I'm Li Qing, 21 years old, from Tieni Village, Guohe Town of Xiantao City, Hubei Province. My dad Li Daofang, who was born in 1965, started practicing Falun Gong in 1997. On March 7, 2002, my dad hanged himself in his room to reach Consummation at the age of 37.
Before he started practicing Falun Gong, my dad was not only sociable and always ready to help others but also always careful about and attentive to me and mom. Because my dad loved to make friends, those who practiced Falun Gong got familiar with him without any difficulty. At that time he didn't watch out for Falun Gong of course. When those Falun Gong practitioners told him that practicing it could not only lead to good health but also a richer spiritual journey in life of present world, and that he got acquainted with them not merely by accident but rather by the arrangement of fate, my dad took it for real, and followed them in practicing.
Ever since then, he never attended the crop field of our family. Sometimes he just locked himself up in his room for a whole day, facing the portrait of Li Hongzhi he pasted on the wall and books in front of him that taught how to practice Falun Gong, sitting in meditation and keeping murmuring Master's "scriptures" on and on. Since then Falun Gong became my dad's only friend and he abandoned all his old friends, never paying any visit to them again. As he became more and more silent, sometimes I found him do not utter a single word for a whole day. My grandparents and mom were worried to see him like that. They blamed him for paying all his attention to Falun Gong and tried to persuade him to return to the right track. But dad dismissed them as devils that interfered with his cultivation, then ignored all of us and shut himself in the room practicing.
Mom alone had since to do everything from the work in our crop field to the chores at home. I remember seeing her cry silently for many times.
Ever since dad was fascinated with Falun Gong, he never bought me any gifts again, nor did he pay any heed to my study and my life. There were times he saw me at home, with the indifference like a stranger on the street. Somehow I got the feeling that the caring dad who loved me was transformed by Falun Gong into someone else. I found myself unable to concentrate on the class anymore, obsessed with images of dad practicing and mom crying. Nothing the teacher said left any trace in my mind. As my scores went from bad to worse, I found going to school and studying increasingly repulsive.
With every passing day dad sank deeper and deeper into the trap of Falun Gong, till the day he was completely spell-bound by the cult. He kept mumbling words like "I'll reach Consummation soon", "I'm going up to heavens now," day and night. His words scared me. I shuddered to think of the day when dad might really "go up to heavens", leaving me and mom behind.
Seeing my dad become so strange, people in the village started shunning my family like plague, as if dad's craziness was contagious. When I went to school, I found myself isolated by classmates who learned about my dad. I felt lonely.
I remember that night when I heard them quarrel. Mom blamed him for spending all their savings to buy Falun Gong books. Dad refuted saying that his efforts would soon pay off and that he would become a god, and after that, money wouldn't be a problem as he could have anything he desired. Mom was so anxious that she burst into tears, questioning dad how she could manage to pay my tuition fee since he spent all the money on those books. Dad sniffed at the idea of supporting my education, saying that he had so many great books about how to practice "Falun Dafa". He told mom, if she let me study Falun Dafa from him, he would bring me "up to heavens" when the time was ripe. Mom was frightened and begged him not to lead me astray. Dad sniffed his contempt, "Idiot! You don't know what's good!" Then ignored us and started practicing Falun Gong himself.
Just after the lunar new year of 2001, dad sold cheap the pig we raised that weighed over 50kg. With the money he went to Beijing with his Gong mates. I was told afterwards that he had gone to Tiananmen Square to "promote the Fa". He was sent home by the police and our friends in Guohe Town.
Since his return from Beijing, dad locked himself in his room studying those books day and night. He didn't care about anything except his cultivation, not to mention supporting the family. I seldom saw him outside his room. It seemed he had detached himself from the family. I heard him murmur occasionally that he would "reach Consummation" at home all the same, although he had been stopped from "going up to heavens" in Beijing. Each time I heard these words, I was filled with fear, worrying Dad might really leave us someday.
And the day did come at last. It was a day in March, 2002. I finished school and saw a crowd outside my home. I had a feeling that something bad must have happened, and fought my way through the crowd. Dad was there, on a makeshift litter inside our house, dead. Mom was wailing beside his body. It turned out that, to reach Consummation, dad had hanged himself in his room. And in this way my dad, young and strong, left us forever!
