A Young Artist’s Ever Incomplete Family Portrait (Part 2 of 6)

(Minghui.org) Continued from Part 1

Discovering Falun Dafa

Minghui's father, Mr. Yu Zonghai, was born on March 3, 1957. He worked for the Mudanjiang City Library and was in marketing and advertisement. He has extensive training in Chinese painting, oil painting, sculpture, and calligraphy. A keen artist, he has an eye for anything aesthetic and captures beautiful photographs. Besides creating promotional material for the library, he was often sought out by Bureau of Cultural Affairs officials for various projects. Hardworking and reliable, he received multiple awards at the city level and the provincial level.

Despite his successful career, Mr. Yu’s health declined when little Minghui was only three years old. He suffered from chronic arthritis, bone infection, inflammation of the nerve ends, chronic shoulder pain due to injury of the tendon, osteoporosis—all were illnesses difficult to treat and recoverer from.

Mr. Yu’s back went out often and when it happened, he couldn’t move. If he dropped a piece of paper, he had to squat slowly while keeping his back straight to pick it up. Weak and sickly, he couldn’t even carry a small container of coal. All the household chores fell to his wife. At work, his supervisor assigned an assistant to help him carry and lift things. 

Slowly, his joints deformed. His hands hurt, his head hurt, and his back hurt. The soreness and pain were indescribable and unbearable. It kept Mr. Yu up during the wee hours of the night, night after night. Exhausted and despaired, he slammed his head on the wall repeatedly to numb the pain.

Mr. Yu’s supervisor took him to Tianjin City to seek out medical experts. An X-ray showed the structure of his bone that resembled a honeycomb. A doctor at the Harbin Rheumatology Hospital pointed at a patient with a hunched torso, inwardly clasped arms, and claw-like fingers and told Mr. Yu, “You’ll be like that in half a year. There is no cure for this illness.” Coming home from that trip, Mr. Yu’s heart broke when his young daughter ran toward him and shouted happily, “Dad! Dad!”

A friend who was into qigong told Mr. Yu secretively, “We have a true master of a very high level right here in China. He’s from Changchun.” 

In his childhood, Mr. Yu had heard of his maternal grandfather speaking of a person from his hometown who practiced martial arts and reached high levels. This person had excellent martial art skills and wandered around in society. A family member had seen him walking in the snow without leaving any footprints. 

He was told that this legendary martial artist had said that a person truly at a high level never shows off or uses their ability to bully others. Mr. Yu had practiced martial arts before but had stopped long ago. However, he believed that there are people of high levels in this world.

Mr. Yu and his friend attended the seventh Falun Dafa seminar in Changchun, Jilin Province during which a whole series of miraculous things happened to him that he could not explain. He didn’t feel any pain after sitting an entire night on a hard bench while traveling on the train to Changchun—not the joints in his hands, nor his feet or back. 

As he arrived at the Mingfang Palace Auditorium in Jilin University, someone shouted, “Master is here!” Instantly, Mr. Yu felt that the sky was spinning and his body twirling. He instinctively grabbed the fence behind him and thought, “Something huge is going to happen in this universe.”

Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, walked toward the crowd. Seeing others shaking hands with Master, Mr. Yu also reached his hands out toward Master. An overwhelming feeling went through his body and his very being was shocked, something he had never experienced before. He made his way through the crowd to see Master up close—Master is tall and calm. His facial features resembled ancient Buddha statues. Mr. Yu decided that if there are indeed Buddhas in this world, they must look like Master.

Obtaining the Fa

It was the last day of April 1994. In that enclosed auditorium, Mr. Yu truly felt the warm breeze of spring that seemed to have come from nowhere. For the first time, he heard of the principles of Falun Dafa.

Master Li Hongzhi talked about opening the celestial eye on the second day of the seminar. Right away, Mr. Yu saw mountains and rivers in another dimension, in beautiful colors that one could have never bought, mixed, or seen. Those exquisite, rich, brilliant, and luminous colors were so clean and transparent as if they were living things. Their beauty simply cannot be duplicated or described.

Mr. Yu noticed his fellow seminar attendees changed. In the beginning, everybody fought to get in and out of the auditorium. As Master purified most people’s bodies in the first couple of days and bathroom runs were more frequent, people fought to use the bathrooms. However, just a few days in, everybody became much more polite and patient. Instead of pushing to get ahead, everybody waited and let others go first—things started to go a lot smoother. 

The older man who sat in front of Mr. Yu was so sick that he needed help coming to class at first. As soon as he got out of the auditorium one day, he suddenly couldn’t walk anymore and sat down on the stairs. Master came over and gently asked him to stand up. He stood up at first try. Master said, “Try to walk a little.” And he walked. He walked faster and faster, better and better. Before long, the older man no longer needed help coming to class.

Mr. Yu had a hearty appetite for a change during the seminar. He used to not be able to finish a small bowl of rice but was then eating two big steamed buns, a big bowl of porridge, and six potstickers for one meal. He completely forgot about his illnesses as the painful symptoms disappeared. Even more strangely, he started getting teary from day four on. Sometimes he cried because he was deeply moved by the profound principles of the Fa but other times he couldn’t explain the excess waterworks as if a dam was broken. 

Mr. Yu paid close attention to Master Li Hongzhi’s way of talking, his tone and voice, his smile, his expressions, his every word, and every move. Mr. Yu thought, “I’ve heard people say that Buddhas have ‘compassion and solemnity simultaneously,’ now having seen it in Master I understand what they meant.” Master Li’s profound, selfless and all-including energy is tolerant of all things and is compassionate toward all beings, changing and rectifying everything quietly.

When the seminar ended, Mr. Yu told his classmates, “I haven’t heard enough.” He attended Master’s second seminar in Dalian City, Liaoning Province and decided from the bottom of his heart, “This is the Master I have been looking for. Dafa is remarkable!”

Regained Health

Six months had passed. Mr. Yu didn’t become disabled as the doctor had predicted, but completely recovered. In the fall of 1994, the library administrators bought bags of rice for its employees as a benefit and each bag weighed more than 200 pounds. The newly recruited college graduate tried to sling a bag onto his shoulder but staggered backward and dropped the bag—it was so heavy. Of the entire workplace, only one person could carry those bags of rice. 

Mr. Yu came down from his office and told the office director, “Let me help him unload the rice.” The director was incredulous, “You carrying these bags?” To everyone’s surprise, Mr. Yu moved three bags in a row. He only weighed about 135 lbs at the time. This became the talk of the entire workplace and caused quite the sensation.

Mr. Yu used to go to the hospital regularly for injections and picking up prescription drugs. When his doctor at the library’s designated hospital didn’t see his patient for a while, he asked Mr. Yu’s co-worker, “Has he passed away?” The co-worker joked, “He didn’t pass away. He ran away.” 

Spreading and Cultivating in Dafa

Seeing how Mr. Yu regained his health through practicing Falun Dafa, many people at work, including half of the library’s leadership (most of whom were Communist Party members), took up the practice. 

Outside of the library, more and more people in Mudanjiang City also started practicing Falun Dafa around that time. Mr. Yu became the volunteer coordinator for the Aimin District. There was an anecdote—Mr. Yu took a picture of himself and put it side by side with another picture of him from ten years ago. People at the practice site were amazed to see his photos, “How is  it that Yu looks younger now than ten years ago?”

Mr. Yu’s wife, Ms. Wang Meihong, is from a family of intellectuals. She was a senior engineer at the Mudanjiang City Geological Survey and the technical lead. In 1995, Ms. Wang found lumps on both sides of her chest which continued to increase in size and hardness and caused a lot of pain. The doctor suggested that both breasts be removed. 

Seeing how her husband effortlessly recovered from all his illnesses, Ms. Wang began to practice Falun Dafa herself. Before long, the lumps disappeared and she no longer needed to undergo surgery. Besides working and going to school, the couple and their daughter often studied Falun Dafa’s teachings and did the exercises together. They always taught little Minghui to consider others first, take fame and material things lightly, and go with the course of nature. 

Mr. Yu always teased little Minghui, “Kiddo, did you meet Dafa’s requirement of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance today?” Their life was meaningful and happy. 

(To be continued.)