Dafa Taught Me to Repay Hatred with Kindness

(Minghui.org) I was born in 1943 in a small mountain village in the remote outskirts of Chongqing. My hometown was truly beautiful—surrounded by clear waters and lush mountains, and the local people were kind and warmhearted. That was before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) usurped power in 1949.

My father was a well-known doctor in the area, and believed in gods and Buddhas. He taught us to revere divine beings and often told us stories about spiritual cultivators. In my young mind I thought that when I grew up, I would find a master to learn the Dao of immortals.

My Family Was Torn Apart

I was six years old when the CCP took power and began its political purging movements. China was overwhelmed by blood and terror. Every day, we saw people being tied up, hung up, and criticized at mass meetings. Their properties and farmlands were seized and divided. Everything became the CCP’s property.

Victims were executed in public. As a child, I was so terrified by the CCP’s brutality, massacres, and terror that my body shook with fear.

After I started school, I was brainwashed by the CCP’s tactics of “Falsehood, Hatred, and Struggle” and became numb to what was happening around me. I mistakenly thought those earlier disasters were behind us now.

I never expected that the ten-year disaster of the Cultural Revolution would hit my family so hard.

One day, CCP officials came to our house and asked us why we didn’t have a portrait of Chairman Mao, but instead had landscape paintings and works of calligraphy. They said all these things were “feudal-capitalist-revisionist” and that we were following a “feudal-capitalist-revisionist” path.

They confiscated our small telephone, claiming that it was a telegraph machine, and that my family had overseas connections and we were enemy agents. My family were labeled spies that colluded with foreign powers, and my father was taken away.

He was dragged through the streets every day to publicly humiliate him, and he was denied food and sleep at night. The militia guards forced him to write confessions about alleged espionage activities that he was not involved in.

During the bitterest winter, after being tortured this way for more than 30 days, my father developed a severe cough and began coughing up large amounts of blood. He passed away, a victim of injustice, at the age of 55.

My older brother was a Chinese teacher at a middle school and had excellent handwriting. All the school’s banners and slogans were written by him. However, less than a fortnight after my father passed away, the CCP arrested him, brought him back to our hometown and locked him up in a village office, where he was tortured for hours.

When he was released home that night, he was covered in wounds. To survive, he fled to a distant place. A few days later, the thugs came looking for him again.

My mother was physically crushed by what happened to our family. She could no longer stand up, and barely manage to support herself against the wall.

“What crimes has my eldest son committed?” she asked.

“Well, his handwriting is beautiful, but it’s only to serve the Kuomintang,” the militia commander replied. [The Kuomintang was a major political party in the Republic of China. It was the sole ruling party in China from 1927 to 1949, before relocating to Taiwan when the CCP took power.]

After several rounds of looting, the thugs took everything that was considered valuable or useful. The things they didn’t want, such as my father’s medical books, calligraphy, paintings, and science magazines, were piled up, doused with kerosene, and set on fire.

The thugs returned and noticed some exercise books on the table – they were my15-year-old brother’s books for his middle school studies. They opened one and found a poem, “The Limestone Rhyme” by Yu Qian from the Ming dynasty, and took it.

The next day, they came again and, in front of my 78-year-old grandma, tied up my brother and took him away. His screams terrified my grandma so badly that she fainted and never recovered from the ordeal. She eventually passed away.

My brother was taken to an unknown detention center, where he was persecuted for three months. When they couldn’t find an excuse to keep him there, they released him home, but he had to do forced labor in the village without pay.

Every day, he was forced to do hard labor for long hours, and was often taken to public meetings where the victims of the CCP’s latest political purges were publicly condemned. When they were tied up and beaten, he was also tied up and beaten. When he came home, he was covered in wounds and blood. The next day, he was forced to work as usual – lifting stones and carrying gravel.

My poor brother was subjected to this forced labor and misery for six years. In the prime of his youth, he often thought about suicide. By the end of the Cultural Revolution he was broken both physically and mentally.

By then, the kindness I had as a child long since vanished as a result of the CCP’s evil conduct, and my heart was full of anger, hatred, and grievance. I was filled with thoughts about how to get revenge. In my worldview, there were no friends or family; everyone was an enemy.

When I was 39, I was diagnosed with hardening of the arteries in my brain. The doctor said, “You’re not even forty, yet you have the condition of someone in their eighties. You must have suffered some extreme stress.”

My mind was still filled with thoughts shaped by CCP ideology: Never forget the class suffering, and always remember the blood-soaked grievances. But my revenge was yet to be carried out, and the hatred hadn’t faded one bit. My entire body – every organ and limb – became diseased.

I Learn to Repay Hatred with Kindness

In January 1999, the doctor told my family that I was beyond treatment and should just go home and make my final arrangements. Just as my life was coming to an end compassionate Master arranged for someone to bring me a copy of the precious book Zhuan Falun. I was so happy and felt extremely grateful to Master for not leaving me behind.

I read the book repeatedly, and Dafa purified my thoughts that had been so deeply poisoned by the CCP culture. I began to understand the true meaning of life and the workings of karma. The icy hatred in my heart finally melted.

I eagerly read the Fa, and every word Master said resonated deeply within me.

In May 2005, I returned to that painful place – my hometown – for the first time in more than 30 years. I wanted to clarify the truth to people there, as they were also sentient beings to be saved.

When I got there, I saw many people crowded together and someone was crying. It turned out that a recent flood widened the river. A six-year-old boy tried to cross and got swept away, and his body hadn’t been found. Everyone was devastated.

“Why don’t you build a bridge?” I asked the production team leader.

“You haven’t been back here for a long time. We are still very poor, and don’t have money to build a bridge. The government doesn’t allocate any funds, and the local people have no money, either. We can’t even pay the fee to buy crops,” he told me sadly.

I thought to myself: It mustn’t be an accident that I came across this situation on my return home.

“What is the fee to buy crops?” I asked the production team leader.

“Over 1000 yuan.”

“I can help with the cost,” I said. “I practice Falun Dafa now, and have regained good health. I haven’t needed to take any medication for years. I would like to use the money I saved to help build a bridge for the local people in my hometown.”

The production team leader was very grateful. He held my hands and said, “We’ll call for a big meeting to thank you for your kindness!”

“Please don’t thank me. We should all thank Falun Dafa’s Master, who has saved my life and taught me to be a good person!” I then gave the production team leader over 1000 yuan to buy crops.

When I got back home, I had a chat with my husband and son about helping the people in my hometown build a bridge. They both supported the idea because they witnessed the extraordinary power of Dafa through the miraculous changes in me.

“Your idea is great. We must do good things for people,” they said, and started to take action straight away.

By September 2005, we indeed built a bridge and a new road for the local people, who all invited me to go back for a visit.

When I arrived, I saw big banners along the main road, thanking me, saying I had brought blessings to the future generations in my hometown.

The production team leader, the CCP secretary of the village, and the leader of the production brigade all came to see me, saying they wanted to personally thank me.

“There is no need to thank me,” I told them. “Please take down all those banners along the road. It’s not me who has brought blessings, but Dafa, and our compassionate Master. If you want to thank someone, let us all thank Master Li, who taught us not to seek personal fame or gain. So, please take down all those banners.”

Then I started clarifying the truth to them about Falun Dafa. At that time, the persecution was still very severe.

“Falun Dafa is a cultivation practice of the Buddha school, based on the highest principles of the universe. It’s a practice of great virtue which can save people, a practice that teaches people to be good by following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.

“If Dafa’s Master hadn’t taught me to be a good person, to forget hatred, it would have been impossible for me to do what I have done. I would have still hated you and wanted to seek revenge for what happened to my family. I wanted to build a bridge and a road for my hometown people because of the teachings of our Master. So, let’s all thank our Master!

“Falun Dafa is not at all like the lies repeated on TV. Our Master is so compassionate! Practitioners are all good people and we try to conduct ourselves by the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. I hope you don’t participate in the persecution of good people. If you see practitioners distributing truth-clarification materials here, please don’t report them, but treat them with kindness. By doing so, you will enjoy a bright future and blessings.”

Upon hearing all this, the production brigade leader and the CCP secretary both said, “Please don’t worry. From now on, if any Dafa practitioners come here to distribute materials, we will protect them, and we will continue to do so as long as we are in charge. You can count on us!”

We are all deeply grateful to Master for his compassionate salvation of countless sentient beings! Thank you, Master!