by Karoline Kan
Thirty years later, he felt the new party members were letting people down. They used their authority to grab the best land for themselves, bought the best and newest car models, and lived in the tallest houses—a brazen sign of their wealth. Their behavior confused Laoye.
He did not approve of these new-style party members, but clearly times had changed and Mao’s way no longer seemed as compelling. For Laoye, Falun Gong filled a gap, and gave him a renewed sense of purpose and belonging.
My grandmother Laolao, who was also a follower, called her husband a hypocrite. She said he was not completely devoted to Falun Gong because he did not attend the gatherings and did not read all the books. But Laoye ignored her needling. When and where he practiced and what books he read were beside the point: in his heart he believed.
* * *
Now that Laoye seemed to have the most tolerance and patience out of all the adults at home, Chunting and I followed him around like two tails. To keep us occupied, he’d tell us stories, especially those about his life. I found his stories to be the most telling. Laoye once had riches, the likes of which his children would never see. He would narrow his eyes and point at a waving green sea of rice on the far side of the river.
“Look,” he once told us. “Long ago, before your parents were born—before even the People’s Liberation Army liberated this place—all that used to be ours.”
“You’re lying,” I said, standing on a chair to catch ladybugs so I could put them in Laoye’s white beard. “If all that was ours, why are you not rich?”
“Sometimes being poor is better than being rich,” Laoye laughed. “You’re too young to understand.”
I learned Laoye’s story bit by bit until I could piece together a vague picture of his earlier life.
My grandfather’s given name was Yuying, which means “fine as jade.” Born into a family who owned many, many mu of land and a timber shop, he had a loving mother and wealthy father. However, when my grandfather was twelve years old, his father brought home a concubine, a woman he knew from the local gambling den. Laoye fought with his dad over this for years and finally left the village when he was fourteen to work in a silk shop in a city called Jinzhou. After three years of apprenticeship, Laoye returned, to be greeted by the news that his mother had poisoned herself a few weeks after he left. His father knew Laoye would be angry and banned other family members from sending a letter to inform him of her death.
Laoye’s hatred of his father grew.
His father wore the finest clothes and hats in the village and never touched crops or soil.
Laoye was growing inspired by Chairman Mao’s revolutionary theories. China needed to create a better future for the poor; the chairman and the Communists had ideas about how to do it.
By the time the Communists marched into Caiyuan Village, Laoye’s father had lost everything to gambling debts apart from a house for each of his four sons. The gamblers to whom he had lost his land were later beaten to death when the Communist Party launched land reforms and encouraged the attack of “local tyrants.”
Laoye joined the army in the 1940s. It was after two years of fighting in the civil war against the Kuomintang that he became one of the first Communist Party members in the village. At first, he considered it a great honor, but his zeal soon faded. Being a party member meant being a pioneer and leader who served the people and made sacrifices for his country, but soon the way the party ruled began to grate on him.
Laoye began to wonder if he was a pure proletarian revolutionary—the ideal espoused by Chairman Mao. He was too fond, in my grandmother’s words, of “impractical” things. He sang Peking opera as he farmed, hung beautiful ink drawings on his wall, and spent evenings sitting in a bamboo chair, listening to the radio. He wrote calligraphy couplets and built nests for swallows under his roof. He lit incense in the temple and prayed. Such interests were—during the revolution—considered to be dangerously bourgeois eccentricities. His duty, as a patriot, was to set an example for others, so my dedicated Laoye decided to remove the Buddhist shrine from his desk and take down the image of the goddess Guanyin. In their place, he put up portraits of Chairman Mao and other party leaders.
The Communist Party had drawn clean lines for religious groups. At a meeting with China’s Christian representatives in 1950, Premier Zhou Enlai declared that although religion was a form of idealism—different from the materialism the Communists believed in—the party would “not launch campaigns against religion” and promised to “not carry out Marxist propaganda work in the Catholic churches.” But he also said: “We hope our friends from religious circles will not carry out missionary work in the street.” In addition, the party founded organizations to scrutinize religions—Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism—and manage their development.
Of course, the nonintervention promise did not last. In 1957, Mao began to fear that portions of the party were moving toward being “soft Communists.” Religious leaders became targets and enemies of the people. Religion itself was devalued as a superstition, a sign of backwardness. Eventually, religion was banned altogether in 1966, at the start of the Cultural Revolution, categorized alongside traditional Chinese culture, art, and philosophy as evil. The revolutionaries had their own ideas about culture that they believed to be progressive, and the Red Guards set about dispelling monks, destroying temples, smashing idols, and burning countless, often priceless, religious texts.
Laoye thought the Red Guards were going too far. Buddhism and Taoism had been part of Chinese culture for centuries. Faith gave the poor comfort and hope. Why should it be banned, and people punished for believing?
But faithful Laoye told himself his own doubt was a flaw, or that he must not be smart enough to understand Mao’s plan. The chairman had overcome so many difficulties—leading the party to victory against all odds—there must be reasons unseen by the common people why religion was not tolerated. To Grandfather, his mind was the one that needed fixing, not Mao’s.
* * *
In the early 1980s, China rehabilitated the religious scholars and practitioners attacked during the Cultural Revolution, reopened temples and mosques, and decreased its vigilance against religious activities.
People quickly flocked back to organized religion and spirituality. Mao had been not only a dictator, but also a god of a kind of religion and they were hungry for something to take his place—to fill the vacuum left by his death. This included Falun Gong, created in northeast China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, who eventually gathered 70 to 100 million practitioners, from farmers and steel workers to students and university professors.
The faith spread by word of mouth and pamphlets.
“Your father is rereading every book he has ever read,” Laolao complained to my mom one day during one of our visits. “What a strange old man he is turning into.” She spoke quietly, covering her mouth with one hand, even though Laoye’s hearing was very bad. I knew this because while his Peking opera was on, I had to clear my throat and speak so loudly for him to hear me.
“So what’s wrong with him?” my mom asked, turning her head to be sure Laoye wasn’t listening. “He’s suddenly become an old man. Sometimes he acts so weird.”
“He’s afraid of death,” Laolao said. “Three friends of his died last winter. When your father heard the funeral music, he just sat home. I asked him why he didn’t go to pay his respects but he didn’t answer me. They were his childhood friends. I’m worried that he’s running from death.”
I was too young to understand life and death, but I knew Mom and my grandmother didn’t get Laoye. Being immortal was not what he wanted. It was the opposite of their thinking. Li Hongzhi promised him a peaceful transit from this life to the next, as well as a place where he would see the people he used to know and love. Communism and atheism didn’t.
* * *
On another visit to my grandparents, my mom’s cousin Kuoxiang came by to give us the latest transcript of Master Li’s speech.
“I don’t get a cold or even a cough these days.” Kuoxiang held Mom’s hands and looked into her eyes. “That is a blessing from the practice.” She was so focused on Mom that she seemed to not see me standing beside them.
Kuoxiang did look healthier. But it could have been a result of quitting smoking, as Falun Gong required. She looked younger, too, because she had also cut her hair short, according to the belief that hair is the sign of attachment to the troubles in the secular world. She didn’t seem to care that this idea was actually from Buddha, not Master Li.
“I’m too busy to practice Falun Gong,” Mom said, trying to hide her annoyance. “I have to teach and have two children to take care of.” She moved back to the cabbage she was chopping for my lunch. Mom was right; she had no time even for herself. She had to take care of Yunxiang and me and the kindergarten, and spent weekends in the village helping her parents.
“Being busy is not a reason…” Kuoxiang pulled a stool over and sat down. She recounted the stories of the miracles of Falun Gong. “As a child, Master Li Hongzhi once forgot to take his backpack with him to school. He had to return home to get it but didn’t have a house key. So he meditated outside, focusing all his energy on the bag, and his soul flew into his house and retrieved it.”
I almost burst into laughter. How could she believe such nonsense! I wanted to say something, but Mom looked my way. I once daydreamed about being a kung fu master and flying across the school rooftops to impress my friends, but I knew it was just a fantasy. How could a fortysomething grown-up like Kuoxiang possibly believe that story was true?
She turned to me. “Don’t you want to have powers like Master Li, Chaoqun?”
“I would, but my parents want me to spend more time studying,” I replied with a small smile.
“Well, if you want to go to a good university, Falun Gong can make you better at school too.”
I smiled again. It seemed Kuoxiang had an answer for everything to make Falun Gong sound appealing. That annoyed me.
When Mom and her sister-in-law, my aunt Zhirong, finished cooking and setting the table, Kuoxiang found an excuse to leave. It was impolite to stay for a family’s mealtime. After she left, my father, who had been sitting in the living room playing Chinese chess with Zhirong’s husband, Uncle Lishui, said, “She must be crazy.” He was one of the few people in my family, besides Uncle Shoukui, who was openly against Falun Gong. He felt it was superstitious but also politically dangerous.
“Why?” Mom asked. “People like it simply because it gives them hope. It teaches them to be kind. And for others, like Father, Falun Gong’s also a good exercise practice.”
“That’s right,” said Aunt Zhirong. “Politically dangerous? I don’t even know how to write my name; how do you expect me to join an uprising?” She burst into laughter.
Baba was easily embarrassed and didn’t like the women ganging up against him. When he noticed me sitting at the desk, listening, he shouted, “You go and study! This discussion is not for you. Don’t be misled by all this superstitious stuff!”
Uncle Lishui handed some meat from the plate to my father. “Eat! Drink some baijiu,” he said soothingly.
I looked away so I wouldn’t anger Baba, but the truth was that watching Laoye practice Falun Gong had changed my idea of spirituality. He was still the sensible man he used to be. I didn’t understand why Baba said it could be dangerous when it was so calming and helpful to my grandfather. I thought of spirituality or Falun Gong as a hobby—if Laoye and all these people enjoyed doing it, I didn’t understand the point in stopping them. If it were a card game, what would be the difference? There were worse things people did with their time. Would it make sense to punish people for those hobbies?
Before long we found Caiyuan was not the only place where I could be “misled.” Falun Gong had spread to Lutai. The practitioners, with their long white shirts, were everywhere.
“A tall tree catches the wind first.” Baba cited this old proverb to remind Mom of the dangers of Falun Gong. When somebody stands out like a tall tree, he is the most obvious attack target. My father’s theory was that the party wouldn’t allow so many people to be led by one man for very long.
My mom laughed as if it were a joke. But Dad’s theory soon proved to be true.
* * *
One summer day in 1999, I was watching cartoons when they were interrupted by an emergency announcement on CCTV: “Falun Gong is an illegal organization and is now banned.”
What followed was a long montage of cases where Falun Gong practitioners either murdered others or committed suicide. The government said Falun Gong was turning people mad and that Li Hongzhi was a fraud.
My father was reading the newspaper in the living room. Upon hearing the news, he called out to my mother, “Cult! We’d better stop your father and brother from being members.”
My mother was stunned by what she saw.
Media like CCTV was controlled by the government, and whatever they broadcast was equivalent to an official announcement. Yet people trusted the news. Neither the source nor the truth was questioned.
The next day, street committees posted a notice from the Ministry of Public Security:
The government has decided that Falun Gong is an illegal organization, and now the orders are as follows: no banners, images, emblems, or other signs belonging to Falun Gong are allowed to be displayed in public; the government does not allow anyone to spread books, audio and video products, and other materials related to Falun Gong anywhere…
The notice also banned petitioning and any protest supporting Falun Gong. Another notice came a few days later: people had to hand in their Falun Gong books and any of its products that week. Harboring these products was now a crime. If you find anybody practicing Falun Gong or using related products at home, please report them to the police, the notices read.
More notices were posted at my school. During breaks, many of us stood at the information board reading the notices over and over again. I didn’t tell my friends that my grandfather and uncle were Falun followers. I noticed that none of the other students admitted to this either. We all just read the announcement as if it did not pertain to the people we loved.
Warnings against Falun Gong increased. At school is where I noticed it most. We watched movies, visited exhibitions, and read articles explaining how evil Falun Gong was. We were told the cult turned people into ruthless killers. In one such documentary, Falun Gong was compared with other cults like America’s Peoples Temple and Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo. None of us had heard of those cults, but the documentary said many followers of those cults also killed themselves. The films were bloody, with gruesome images of members cutting open their stomachs. Teachers told us stories of how entire families set themselves on fire in pursuit of “heaven.” It was instilled in us that Falun Gong would ruin our own families and our future.
One day, when my class was watching one of these anti-cult documentaries, my classmate Hong stood up and shouted, “Falun Gong is good!”
The entire class gasped, and Teacher Li’s face turned crimson.
“I was a practitioner and so were my parents. This stuff you’re showing is nonsense!” The entire class stared at her with open mouths. Teacher Li ran over and dragged Hong by her sleeve out of the classroom. The door slammed, and we all just looked at each other in disbelief while the documentary played on. I wondered what would happen to Hong.
Her mother took her home that afternoon, and Hong returned a week later. After the incident, we all kept our distance from her. Everyone worried that she was “abnormal” and that talking to her would turn us crazy like in the films we watched. I didn’t believe this would happen and wanted to talk to her but was afraid I might be shunned by my other friends.
To ensure that Chinese people remained loyal to the party, a huge organization like Falun Gong had to be suppressed. The movement’s ever-growing members—their ability to organize—made it a threat. This was when my fear of the government began to
increase, and I began to shy away from politics instead of embrace it as I’d been taught.
As I now understood it, the government was the only judge of right or wrong. As a Chinese person, my individuality and beliefs did not matter, and I would always lose in any fight with the government.
My generation had more in common with my parents than I thought. It was evident to me that, although our dictator Mao had been dead for decades, China was far from being a free country.
Falun Gong members wrote letters to newspapers and protested outside of government buildings to no avail. The police arrested them for “picking quarrels” and “stirring up trouble,” terms that were often used to imprison human rights activists.
Because my parents were not members, the street committee officials never examined our home. However, I spent a lot of time in Caiyuan and saw how the chief enforced the anti–Falun Gong policy on the villagers. Through the loudspeakers on every corner, there were alarming announcements like: All villagers: Attention, attention. Anybody who practices Falun Gong in public will be jailed. You might be sent to prison and your children will be disqualified from attending college.
The police drove from village to village to confiscate the Falun materials and publications. Signs like “REFUSE CULTS” were posted next to the One-Child Policy posters.
One day when I was having lunch with my grandparents, Uncle Lishui, Aunt Zhirong, and my cousins, we heard knocking at the front door.
My uncle went to open it. The village chief and two policemen with light gray uniforms were standing in front.
“What’s going on?” Uncle Lishui asked. He knew his name was on the police’s list of Falun Gong practitioners.
“Don’t worry,” the village chief assured him. He put on his glasses, narrowed his eyes, and examined the list of names. “I’m helping Officers Zhang and Liu from the county police station confiscate the Falun Gong books and other materials.”