My name is He Weiming, working with the Guoqing Company in Hanyuan City, Sichuan Province. My father He Angui was born on November 14, 1941 and was living in the 2nd Production Group of Dawei Village in Dashu District of Hanyuan.
In the summer of 1995, father went to the Dashu District Hospital for a bladder stone surgery. During that time, he made acquaintance with a man calling himself Zhou Tong, and heard of Falun Gong for the first time. Knowing that my father would have surgery, Zhou asked him to practice Falun Gong and said that there would be no need for surgery or wasting money. His words were so persuasive that they had aroused curiosity in Father’s mind. At that time, he went to my father’s room every now and then, bragging about the “fairy tales” of Falun Gong, and finally Father was convinced and slipped away from the hospital without going through the discharge procedures.
From then on, father started to practice. He stuck to getting up at 5’oclock in the morning, then set up the incense stand, kowtowed and bowed to Master Li’s picture and “Zhuan Falun” on the shrine, and finally sat cross-legged to practice facing the picture on the wall. What’s more, he would listen to the cassettes till late at night. The practice lasted for more than 10 hours everyday.
This autumn, I went back to see him. Entering the living room, I found that things on the wall had been changed: the place once used for commemorating ancestors was taken by a round picture like the Eight Trigram; the family photo of mum and dad was changed to a picture of a round-faced, middle-aged man with small eyes and a little over-weighted body. Father sat cross-legged on a cushion, with sweat as big as beans rushing out from his forehead. His hands Zen-gesturing in front of his head and his arms shaking slightly, he continuously whispered. When I asked him to rest, he considered me the demon who interfered with his “further advancement”.
Seeing father acting like that, I was burning with worries. I begged his neighbor Uncle Liu to help take care of him.
The 14th of November, 1996 was Father’s 55th birthday. Early in that day, my wife and I bought a black down jacket in the mall and his favorite sweet roasted duck in the market and picked up the birthday cake we had ordered in the bakery and went to his home to celebrate his birthday with our five-year-old son.
Entering the garden, my son shouted for several times “grandpa, grandpa!” but there was no response. Actually, he was practicing. At the time when my son ran into him and was about to pull him up from the floor, he yelled: “How dare you demon disturb my practicing, I’ll choke you to death.” My son was so scared that he cried for his mother and ran out of the living room.
A moment later, my wife took the jacket for father to try on. Father only gave her a glimpse and scolded her. After we had set up the birthday cake and lit the candles before lunch, and invited father to sit and make wishes, he became angry again, shouting: “you are so rude! How can an ordinary person take that seat?” He carried out carefully the frame of Master Li and reverently put it on the seat, saying that the seat was reserved for the Master Buddha, and only the Master could sit there. Then he let us to kneel down and bow to Master’s frame. A happy birthday party broke up in discord…
On the Spring Festival of 1997, I was on duty at night. The next morning, before I woke up, I heard Mr. Wang from the security section shout outside: “Wake up, wake up, Little He! Your father has an accident.”
As I rushed into Father’s home, the relatives and neighbors had already gathered around the banks of Dadu River. Some of them were trying to find my father using either bamboo poles or fishing net in the water, others were searching along the banks by attaching a rope around their waists. After several days of ransacking, we still failed to find him in a torrent of water.
Afterwards, the neighbor Uncle Liu told me: on the first day of the Spring Festival, as usual, he went to invite father to his house to “snatch the gold ingot” (eating dumplings). He saw that father was about to go out when he entered his yard. Father told Uncle Liu: “Old Liu, I will reach Consummation in no time, so I don’t have to snatch the gold ingot anymore. The Master says he will bring me today to heaven where I may live in ease and comfort. And now the Ferry of Law is waiting for me on the river. Please tell my son, Little Ming that I will pick them up after I have settled down in the heavens.” Then he ran crazily towards Dadu River. Feeing somewhat weird, Uncle Liu chased him leaning on a stick, shouting loudly behind: “Come back!” However, when he reached the river bank, father had jumped into the River, disappeared.
Nowadays, whenever I walk by the torrential river, I will recall my father’s death there.
