Journey to India with Story of Books
On My Visit to 2016 New Delhi World Book Fair
by Lizhi He (May 2016)
Interestingly, I once had felt very close to this historical figure. Back to 1980’s, I was attending my university in Xi’an, the same city that used to be called Chang’an, the capital of China in the Tang Dynasty. My university was just a few bus stops away from the Temple of Great Compassion where Hiuen Tsang lived and did the translation of the sutras after his return to China, and as well the Great Wild Goose Pagoda where his collections from India were kept and protected. However, even though I had known the story of Hiuen Tsang when I was a little boy living in the remote countryside, it was unfortunately not until the year of my university graduation that a print copy of Journey to the West became available from bookstore shelves in the city of Xi’an, because classical literatures had disappeared for many years in China due to the influence of the notorious Cultural Revolution (short for “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”).
This is a reminiscent of my unfortunate childhood in a time when there was not a single valuable book available for reading, which blanked out my exposure to traditional Chinese culture as a teenager. I was born in the mid-1960’s, then befell the 10 year long Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), during which China’s 5,000-year-old culture was almost entirely wiped out. A typical and routine campaign was sweeping the country, setting fire to the ancient relics and antiques, calligraphy and paintings, classic books and scriptures, burning it all up. Temples and statues were smashed to dust. The education system was also brought to a virtual halt.
In my hometown, a rural area in a northwestern province, the only books from my home or neighbors or relatives were all sorts of “Quotations of Chairman Mao.” As a result of the nationwide Mao’s cult of personality established in the Cultural Revolution, these were the only literature available, although such “quotations” meant nothing more than nonsense to villagers. I do not remember any book for children to read before I entered primary school. I looked forward to growing up to a full 7 years of “legal” age to be officially allowed to attend school.
After Mao died in 1976, the CCP began to carry out a so-called “reform and opening up” policy, and declared the official end of the Cultural Revolution. Universities were re-opened, and students could continue their education after finishing a high school. In 1978, I was able to enter the best high school in my county which was a couple of hours’ travel from home by bicycle on bumpy dirt roads. In addition to the conventional classes of (Communist) Politics, Chinese, Math, Physics, and Chemistry, there were two more entries in the curriculum in the new school, namely, History and Geography, which were appealing to my thirst of knowledge. On opening the books, however, I was in for a shock, as the way in which the Chinese characters appeared in the textbooks were totally different. Here, let me digress a little bit, to an introduction to the Chinese language and characters.
Chinese language is the carrier of our splendid Chinese culture. Thanks to the Chinese language, Chinese culture has been the only culture in the world to have a continuously recorded history of 5,000 years, with countless literary classics and historical documents. The system of Chinese characters was formed in ancient China. Legend holds that it was a deity named Cangjie who created Chinese characters. Unlike most of other languages in the world in which a group of letters make up a word to give a meaning, each Chinese character has meanings on its own. According to linguists, Chinese characters may derive from pictures of the objects (pictographic) they denote, or direct iconic illustrations (ideographic), or combinations of two or more pictographic or ideographic characters to suggest more meanings. Each Chinese character has its own intrinsic structure associated with meanings with a reason behind, thus, taking its place in the language with its uniqueness. To me, each Chinese character presents itself like a living being with a personality (character) of its own.
My new books of History and Geography came with a set of characters that were further chopped off or simplified even to the point of being disfigured. Upon the first sight on the page, the disfigured text shocked me like a view of battle field strewn with mutilated corpses – the characters were so dismembered they were too scary to behold. Reading became suffering. Due to the terrible result, this even uglier set of Chinese characters was abandoned afterwards. The affected text books were abandoned by the school accordingly. Unfortunately, we were not given new textbooks as substitutes. So, the courses were cancelled. Period.
This very experience exemplified the helpless reality of how I, despite of being a native Chinese, like others who were born in communist China, had been deprived of the right to learn and understand the authentic Chinese culture and civilization. Instead, our time to receive education of our own culture in school was filled up with brainwashing propaganda, hatred, lies, distorted and falsified history. The essence of culture was labeled as backward and superstitious, and civilizations were depicted as decadent and dark. Violence and hatred were viewed as the drive to create progress for humankind.
In the second year of high school, I dwelled on the paradox of two claims the CCP made. The first claim was that the launch of the Cultural Revolution proved “the CCP is forever Great, Glorious, and Correct,” and the second, the ending of the catastrophic Cultural Revolution once again proved “the CCP is forever Great, Glorious, and Correct.” How could both be true? Racking my brain in reasoning and finally deciding not to brook the absurdity, I chose to believe that CCP is a big liar, unscrupulous and shameless, even though such a thought was of “anti-revolutionary” nature in communist China and if overtly expressed, could have endangered my life. My other observations during later years at the university deepened my insight into it. Determined not to be deceived by the Party any more, I started in 1980s to seek the truth by reading books on traditional Chinese culture, which paved the way to my personal cultivation towards a spiritual development.
It was amazing to become enlightened as to why China has such a unique and divinely inspired culture, how the history of Chinese civilization has systematically and exquisitely prepared a profound culture with moral and spiritual cultivation as its essence and emphasis, and finally people today come to learn, understand, and practise Falun Dafa, all these developing as a matter of predestined course toward the Grand Finale. In my understanding, the book Zhuan Falun gives the answer to the most fundamental question in the history of mankind for anyone with any background in spiritual practices, religious beliefs, or philosophical approaches, who endeavor to seek the ultimate truth, the Tao, the Buddha Fa, the principle of the universe, or the standards to live up to. Let me respectfully quote as follows from Zhuan Falun:
In the book, Essentials for Further Advancement, “Broad and Immense,” Master Li wrote:
“The principles of Falun Dafa can provide guidance for anyone’s cultivation practice, including for one’s religious beliefs. This is the principle of the universe, the true Fa that has never been taught. People in the past were not allowed to know this universe’s principle (the Buddha Fa). It transcends all academic theories and moral principles of human society from ancient times to this day.”vi
The practice of Falun Dafa has had tremendous impact on individuals and society. By 1999, seven years after the introduction, Falun Dafa had reached a popularity in China of estimated 70 to 100 million practitioners by word of mouth because of the huge body-and-mind benefits to practitioners. With the rapid spreading of the practice in those years, the demand for the book Zhuan Falun was huge as well. For example, in the year of 1996 in Beijing, Zhuan Falun was among the bestselling books in both January and February, and Top Ten Bestselling books in April. Because of the book easily getting out of stock from the publishers, there emerged unauthorized printers to produce large volume of supply to the book market in Beijing and other areas as well. I still remembered freshly the experience of helping correct the print errors from time to time for new practitioners I met who obtained the books from an unauthorized printer. This period of Falun Dafa popularization and the effect of great enhancement of social morality wrote a page of glory and magnificence in history, which when turned over, was unfortunately followed by a chapter of darkness and injustice in China.
Out of personal jealousy over the popularity of Falun Dafa and paranoid of losing power, the then CCP head Jiang Zemin, launched a crackdown on this peaceful and non-political spiritual practice in July of 1999. Falun Dafa books were confiscated and burned nationwide, and even possession of Falun Dafa books was viewed as a reason to be convicted, replicating the Cultural Revolution or even worse. Falun Dafa practitioners have been systematically abducted, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and even murdered with their organs pillaged, for the past 16 years and to date.
I was imprisoned in China for three and a half years for telling friends by mail that Falun Dafa is good. One day in the summer of 2001 during my imprisonment, after a surprise search, prison guards found a book of Falun Dafa teaching among my belongings. I was then forced into a room, with my arms forced behind my back, hands handcuffed, and squeezed to sit against walls in a corner. Two policemen stepped on my legs with their boots so that I could not move. Then both of them waved electric batons, shocking my forehead, face, neck, and wherever they believed they could inflict the most pain. The batons shot out blue flashing arcs like infuriated snakes biting violently. My skin felt like it was being torn into pieces with cracking sounds of shocks like continuous explosions. Even though restricted by walls and with boots stepping hard on my legs, the strong electric current forced me down on the ground. I did not know for how long I had been struggling helplessly till they stopped the shocking, and I was finally put back into the prison cell with entangled dirty clothes and bruises on my body. Afterwards, as further punishment, for many days I was deprived of sleep and food. However, the brutal torture could only help me with even stronger determination in my faith and led me to understand more deeply the evil nature of the CCP: who else in the world could be so desperately afraid of a book that teaches how to become a good person following the principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance?
To conclude my story of books, I would like to mention a book that has been exhibited in the 2016 New Delhi World Book Fair – Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party.ix Since published in November 2004 by The Epoch Times, this book has brought about a quiet movement within the iron walls of China – more than 224.5 million Chinese people, as of Jan. 10, 2016, announced openly on the Epoch Times website to quit the Chinese Communist Party and affiliated organizations,x which loudly predicts the collapse of the communist regime in China.
Nine Commentaries offers readers an insight into the creation of the Communist Party and its unscrupulous nature, why it is an anti-humanity force and an evil cult, how the tyranny destroyed traditional Chinese culture, killed tens of millions of Chinese people, and persecuted Falun Gong. By reading this book, I believe, Indian people will get an answer to many questions they might have about China – the Guest of Honour country of this year’s book fair.
[i] Zhuan Falun: Lecture One, Zhen-Shan-Ren is the Sole Criterion to Discern Good and Bad People,
http://en.falundafa.org/eng/zfl2014/ZFL2014-023.htm
[ii] ibid. http://en.falundafa.org/eng/zfl2014/ZFL2014-024.htm
[iii] Ibid. http://en.falundafa.org/eng/zfl2014/ZFL2014-025.htm
[iv] ibid. http://en.falundafa.org/eng/zfl2014/ZFL2014-025.htm
[v] Ibid. http://en.falundafa.org/eng/zfl2014/ZFL2014-026.htm
[vi] Falun Dafa: Essentials for Further Advancement, “Broad and Immense”, http://en.falundafa.org/eng/jjyz03.htm
[vii] Falun Dafa website, http://falundafa.org/
[viii] Falun Dafa books in Indian languages, http://hi.falundafa.org/falun-dafa-books.html
[ix] Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, by The Epoch Times,
http://en.tuidang.org/the-nine-commentaries-on-the-communist-party.html
[x] Global Service Center for Quitting Chinese Communist Party, http://en.tuidang.org/home
http://seraphimeditions.com/portfolio-posts/bloody-harvest/
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Lizhi He is an award-winning engineer from China who was imprisoned for practising Falun Gong in July of 2000. His wife, also Falun Gong practitioner, managed to get to Canada in 2001 after being detained in China three times. With help from Amnesty International and Government of Canada, Lizhi was reunited with his wife in Canada in May of 2004.
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