was persecuted at an infectious diseases TB hospital.

Right after the 2001 New Year my husband and I returned to our hometown. The 610 Office agents were afraid we would go to Beijing again, and that they would be implicated, so they schemed with our hometown police personnel to force us back home prior to the two CCP Congresses. On our way back, the local police illegally arrested us. We took this opportunity to explain the truth about Falun Dafa, and tell them that Falun Dafa and the practitioners were being persecuted. We also told them the correct information about the staged Tiananmen "Self-immolation" incident.

After we arrived at the police precinct we refused to cooperate with any of the police requests. We pointed out to them that they were violating the law, and that they should not arrest peaceful people who did not violate the law. We asked to be unconditionally released. They released us after three hours, due to the power of our righteous thoughts.

3. My Husband Died as a Result of the Persecution

Our refusal to cooperate with the evil affected our six-month-old son. When my husband and I were arrested and put into a police car with our infant, the baby's head got caught in the door and was squeezed, and he went into shock. We had to return to our hometown. After that, when we encountered the local police, we took every chance to expose their evil crimes. The police got angry and were responsible for a female practitioner's death within several days. This practitioner had provided us with food and lodging. Several months later, on my husband's way back home, the police illegally arrested him and sentenced him two years in a forced labor camp.

I was forbidden from visiting my husband in the forced labor camp. Because he followed the principles of "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance," he was brutally tortured until his term was up. After he returned home, he was so weak from torture that he died.

The former school principal was actively involved in my husband's and my persecution. Following my husband's incarceration in the forced labor camp, this evil persecutor attempted to force me to take my baby and find another job, but I refused. He spoke with us every opportunity he got, by first acknowledging the coworkers' and students' positive comments about us, as well as our experience, knowledge and high moral standards. But then each time he also said that we were standing on the wrong side by believing in Falun Gong. Our standard response was, "The reason we are this good is because we practice Falun Gong. Falun Gong changed us physically and mentally. We want to be better, and live with dignity. Society should recognize people's desire to improve. Master Li Hongzhi teaches us to be better people, and should receive respect." I also spoke to him about heaven's law - that "good is rewarded with good and evil meets evil." I added that if he continued persecuting practitioners, he would receive karmic retribution. He then shouted at me and chased me out of his office. He did receive swift retribution the next day - he lost his position!

My husband went to the forced labor camp when our son was only 1-1/2 years old. I lost the mutually supportive and encouraging cultivation environment we had provided for each other. The difficulties of raising a young child, along with the financial hardships, caused me to slack off in my Fa study. I developed the desire for comfort. The local government put me in a brainwashing class for over 40 days. The poor child kept crying for his mother, but the local officials did not allow me to see him. I did not pass the cultivation test and I compromised with the evil. This is a big stain and a shameful event on my cultivation path.

Three practitioners had then been sent to the brainwashing class. Each of our workplaces were extorted of 15,000 yuan for our living expenses and "reformation" expenses. After my husband's death I made phone calls to all his former classmates whom I could reach. I explained the truth of the persecution to the co-workers, students, and neighbors. As a result of my clarifying the truth, some people withdrew from the CCP. Our current school leaders, co-workers and students all recognized that my husband and I were good people. They were also shocked by the facts of the evil persecution. Many people complained about the CCP and shed sympathetic tears.

4. Manifesting the Wonders of Dafa at My Work

In 1999 I had just taken over as a homeroom teacher for a freshman class. The CCP's persecution forced me from my job within a month. My students all liked me. After the persecution started in 1999, the CCP's slander and framing of Dafa were causative factors in many natural disasters. China experienced a heat wave of over 40 degrees (104o F). The conditions in students' dorms had been poor. I followed Dafa's standard to increase my xinxing whenever I could. On one occasion I made green bean soup for the students. I also invited a student who lost consciousness from the heat to my home to rest. Some of my students were financially poor. To ease their financial burdens, when there were class activities I always contributed my own money. My husband also gave his tape recorder to my class. We invited a student who was not very outgoing to our home during the Moon Festival to celebrate and chat. This student became my son's teacher.

I worked in that school copy room for four years. After my many requests, the current school leaders eventually agreed to my going back to teaching. I have always been strict with the students, but I helped them with any problems and questions they had as I guided them through their essays. Every year, during their appraisals, my students were always among those who received awards, and some of my students' essays were published in scholastic magazines. When the school collects students' evaluation of teachers each semester, the feedback I get from my classes usually reads something like, "A good teacher who loves her students as her own children." My library coworker told me that most students speak highly of me when she talks to them. One student told me that his classmates thought I was the best teacher they had ever had. He also wants to be a teacher like me in the future.

At school, I try my best to use every chance I have to tell people around me about Falun Dafa. As more and more people understand the truth about Dafa, I feel improvement in my cultivation environment. A middle management person told me that many school leaders have given me, the Falun Gong practitioner, good appraisals, privately or publicly.

Several days after my husband passed away a new semester began. I rushed through the funeral with great grief. I did not take any days off and returned to work immediately. From a seemingly weak woman like me, people could see the indestructibility of Dafa. Due to the CCP's persecution, my young son lost the well-off lifestyle he would have had, and lost the love of his father. The child has been suffering since he was in my womb - when guards forced his mother to stand for an entire night, she had to breathe the toxic air in the copy room, was forced to have injections in a mental hospital and was dragged, pulled and beaten. His mother did not have money to buy nutritious food and she was monitored and persecuted by spies. After he was born, he witnessed several incidents of his parents being persecuted and arrested, and finally his father died as a result of the persecution. This young life has gone through tremendous tribulations. But on the other hand, his handsomeness, healthiness, kindness and wisdom are great manifestations of the principle of the universe: Good will be rewarded with good and evil will be met with retribution. My son always follows me. His existence helped create so many opportunities to clarify the truth. The principal, teachers, and parents in his school are all people to whom I have explained the truth. Sometimes, Master uses my son's mouth to remind me and give me hints. My son would point to a person passing by and say, "Mom, have you explained the truth?" The president of an English education institution for young children offered to teach my son English for free after listening to me clarify the truth. The everyday people who understand the truth have chosen bright futures for themselves.

My mother-in-law only had one son, and she suffered greatly from the loss. Following my husband's death, everyday people around us thought my mother-in-law would move out and go back to her village to live. But so far, my mother-in-law and I have lived together for over six years. Seeing her healthy, lovely grandson growing up, she is so happy. All these years I have been the family's only support. Though my husband died, my family is still together. This is a testimony to the wonders of Falun Dafa. The neighbors in my subdivision admire my courage.