A Letter More Precious Than a Thousand Pieces of Gold

Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, hundreds of thousands of practitioners have been sent to jails and forced labour camps. In this controlled environment, built upon threats, deceit, violence and lies, it's hard for practitioners to obtain factual information from the outside world. In order to achieve its malevolent goal of brainwashing practitioners, the Chinese authorities have attempted to isolate them from the rest of the world.

While I was detained in the forced labour camp, guards forced us to watch the "Combined News Broadcast" from CCTV. We were watching the program one day, and although they were slandering Falun Dafa once again, we learnt that Teacher was giving lectures in North America, and we were thrilled.

Practitioners on the outside took every opportunity to visit practitioners inside and pass them news about Falun Dafa, and also wrote them letters, using their wisdom, to keep the jailed practitioners up to date on the situation in Fa rectification. The rules of the labour camp where I was detained allowed us to write only one letter to our family each month, and it had to pass a strict examination. What they fear most is having their evil actions exposed to the world. The letters from the families to practitioners must also pass an examination, but they often manage to get news from outside to their loved ones inside.

When I was in the labour camp, I often saw letters from a Canadian practitioner to his mother. The letters were passed around among the practitioners in jail, an occurrence he probably didn't expect. In one letter, he said he was writing a paper for his PhD and had seen his teacher in Florida, which we understood to mean that Teacher had recently given lectures at a Fa conference in Florida. It's hard for practitioners outside to imagine how precious this type of news is to practitioners suffering the tribulations of persecution. In every letter he sent, he asked his mother to do the cleaning often, meaning we need to send righteous thoughts more often. In the beginning many of us didn't have sufficient righteous thoughts and didn't pay enough attention to sending forth righteous thoughts. Thanks to these reminders, we saw our shortcomings and started to send forth righteous thoughts, eliminating more evil factors.

I knew that Canadian practitioners were very busy; they have their jobs in ordinary society, and spend a lot of time working on Falun Dafa projects, but this practitioner's letters to his mother, each one very long and written late at night, managed to communicate key issues while on the surface seeming to discuss everyday topics, providing major assistance to practitioners in tribulation. A letter that can strengthen our righteous thoughts is more precious than a thousand pieces of gold. I wish to express my deepest gratitude to this Canadian practitioner.