Fan Zhaokun, born 1933, was a staff member of the Light Industry Research Institute of Dalian. Zhao Xuemin, Fan's wife, born 1938, was a worker at the Dalian Chemical Plant.
In the summer of 1995, Zhao began to practice Falun Gong at a Falun Gong instruction center located at the botanical garden in Zhongshan District. After several months she persuaded her husband to practice Falun Gong at home and stop seeing doctors for his heart disease. In February 1996, Fan died. Believing her husband could be resuscitated by Falun Gong, Zhao refused to cremate his corpse and preserved it for a year, prohibiting her daughter from entering the room where the corpse was kept. His dead body was found in February 1997, when Zhao herself also died of a heart attack.
