Twenty Years of Volunteering to Do Road Repairs

(Minghui.org) I am a teacher at a village school. After learning Falun Dafa, I learned that I need to be a good person. On my own, I have been repairing and maintaining a dirt road in our village for twenty years. People have changed from initially not understanding me to praising me and Dafa in the end.

Fixing the Road

We have a half-mile-long dirt road that connects our village to the major paved road. Everyone in our village used this road, but nobody had bothered to maintain it. It had many bumps and potholes. It would get very muddy when it rained and people riding bicycles could fall into the ditches on the side.

People had been complaining about this road for years, but there was no change.

After I practiced Falun Dafa, I thought, “Master said, ‘However, during the course of cultivation you cultivate yourself to become more and more kind, to the point where you think of others whenever you think about anything, thus succeeding in becoming a selfless being.’ (“ Teaching the Fa at the Western U.S. Fa Conference”) How should I think for others? Shouldn’t I repair the road instead of just complaining about it?”

Thus, I started to use my hand-pulled cart to get dirt from far away to fill the holes in the road. I also shoveled off the grass on the roadside to make the road wider.

Initially, people didn’t understand me. Some asked if I wanted to run for the head of the village. Some asked how much the government paid me. A young man asked if I wanted to get in the newspaper. A neighbor asked me why I even cared, when the village officials did not care about the road.

My wife also complained, “No one else repairs the road. Are you the only person walking on it?”

As time went by, people stopped saying bad things about me. They knew that I was practicing Falun Dafa and began to understand and admire me.

Bitterness

Though the road is only half a mile long, the maintenance is not easy at all. People, bikes, and cars are going over it every day, so it got bumps and potholes easily. After a heavy rain, the holes would hold pockets of water, making it hard for people to walk.

Our region has more rocks and stones than dirt. It took me half an hour of walking to get dirt. Later, I went to a dried river bank nearby for dirt. It is much closer, but I have to separate the dirt from the rocks. It is still very time-consuming. It can take me a whole day to get the work done.

Sometimes a heavy rain washes away the dirt I just put down, and I'd have to do it again. Sometimes it rains for days; I will put on a raincoat and get some sand to fill the holes.

Later on the government carried out a policy – a “paved road to every village” – and upgraded this dirt road into an asphalt road. But it was built hastily with low quality materials. In less that two years there were several major holes and gaps. I started the repairs again.

Occasionally I would complain, too. “Why don’t others do it?” “Where are the village officials?” Then I would say to myself, “To whom are you complaining? Did anyone force you to do this?”

Master said,

“A benevolent person always has a heart of compassion.
With no discontentment or hatred, he takes hardship as joy.”
(“Realms,” Essentials for Further Advancement)

I was still far away from holding no discontentment or hatred. Why was I complaining?

Sweetness

“Some fragrance always lingers in the hand that gives roses.”

I sued Jiang Zemin, the former head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who launched the persecution of Falun Gong, using my real name in 2015. The CCP sent people to gather my information for retaliation, but the village officials protected me. A villager commented, “If you are not a good person, then is there any good person in the world?”

My school had openings for few senior titles. People competed for that fiercely. I stayed out of it, but the manager gave a position to me anyway. When my son was about to graduate from a mediocre major in a college, my wife was worried about his job prospects. But he got a white collar job at a big company with decent pay.

People asked me, “What connections do you have?” I smiled. I have no connections, but I have my Master. My great Master and Dafa make me a decent person and bring me good things in life.

My wife was against me practicing Falun Dafa since she was poisoned by the CCP’s propaganda. We had quite some clashes on whether I should practice Dafa. Gradually, she saw that I had changed into a person with a good temperament and a healthy body – I have had no need to take medicine for over twenty years.

Now she has started to read Dafa books from time to time. When she was sick, she would chant “Falun Dafa is good! Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good!” She said it was very effective.