This story reads like a dramatic novel, but it is true. Have you found that in the West people are unaware or even surprised about the reality in China?
Long Tu and Yuan Meng: Yes indeed! Falun Gong practition-ers in the West frequently encounter surprise when they tell people about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Freedom and rule of law govern Western societies, and respect for others is emphasized. It is very hard for one living in such a society to fully understand, or even imagine, the cruelties suffered by Falun Gong practitioners and the entire Chinese population over the past years under the CCP’s—the Chinese Communist Party’s—rule.
Another reason people in the West are surprised to learn of the true reality in China is due to the information blockade by the CCP. In many cases, due to lack of first-hand materials, many Western media outlets are forced to use censored documents from the CCP's state-controlled media. In historical research, for instance, many are forced to use materials written by the CCP's propaganda department. All this material is filled with distortions and cover-ups of history, produced as part of the CCP's attempt to display itself as "magnificent, glorious and righteous." Therefore, Western studies of modern China are, to a certain extent, affected by this misinformation.
Why has the Communist Party persecuted Falun Gong?
Long Tu and Yuan Meng: In order to portray itself as good, it is natural that the CCP would want to portray its target of persecution as bad. Throughout the Party's persecution of Falun Gong, it has been trying to find all kinds of reasons and rationales to justify itself; however, it has never come up with a credible charge, even when it asked Party members to study the issue. It has simply labelled Falun Gong "anti-Party."
Is this true?
Long Tu and Yuan Meng: No. In the past, when the Party has persecuted different groups, it has charged different people with different crimes; the one crime common to all of them, however, is that of being "anti-Party." In China, the crime of being "anti-Party" is a crime beyond all others, including homicide and rape. Moreover, it is always proclaimed before the start of the persecution. In fact, most people who have been persecuted by the CCP were not against it in the beginning. Many people were in fact supportive of the CCP. However, they were met with persecution, just like the students on Tiananmen Square in 1989, who were there because they trusted in the CCP to clean up its own corruption. Falun Gong practitioners also had nothing against the CCP initially.
As The Nine Commentaries of the Communist Party explains, the CCP requires an enemy to struggle against. When there are no enemies, it will target a group of people to fight against. Moreover, it has always used the most brutal methods to eliminate these made-up foes. This time, the former CCP leader, Jiang Zemin, chose Falun Gong as its target, because this group lives according to the principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. They are peaceful, and they have a great number of practitioners. Jiang thought, therefore, that they would be an easy target, plus, the more people the better-it goes to show how strong the CCP is. Jiang exclaimed at the start of the campaign that "the CCP will eliminate Falun Gong completely in three months," and used a huge amount of manpower and resources to cover up the truth of the persecution. It was an attempt to wipe out Falun Gong quickly. However, the CCP did not realize that good people don't necessarily make an easy target. This group of practitioners, with their strong belief and perseverance, have overcome the persecution-even though many of them have walked a painful, torturous path. They have continued walking this path. And, therefore, today we have this opportunity to talk about the truth of Falun Gong, as well as the persecution it has met with in China.
Long Tu, you are a computer programmer by profession, not an author. Yet you have felt compelled to write this book. Why?
Long Tu: I did not find the task too hard. All I did was write down everything that happened to Bai Shaohua's family. The story of Shaohua and his family is by itself very interesting. However, the one challenge I faced was trying to help Westerners understand some things that are unique to China.
Such as?
Long Tu It's not that there is anything special about the Chinese people; it is the CCP's rule that is unique. China has two systems: the Party and the government. The government is ruled by the Party, so the Chinese government is not based on service to its people but rather service to the Party. The CCP uses totalitarian rule to brutally persecute all kinds of beliefs, but it also wishes to portray itself as "magnificent, glorious, and righteous." It professes things like "China cannot survive without the Party" to deceive Chinese citizens and the entire world.
The CCP's legislative, judicial and police systems do not have any form of supervision or control. The CCP rules itself and is beyond the law. This results in a very unique judicial system. In the West, constitutions are the basis for most nations' laws, and all other laws cascade from it. In China, however, all laws, including the Constitution itself, are written according to the needs of the Party. The laws are often completely contradictory too, and which law is used depends entirely on the needs of the Party. The Chinese Constitution must be one of the most frequently amended in the world-especially since the Cultural Revolution. In that time it has been rewritten every five years or so, according to new needs of the Party.
To make matters worse, many officials do not follow the laws. Instead, they exploit ordinary citizens for their own benefits, resulting in millions of injustices, and there is usually no way of appealing for ordinary citizens. The entire system has become a huge mess. Fundamentally, the CCP's judicial system is completely unjust. Therefore, it was forced to create an external organization called the "Letter and Visit Office," to help citizens communicate with high-level officials to correct problems that the government should be correcting, as a form of "pressure reliever" for society.
You mention the "Letter and Visit" system in the book. Have Falun Gong practitioners tried to use that system to appeal their cases?
Long Tu: When Falun Gong practitioners tried to solve their problems through the "Letter and Visit" system, which is supposed to be a problem-resolving method provided by the government, the CCP denounced their attempts as a "siege" because there were so many Falun Gong practitioners protesting their persecution. The Party was then able to claim that these appeals were "anti-Party" activity, which provided it with reasons for the persecution.
That's surreal, or should I say Orwellian.
Long Tu: There's more. To show that China is a free and democratic party, the CCP has declared that China has no "political convicts." Yet, it installed the Re-education Through Labour system. After the year 2000, the labour camps were almost filled with Falun Gong practitioners. When they are in prison, the convicts and those who are to be "re-educated" are no different at all, and the latter are often subjected to worse torture.
The CCP twists language so that it can rob its innocent citizens of their fundamental freedoms.
Does Falun Gong have a political message?
Long Tu:long tu: Falun Gong is a community of practitioners and has nothing to do with politics. In other words, the only thing that Falun Gong practitioners ask of the government is that it not interfere with their practising of its exercises in the parks, just like everyone else. Falun Gong practitioners would also like the government to allow them to publish its books, just like the Bible and Buddhist scriptures, etc. As cultivators, practitioners have no interest in politics or power at all. Even though there are a lot of practitioners, Falun Gong will not overthrow the government or form any political party to contest the CCP.
Despite this, the CCP defends its persecution of Falun Gong by claiming that Falun Gong is "anti-Party" and "threatening the government" etc. All of these are lies. The CCP began monitoring Falun Gong practitioners in the 1990s, not because they thought that Falun Gong was subversive, but in hopes of finding reasons to persecute Falun Gong. However, they found nothing, despite many years of searching. After the persecution began, a lot of people, including parts of the government itself, knew that Falun Gong practitioners had no desire for power, and so many working for the Party did not wish to carry out the CCP's policy of persecution. As a result, Jiang Zemin's threat to "destroy Falun Gong in three months" failed. It was not until early 2001, when the CCP staged the Tiananmen Self-Immolation* and whipped up hatred towards Falun Gong, while using threats and rewards to force and entice its workers, did the persecution turn brutal.
I hope everyone will like this book, and hope that Western society will be better able to understand the truth about Falun Gong, the CCP and Chinese society from reading it. Personally I feel very happy to be able to do this.
For your part, Yuan Meng, your profession is architecture, but you too were driven to write this story. When talking about the Bai family in Pagoda of Light, are you also remembering your own time in a Chinese "Re-education Through Labour" prison?
Yuan Meng: Yes of course. The experiences that Shaohua has met in his life have a lot in common with what I have met in mine. We are of the same age, we grew up in the same era, and so we have the same feeling towards the life of Chinese citizens oppressed by the CCP. Both of us have also practised painting since we were young, and so I am even more deeply and spiritually appreciative of what Shaohua has done, in terms of the paintings, in his period of imprisonment - when he was not free to say what he wanted to say. He was using paintings to express the calm, purity, peacefulness and devotion towards truth that a Falun Gong practitioner possesses.
Both of us also attended the peaceful appeal on April 25, 1999. More importantly, both of us suffered persecution under the CCP. I broke my spine while trying to escape from policemen who were trying to abduct me illegally. Even after I became handicapped, they still threw me into a labour camp. Therefore, I can understand very well how Shaohua felt when he was tied to the Deathman's Bed until both his legs were disabled, yet he was still sent into the labour camp. Both of us were imprisoned in the Beijing Dispatch Centre to be re-educated. I remember the policemen with their electric batons and Japanese-style "samurai" swords "welcoming us," before throwing us into the building.
Was your experience in labour camp similar to Shaohua's?
Yuan Meng: I was imprisoned in the Beijing Female Labour Camp in 2002, and the camp leader, Li Jing, was transferred to Tuanhe Labour Camp to persecute Shaohua and other practitioners as part of the "Shatter the Ice and Destroy the Fortress" campaign. Shaohua's experiences are very similar to mine-slave labour, physical torture, sleep deprivation, and a daily dose of abusive language and lies.
We've all had policemen and convicts sent to monitor us, and we've also helped other practitioners who were deceived by the CCP to return to cultivation. I am well aware how hard this process is. Right before my sentence was supposed to be up, policemen found out that I had been passing on Master Li's articles to other practitioners, calling upon fellow practitioners to clarify the truth and have righteous thoughts, etc. Immediately, I was sent for 24-hour monitoring and they threatened to lengthen my sentence. That day was my father's birthday. The policemen let me call home, hoping that I might break down while I was on the phone. I wished my father happy birthday and thought that I must not let him know this bad news. I could not bear to let him be hurt again because of his daughter's persecution. I smiled and comforted him saying that we would be reunited soon, while at the same time swallowing my tears. Therefore, I deeply feel for what Shaohua and the other practitioners did when they were sent into the Disciplinary Team for resisting the persecution-and even more so, I understand the pain they suffered parting with their family members, and also their deeper and deeper love!
So Pagoda of Light is more than just another story for you.
Yuan Meng: I can say that Pagoda of Light is not just a story that describes Shaohua's family alone. It is a tale of what millions of Falun Gong practitioners have met with in the past nine years of persecution-written with their hardship, pain and kindness; it is a token of our appreciation and understanding for what people of many different backgrounds have suffered for persevering in their faith.
It is because I have shared so many feelings and similar experiences that I have been able to express many details of why things take place and the inner world of everyone in the story. While I was writing this story, I felt myself blending into it, following Shaohua's family in its sorrow and rejoicing. This book was not written using pen and paper-but with our hearts.
When you expose the Communist repression of Falun Gong practitioners in China, might you also be describing conditions under totalitarian regimes from Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge?
Yuan Meng: Throughout CCP's persecution of Falun Gong, it has made use of many methods used both from within and from outside China, from the past and from the present.
The Nazis had concentration camps, and so does the CCP. The Nazi persecuted target groups of people there, and the CCP has also done the same very often. The Nazi's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, launched a massive hate-inciting campaign against the Jews to justify their actions; the CCP also launched a hate campaign against Falun Gong at the beginning of its persecution of us and it has continued during it.
The Soviets starved millions to death and killed many of its own citizens including high-ranking Soviet officials. Being a student of the Soviet Union, the CCP has learned a lot from its teacher-it has persecuted even more people since establishing its rule in 1949. Currently, governmental estimates put it at around 80 million deaths-including the head of its own party.
The Khmer Rouge is in fact a direct offspring organization of the CCP. All its methods-including harvesting brains from live people-were all learned from the CCP. Through decades of "progress," the methods used by the CCP have become even more brutal, and much more "mature." For instance, the CCP has introduced new horrors like the harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners for profit.
There are now many Falun Gong practitioners in the West. Indeed, Master Li now lives in the United States. Have Falun Gong practitioners run into trouble with Chinese government officials outside of China?
Long Tu and Yuan Meng: The CCP has always sought in the past to "plant the red flag throughout the world," i.e. it has expressed the desire to put the whole world under Communist rule. Of course, that includes exporting its policies. The CCP knows very well how to manipulate democracy and freedom in the Western world to give itself a piece of territory and install its power. They have an entire set of methods, known as the "united front." Today, the CCP uses all kinds of commercial and business organizations and even students to plant themselves in multi-national corporations, governmental offices and community groups.
In some respects things have changed dramatically, and as a society those who lived through the First World War had radically different views on many issues. But equally, military life was in many ways similar to what it is now. If we ignore the obvious things like clothing, food, weapons and tactics, many of the certainties of army life are the same. It’s a hierarchy, you live and work in close-knit teams, there is a heavy emphasis on strength of character and you need to develop strong bonds of trust. Those kinds of basic things are probably very similar.
To give an example: Since May 17, 2008, the Chinese consulate in New York has instigated mobs in the tri-state area to both physically and verbally attack Falun Gong residents in Flushing, Queens. The Chinese government is also able to mobilize thousands of overseas Chinese (especially students) very quickly wherever the Olympic torch goes-to attack Tibetans and human rights groups who are on site to protest. In effect, The CCP has already tried to use its far-reaching hands to organize things to its benefit in other nations. It can be said that the CCP is the greatest threat to the safety and security of today's world. The world must learn to say "no" to governments like the CCP, for appeasement will lead to the sort of catastrophe the world saw with Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Falun Gong practitioners have already been persecuted for nine years. If humanity continues to ignore this persecution, they will ultimately fall victims as well.
You present a lot of very personal information about the Bai family in this book, as well as poems and paintings from prison. How did you get all this?
Long Tu and Yuan Meng:We are friends of Shaohua and have always been very concerned with his family. Our information comes from a variety of sources. Some came from people who sent us information at great risk to themselves. Messages were sent to us via e-mail, using all kinds of encryption methods to break the CCP's Internet blockade. The people who sent us these messages sent them at the danger of their lives.
We also had our unique methods in making sure everything was true. As time has passed, more and more people-including police officers and convicts in labour camps and prisons-have realized that the persecution of Falun Gong is simply wrong and have become friends of Falun Gong practitioners-or even practitioners themselves. They have helped us obtain information.
We also had our unique methods in making sure everything was true. As time has passed, more and more people-including police officers and convicts in labour camps and prisons-have realized that the persecution of Falun Gong is simply wrong and have become friends of Falun Gong practitioners-or even practitioners themselves. They have helped us obtain information.
After this book was published in its original Chinese version on the Chinese Epoch Times website, some policemen even gave up persecuting Falun Gong practitioners, infuriating the CCP, who have never stopped trying to figure out who passed on the information. In order to protect them, we ask for your forgiveness in not being able to reveal more.
A unique feature in Pagoda of Light are the works of art created by Bai Shaohua.
Long Tu and Yuan Meng: Yes, they are a big treasure in the book. Not only because the drawings were finished in the labour camp and had to be smuggled out, but also because the files are so large that it was very difficult to break the Chinese internet block to send them to us. So the images are important, not only for their evident artistic merit, but also because they represent a double victory over suppression, first in the camp and then in the rigidly controlled life of today's China.
In the West, Falun Gong is commonly associated with China because most of its practitioners live there and because most believers in Western countries seem to be Chinese people. Is Falun Gong essentially Chinese, or does it offer something to those raised outside Chinese culture?
Long Tu and Yuan Meng: Falun Gong is a practice for everyone in the world. Currently, Falun Gong has already been spread to over 100 nations, with its main texts like Zhuan Falun and China Falun Gong translated into over 40 different languages. More and more people throughout the world have begun practising Falun Gong. Falun Gong teaches one to be a good person according to the principle Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and to achieve both physical and spiritual purity through improving one's morality and practising the exercises. Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance are universal virtues; the principle is one that everyone who wishes to be good follows.
Falun Gong is deeply rooted in ancient Chinese culture, and started out in China; this is why there are so many Chinese practitioners. Ancient Chinese culture has very profound inner meanings, and the basis of it is cultivation. Each dynasty, age, occupation, etc. are all filled with factors related to cultivation. This is different from Western culture. Nevertheless, the kind and compassionate innate nature of all human beings is the same regardless of race or nationality. Today, more and more people are wanting to understand Chinese culture, and so more and more people have come to know about Falun Gong, and have begun cultivation, and they have very good understanding of it as well.
*The Tiananmen Self-Immolation refers to an event which took place on January 23, 2001, in Tiananmen Square. Seven people claiming to be Falun Gong practitioners attempted to set fire to themselves. They claimed that Falun Gong had taught them that by burning themselves they would go to heaven. In fact, they were not Falun Gong practitioners at all; rather, they were part of a CPP plan to turn public opinion against Falun Gong. The CPP used this carefully staged event to "prove" that Falun Gong was an "evil cult" that could derange its followers, thereby justifying the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. In reality, violence, including suicide, is forbidden according to Falun Gong teachings.