A “Man of Iron” Falun Gong Practitioner I Knew Well

Falun Gong practitioner Wang Xueming. (Source: New Tang Dynasty Television)

[People News] When I first met him, I was only 25 years old. At an accidental reading gathering, I met Mr. Wang Xueming. He was there to give a lecture as an education expert. After he finished speaking, I took the initiative to ask him some questions. He seemed to have a favorable impression of me, asked about my ideals in life, and gave me his contact information, telling me to reach out if I needed anything. At that time, I had ideals but did not know how to realize them. I was working in insurance, but my heart was not in it, so I felt lost and depressed. So I contacted him and told him about my situation. He invited me to Anhui to work in education with him. I gladly went to Anhui, and from that point on, I formed a bond with him.

After arriving in Anhui, I was deeply shaken. It can be said that I experienced an environment I had only ever read about in books. I called this environment a “pure land.” He ran a small daycare institution in Anhui, with fewer than twenty students and six or seven teachers. Every single person was especially pure, with no scheming or intrigue whatsoever. I was also someone who had read many Chinese and Western classics, and I had spent four or five years cultivating myself, thinking of myself as a gentleman. But compared with them, I actually paled by comparison.

He was an education expert, a master of traditional Chinese studies, and a writer with many works to his name. He had published more than a dozen books alone. When he taught traditional Chinese studies courses, not only I, but all of us teachers and the students’ parents, felt as if our spirits were elevated every time we listened, as if we had been recharged. This was not only because he was erudite and knowledgeable, but more importantly because what he taught was especially pure and noble, and because of the deeply moving power expressed in his conduct. At that time, I even wrote a self-reflective article in which I wrote two sentences, roughly meaning that being able to study with such a teacher of great virtue made money hardly worth mentioning. This shows the respect I had for Mr. Wang Xueming at that time.

In this small educational institution, I felt as comfortable as if I were in my own home. Even in the office, I casually ate the things he bought, and he never said anything to me about it. His wife and son also worked with us, but in front of us they did not show the slightest sense of superiority. On the contrary, he was much stricter with his son than with us. For example, when we went out on educational field trips and came back, the electric bike could only carry one person, and the other person had to ride a bicycle home. He let me ride the electric bike, while his son rode the bicycle home. In my memory, in every matter, he treated his own family so strictly, while treating us so generously.

He also left me with a very deep impression of being a “man of iron.” His life after 1999 was especially difficult; it could even be said to have been full of suffering. He began practicing Falun Gong in 1996. At that time, he was a middle school teacher. Later he opened a computer training school of his own, and then founded a vocational secondary school himself, both of which were very successful. In 1999, when the Chinese Communist Party began persecuting Falun Gong, he went to Tiananmen to appeal and was arrested and sent back to Sichuan, where he was given three years of forced labor. From then on, he was put on the Chinese Communist Party’s blacklist and was under surveillance at all times. After his release, he went to teach at a university in Zhejiang, but was arrested again and sentenced to three or four years in prison. After his release, he went to Chengdu and founded an educational institution. Just after it began to improve, he was arrested again and sentenced to one or two years. After his release, he founded an educational institution in Wuhan, won the deep trust of students, and enrollment surged, but he was arrested again and sentenced to three years. In 2014, after being released from prison, he founded an educational institution in Anhui. It was at this time that I joined his educational institution and worked with him in education.

After I had worked there for a few months, his son spoke with me about Falun Gong, about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party, and about the truth of the persecution of Falun Gong. It was only then that I learned Wang Xueming practiced Falun Gong. Later, after we became more familiar with each other, he told me about the torture he had suffered in prison. For example, his mouth was crooked because it had been beaten crooked in prison. He told me that one winter night, he was stripped naked, wrapped in a wet quilt, and left to freeze the entire night. There was also much more torture, which he wrote into a book, waiting to be openly published after daylight came.

Later, in 2015, he established the parent company in Shenzhen, with two branch companies in Wuhan and Dongguan. I was sent to manage the Wuhan company, while he and his son went to the Shenzhen parent company. In 2016, the Anhui branch was harassed and shut down by the local public security authorities, and the Dongguan branch was also harassed and shut down by the local public security authorities. Because of harassment, the Shenzhen parent company moved from Bao’an to Longgang.

At the end of 2016, I went to work at the Shenzhen parent company. In 2018, the Shenzhen Longgang parent company was harassed and moved to a remote private house in the mountains of Buji to continue operations. The company spent two to three hundred thousand yuan building small wooden cabins, but in less than a year it was harassed and shut down by the local public security authorities. He then moved the company to Weihai, but after a little over a year it too was harassed and shut down by the local public security authorities. He then shifted to operating online, but at the end of 2020, while he was in Inner Mongolia giving a lecture, he was arrested and sentenced to three years. In 2022, he was persecuted to death in prison.

Let us take a look. He was exactly such a “man of iron,” like Kua Fu. He was repeatedly thrown into prison and tortured, and his property was confiscated as well. After being released from prison, he continued his work and continued spreading the truth. Then his property would be confiscated again, and he would be illegally sentenced again. This happened four or five times. Each time his educational work showed even a little improvement, it was harassed into closure and his property confiscated. Many times, he had just collected students’ tuition when the company was shut down, leaving him with a huge debt. But as soon as he got out of prison, he started a business again and spread the truth again. When he was harassed in one place, he moved to another place and continued operating. He kept moving all the way into the mountains and then to the seaside, yet still could not escape the same fate of being shut down and left buried in debt.

He was always carrying enormous debts. Every month when salaries had to be paid, he borrowed money everywhere. People say that in the world today, who could still bear such tremendous disasters? Especially while facing repeated brutal persecution from the extremely evil Communist Party, being monitored and harassed for a lifetime, and burdened with huge debts—how could such a person not inspire admiration?

Yet in the midst of such a life of suffering, I lived and worked with him day and night for four or five years, and never once saw him sigh. I never once saw the slightest trace of depression on his face. On the contrary, until the day he died, what he showed to everyone was always a childlike innocence, liveliness, and even playfulness. He often laughed heartily, bright and open laughter without a trace of gloom. He loved to play like a child. Every time we went on field trips, at the age of fifty he had more enthusiasm for fun than I did as a young man of twenty-five. Climbing trees, rock climbing, splashing in water fights—he was simply as happy as if he had won the lottery. No matter how long you were with him, if he did not speak of it, you would never see that he was burdened with such heavy calamities.

This was Mr. Wang Xueming, the “man of iron” Falun Gong practitioner whom I knew well. Before I met him, I knew absolutely nothing about Falun Gong. I had only heard schoolteachers say that Falun Gong was an evil cult, so I formed a preconceived notion. As soon as I heard someone mention Falun Gong to me, I would naturally think it was an evil cult. In addition, I studied philosophy and valued rational thought and analysis, so at that time, when Wang Xueming’s son talked to me about Falun Gong and asked me to read Falun Gong books, I could not accept it. Moreover, when I heard that Wang Xueming had been arrested because he practiced Falun Gong and had suffered torture, I instinctively avoided Falun Gong from then on.

But if I had not had four or five years of contact with Wang Xueming, with the other Falun Gong teachers in our company, and with the many Falun Gong parents of students, I might still not know to this day how kind a group of people they are. Especially with a man of great virtue like Wang Xueming, I might still be treating him as an evil cult follower!

(Source: Ding Zhong @dingzhonggood)
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