(Minghui.org) A Hongkonger shares how his family began practicing Falun Dafa and how he started volunteering to raise awareness of Dafa’s persecution in mainland China.
In the late 1980s, my family began searching for a qigong practice to improve our health. At that time, Falun Dafa had not yet been introduced to the public.
In 1994, my wife’s sister told her about Falun Dafa, so she attended the third, fourth and fifth session of Master Li Hongzhi’s lectures in Guangzhou. My daughter and I attended part of Master’s lectures.
The first day my wife attended Master’s lecture, she brought back some Dafa books. Zhuan Falun was not published yet, and there was only Falun Gong. She also brought back recordings for us so we could listen to them. I had been searching for the Tao (the Way), so when I saw my wife meditating, I joined her. She attended the classes to learn the exercises while I just meditated at home with her. At the time, doing the exercises was the core of the practice.
My daughter’s health was not very good. When the weather changed, she suffered from allergies. The symptoms were like asthma and she needed to take injections three times a day. Despite all our efforts, her condition did not improve.
In 1994, my daughter came to Hong Kong to live with me. After attending a few months of kindergarten, she began attending primary school. She still had to visit the doctor frequently. My daughter did not understand Chinese, so she could not read Zhuan Falun.
On the night of October 31, 1997, my daughter’s asthma became so severe that I took her to the hospital for treatment. After returning home, she still felt unwell. The following day quite a few practitioners met to do the Falun Dafa exercises. I decided to bring her with me and then take her to see the doctor afterwards. The practitioners encouraged her to do the exercises, and her asthma symptoms lessened. We did not go to the doctor that day, and she never needed a doctor again.
My daughter was barely 10 years old at the time. She started to understand Chinese and could read a bit. So, along with practicing the exercises, we also read the Dafa books.
This was how my entire family began practicing Falun Dafa.
Practitioners went to different districts to introduce Falun Dafa on weekends. In July 1999, when the CCP started persecuting Falun Dafa, practitioners began to distribute information at their own group exercise sites. Our first materials were single sheets of paper with no pictures. Around the year 2000, other practitioners and I started to make display boards.
I always dressed neatly in a pressed shirt and tie when I went out to talk to people. We set up a booth at the tourist area in Tsim Sha Tsui and stood from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day. We did not even have a table or chair. After standing for hours, we realized that it would be good if there was a place for us to meditate. We brought a table and installed an electronic display board. We added a stool and could sit and meditate.
There were many street vendors at the bustling Tsim Sha Tsui Ferry Terminal. Many people came to know about the persecution of Dafa, and thugs from the CCP-affiliated Hong Kong Youth Care Association always tried to chase us away. Not only did they go to the district council and discuss how to get rid of us, but they also hired gangsters and drunkards to create havoc. They even splashed red oil on our signs and materials.
One day some gangsters surrounded us and our display boards. They even set up a bamboo screen to block people from seeing us.
One Christmas, they hung white banners all around Tsim Sha Tsui, making the whole place look like a funeral parlor. Those banners were transported by containers from Shenzhen, and a banner hung on every pole.
I designed a pushcart so we could insert our own banners and easily move around. When they blocked us from the front, I could push the cart to another place to avoid the obstruction.
Once when I was meditating, they placed flags with words that defamed Dafa in front of me. I ignored them and continued to meditate. An elderly man scolded them, saying that the way the Youth Care Association blocked us was really going overboard in bullying people. They later restrained their behavior.
The CCP thugs have copied us for so many years. When we display pictures of the persecution to expose the CCP’s crimes, they put up pictures to defame Dafa. When we put on a display to reenact the CCP’s torture of practitioners or forced organ harvesting, they created an evil altar. However, there was one thing that they could not copy—our exercise movements. We usually do the Falun Dafa exercises at our booth, and they could not retaliate.
We have now persevered through so many years. However, once we relax a bit, the evil will use the opportunity to create a disturbance. We must not slack off.
(2021 Hong Kong Truth-Clarification Site Experience-Sharing Article)