Hong Kong iMail: Inside the Falun Gong

9 March 2001 / 12:13 AM

The alarm clock in Maria Chow's sparsely furnished studio in Wan Chai goes off at 5.20am - as it does every morning without fail. By 5.55 she's already at the foot of Central Plaza, a cassette of Master Li Hongzhi's tape-recorded voice rolling, her two-hour workout under way. By 8am she stretches out, heads for home and is at work by nine.

When we meet up that evening, Chow, a gentle, unassuming woman who lives alone, is as fresh as a daisy. The 40-year-old music teacher says she's never felt so energetic and healthy, and hasn't seen a doctor since 1999, a real breakthrough for someone who has endured ill health since childhood.

"If someone told me 18 months ago that I was going to feel like this, I would have been very surprised,'' says Chow in a very proper British accent picked up at school in Hong Kong.

But it's not just her health that has changed in such a short period of time, it's her whole life.

Once a [religious person] who had considered becoming a nun, Chow ... now calls herself a Falun Gong practitioner. She's happier about herself and her fear of death has disappeared.

Her conversion began in June 1999 when she returned to the SAR for a holiday after working on her music dissertation in Chicago. Disillusioned with Western medicine, Chow visited a qigong master and, despite her natural cynicism with "that kind of stuff'', had been impressed by the exercises.

Back in the United States she surfed the Internet looking for information on qigong, but came up blank. Then she remembered hearing about a new type of qigong called Falun Gong. Unaware of the growing controversy surrounding the movement, which was banned in July 1999 on the mainland, Chow surfed again and found a website on Falun Dafa, as practitioners prefer to call

themselves, with a contact name listed for her area.

"I called and asked how effective it would be in improving my health. They told me wonderful stories,'' says Chow. "A man with lifelong liver problems started Falun Dafa two years earlier, and his problems had disappeared. I thought it was amazing.''

She was advised to first read the group's book, Turning the Law Wheel, written by the group's founder Master Li. Expecting it to be full of exercises, Chow was shocked to read about the universe and how to judge good and bad people. But after two chapters, she went to an exercise class, mainly because it was free, a crucial factor to an overseas student.

Chow finished the book, but began to have second thoughts, especially when she read about practitioners developing supernormal ability. "I'm cynical about a lot of things,'' says Chow, who describes herself as a "doubting Thomas''. "And intellectually I'm very open minded, so it was difficult to imagine I would commit to something like this.''

By mid-August, her health problems flared again but her medical insurance didn't kick in until September. The gym seemed like hard work, so she started doing Falun Dafa exercises. "The purpose was to exercise not to practise Falun Dafa,'' says Chow. "I did them every day in my room for a week and then I felt something very strange. It's difficult to describe. It was an unknown feeling. It wasn't uncomfortable, it was just new. I thought maybe what the book says is right.'' Her health improved so dramatically over the next two weeks, that by the end of August, Chow decided to follow the book to the letter - and assimilate the movement's principles of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.

The manual, which Chow prefers to call the "guiding book'' rather than the "bible'', describes Falun Dafa as a cultivation practice, a two-pronged approach to life. She says her "guiding book'' deals with the cultivation of the mind and the spirit, and the practice of the physical body. "To achieve good health, one has to upgrade one's moral standard. The crux is the elevation of the mind and the spirit,'' says Chow, back in Hong Kong as a staff member at a performing arts institute.

So why does Beijing feel so threatened by the group, to the extent that it's branded the movement an "[Chinese government's slanderous word]'', sentenced hundreds to 18 years in prison and placed 10,000 in re-education-through-labour camps without trial, according to human rights organisations?

"The general consensus is that the Chinese government would feel uneasy about any phenomenon that involves a lot of people [reports indicate that at least 120 followers have died in police custody]. If 10,000 people in China went to yum cha together at 9am, that might be a threat,'' says Chow laughing. The other joke within Falun Dafa is who will turn up next at the practice sites. Bets are on journalists, anthropologists and secret agents. Chow smiles but she's serious about being spied on by agents from the mainland's Ministry of State Security. She is guarded about what she says on the phone, believing most practitioners have their phones tapped, and on our way to one of the reading sessions, she tells how agents have infiltrated meetings.

The reading session I attend is held in a practitioner's apartment in Kowloon, and is packed with 30 people of all ages, sitting on round red and orange mats on the floor in the lotus position. Master Li surveys his followers from large posters on the wall. At 7.30pm, the group, apparently spontaneously, starts to read aloud from Li's little orange book.

The absence of an institutionalised body is why Falun Dafa practitioners shy away from the label religion and why they deny it is a political body. "Falun Dafa is a belief, because there is no organisation, no leader and no doctrines - it all works on a personal level, between the person and what is said in the book,'' says Chow.

She is eager to point out the freedom within the group and says the idea of being a member is one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding Falun Dafa, and why practitioners dislike being branded a cult or sect, especially when prefixed by "[Chinese government's slanderous word]''. There are no membership cards or fees and no reprimands if you miss a meeting or quit altogether. "Practitioners come and go,'' says Chow. But there is no denying the group's ability to rally the practitioners quickly and quietly, a factor that makes Beijing very nervous. The Internet is a crucial tool in organising large-scale practices with phone numbers for contact persons on websites worldwide. Listening to

Chow, however, gathering the masses is a much more haphazard affair. "We argue a lot because there is no leader or constitution. We resort to long discussions until we all agree.'' These discussions usually take place during the break in the two-hour reading session. When the door bell rings during the first hour, no one pauses for breath, except for Jo Zhou Cu-xia, who gets up to answer it. The 25-year-old building student has been a practitioner for three years and says she feels happier because of it.

Her motivation came from a sense of wanting to feel different inside. "The book teaches you how to be a good person,'' says Zhou. "Before I didn't know how to treat other people. I knew I should be good but it was difficult when society is so selfish. Falun Dafa gave me the courage. Now I feel I can face problems from the inside.'' She doesn't sound like she was a bad person before and struggles to illustrate her previous life. "If a sales assistant gave me back too much change, I would have kept it and thought that's not my problem. Now I know I should be honest.''

The biggest change, however, has been the life direction she gets from Falun Dafa. "I want to be responsible for society and myself. I just want to be a good person.''

The desire to be a good person echoes from the mouths of Zhou's fellow practitioners. Tsang Yat-ling, a 44-year-old clerk in a property office who stumbled across Falun Dafa six years ago when looking for something to improve his daughter's health, claims he now knows how to be a good person from reading the book. Asked if he will always remain true to Falun Dafa, Tsang says: "Yes, it tells you how to be a good person, so why give it up?''

Almost word for word Wu Ah-ling has the same answer. "A good person should do everything for the good of other people, before doing good for yourself,'' adds the 44-year-old sales assistant, who works in an electronics shop. "Falun Dafa is the most important part of my life.''

The devotion, explains Chow, is because it works. "People get results,'' she says. "Look at me.'' But does she ever contemplate turning her back on Falun Dafa, just like she did with Christianity? "No,'' she replies ... very firmly.