(Minghui.org) I am an English practitioner.
I have lived in Hong Kong since 1995. I spent some 10 years traveling and working in China, but returning to Hong Kong frequently, so I have lived here while the British were in control, through the handover back to China in 1997, and for 17 of the 21 years since.
I started cultivating in 2010, two years after my Chinese wife started, but we know Master had been looking after us from long before that.
Because of the Asian financial crisis and SARS, my consulting firm was losing money, so I closed it in 2003. At that time we were thinking of moving to Thailand, but the owner of the apartment wanted to sell the property and offered it to us at a very low price. So we bought it and stayed in Hong Kong. It is in an ideal location near Times Square. Looking back now, it was a life-changing decision.
When I started practicing, I was working on an EU project in Kosovo. On returning to Hong Kong in 2011 we discovered there was an English Epoch Times newspaper, so I started to work for the newspaper.
Truth Clarification Sites
In June 2012, a communist party organization, the Youth Care Association (YCA), started attacking our truth-clarification sites.
On one occasion, I went to the Hung Hom site. YCA had speakers set at very high volume. When I asked a policeman to ask them to turn the volume down, he first took details from my ID card. Two weeks later I received a letter from YCA using my full name on my ID card. The police and YCA are apparently in cahoots.
The people in Hong Kong did not believe there was such a connection until they saw what happened during the umbrella movement. They then realized that Hong Kong was changing rapidly.
At the height of this communist party campaign to drive us off the streets of Hong Kong, confrontation was non-stop. I was closely involved at the site near Sogo in Causeway Bay.
One day when the YCA was covering our banners with theirs and it had reached a critical point, I was doing the exercises with a few other practitioners next to the conflict area. One of the YCA leaders jumped at me, as if he was going to attack me. I reacted (which showed my attachment to fighting) but did not touch him. The guy lied to the police that I had hit him and I was taken to the police station. During the ride, I clarified the truth to the several officers in the vehicle.
They put me in an interview room and kept me there for several hours. One time when the door was open, I saw a YCA leader walking around the restricted area of the police station as if he owned the place.
At midnight I was released on bail and told to report to them each month. On one occasion they tried to keep me waiting for the interview, so I did the Falun Gong exercises in the open area in front of the main desk. At each visit, I told the interviewer the facts about Dafa. On the third occasion, the interviewer was particularly interested in what I had to say. I reported three times before they dropped the case. It was a good lesson for me, and my attachment to fighting is now much more under control.
Although there have been fewer direct confrontations since 2014, at every one of our parades or gatherings, the YCA is allocated an adjacent site where they have huge speakers pointing in our direction, blurting out anti-Falun Gong propaganda at incessantly high volume. The police just watch but usually do nothing to curtail the noise level even if we complain.
At each of these gatherings, they bus in YCA demonstrators from Guangdong and the New Territories and bring spies to take photos and videos of the assembled practitioners. Taking my photo does not concern me, as I am well known to all of them. I like China but have not visited since 2008.
We have more than 10 parades in Hong Kong every year, and I try hard to participate, because I see practitioners from Taiwan and other regions overcome such hardships to come here to validate the Fa.
During the parade, I watch out for Westerners that look interested and usually have some English flyers to offer them. For some, I spend a little time explaining the situation to them. I also clarify the truth to the police officers that accompany the parade if they will listen. Some are interested to learn more about the situation in China.
Doing Media Work
To cover sports, I started taking photos in 2011.
About a year ago I was asked to help the Chinese Epoch Times by taking photos at business meetings and press conferences. Some mainland companies would not let our local reporters attend. I have managed to get into many of these events and I am now getting invitations from a wide range of Hong Kong and a few Chinese companies.
I also cover entertainment events. The media at these are different from those that cover business or sports, so I have a chance to meet a lot of media people from both Hong Kong and China. I try to be helpful. I try to give cameramen room to take photos and arrange space for video crews to put up their tripods. If they speak English, I exchange business cards with them and explain about the Epoch Times and, if possible, do some truth-clarification. A few have told me they like our newspaper.
One day between assignments I went to a popular coffee shop at Pacific Place in the Admiralty area of the city. It was very busy, and a Hong Kong businessman came to sit at the same table. We started chatting and I brought up the subject of Falun Gong. He was very interested, but he could not understand why he had not seen anything in the local and international media about it. I explained why. I also told him many people around the world have been brainwashed by the Chinese propaganda. He replied, “I, too, have been brainwashed by Chinese propaganda, but today I've learned the truth.”
I joined the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) as a journalist member last year. I soon discovered that the copies of the Epoch Times that I was taking each week were not on the newspaper stand. I enquired at reception and was told the House Committee had taken the Epoch Times off its media list. I contacted the committee and said to the receptionist, “Not everybody will like our newspaper, but if the FCC is censoring the media, that is not right.” A few weeks later it was reinstated.
A Bad Thing Turns Out to Be a Good Thing
I still cannot sit in the double lotus position to do the meditation. Before I became a practitioner, I had my right hip replaced. It has worked well, but I was always frightened that if I pushed it too far, it might dislocate. I put this attachment behind me a year ago and made improvements. But the right hip joint seemed to stop cold at a certain point and would go no further.
A few weeks ago after distributing newspapers in Stanley, I needed to get to an appointment. I saw the bus I wanted coming, but I was still 50 meters away from the bus stop. I ran as fast as I could alongside a wall, as people were standing at bus stops along the edge of the pavement. All of a sudden, someone stepped backward toward the wall, right in my path. To avoid hitting him, all I could do was crash into the wall. I fell sideways, breaking my fall with my arm but hitting my right hip hard on the pavement. My first thought was, “No problem, Falun Dafa hao.” I got up and I was fine.
Since then, the blockage in my right hip seems to have been removed. I can now sit in the single lotus position. When I told my wife what had happened, she said it was because at that moment I aligned with Dafa by choosing to hurt myself instead of someone else, so Master protected me and a “bad thing” had a good outcome.
Thank you, Master.
