Portrait of Liu Liping

Zhou Zhengyi was graduated from cooking specialty of the Caohekou Town Technical School. He is doing part-time jobs for a living in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. His father, Zhou Dabo, hanged himself in November, 1998. His mother, Liu Liping, died of breast cancer on October, 12, 2010. Both his parents had been workers in Caohekou Town Chemical Plant, whose deaths were Falun Gong-related.

Zhou Zhengyi’s parents got married in the end of 1984, and gave birth to him on July, 15 of the next year. They were out of work when the chemical plant closed down in March, 1995, and since then earned a living by selling vegetables and grains on the market. After years of toiling outdoors, Liu Liping suffered from serious beriberi that resisted many kinds of medicines.

In September, 1997, a regular customer learned of her illness and gave her a copy of Zhuan Falun and a set of tapes, telling her that as long as she practiced Falun Gong, her diseases would be gone without taking any injection or medicine, and that persistent practice would lead to consummation and ascension to Heaven.

Thinking of it as having a try, Liu Liping joined the local Falun Gong group and started practicing. Since she always practiced indoors without exposing her feet to cold or hot and humid conditions, and concentrated completely on practicing, she felt the foot itch subside, which she attributed to the effects of practicing Falun Gong. That conviction gave her stronger incentive in its pursuit.

As the cultivation went further, she was no longer satisfied with simply preventing disease and improving health, but longed for being elevated to higher levers following the master Li Hongzhi, and becoming a Buddha in the end. Her husband made huge efforts trying to dissuade Liu from her obsession with practicing, but to no avail. He then had to shoulder the burden of the family alone, going out to attend the business in the day and doing housework at night.

Liu Liping took all that he did for granted without the slightest sting of conscience. She often talked to him in a preaching tone: “A man who practices Falun Gong will bring fortune and well-being to his whole family, just wait and benefit from my effort!” At that time she hung portraits of Li Hongzhi on the walls around their house, and played the music accompanying the practice all day long. Furthermore, she often invited home other Falun Gong followers to practice together. They did all kinds of strange stuff including kowtowing and burning incense, which made it impossible for Zhou Zhengyi, then only 12, to get down to study. He even had frequent nightmares.

Zhou Dabo had no choice but to send the boy to live with his grand parents. Zhou Zhengyi said he did not dare to go home then, and had to go to the market to see his father when he missed him. His father, in his 30s then, looked well over 50 with a weary look, shaggy hair and beard, and dirty clothes.

On a day in November, 1998, he went to the market but did not find his father, and was told that his father had not been seen for more than three days.

He hurried home and asked his mother what happened. She told him: “He went out after we had a quarrel the night before and hasn’t come back. I thought he had gone to your granny’s.” When inquired about the reason for the quarrel, she disclosed that she had donated to Falun Gong the family’s savings of 10,000 yuan that they squeezed out of tight budget. Zhou Zhengyi hurried to his grand parents who later called the police.

Two days later, Zhou Dabo’s body was found in the woods on a hill. He hanged himself on a tree. The coroner concluded that it was a suicide.

Indifferent to the death of her husband, Liu Liping did not show the slightest trace of sorrow, and did not even attend his funeral in the end.

In January, 1999, Zhou Zhengyi’s grand parents moved his registered permanent residence out of his mother’s house and into theirs, and since broke off with her.

Although the government clamped down on Falun Gong in July, 1999, Liu Liping obstinately stuck to her cultivation and kept on practicing secretly.

In the end of 1999, some policemen and community workers found her parents and told them that she had disappeared. People searched hither and thither in Caohekou Town, but did not find her.

Worrying about his mother’s disappearance, Zhou Zhengyi had a free fall of scores in school. In the summer of 2001, he suffered a waterloo in the entrance exam for secondary school, and had to enroll in a local technical school. At that time his parents’ house had grown desolate from years of negligence. The yard was full of rampant weeds and the roof leaked. His grand parents made the decision and sold it cheap.

Although Liu Liping’s family had reported her missing to the police and never gave up their search for her, she appeared to have vanished. And no word had come from her for ten years since she left. They had thought that she would never return.

In September, 2010, Zhou Zhengyi got a call from his elder aunt when he was doing part-time jobs for a living in Shenyang. She told him that his mother had returned and asked him to come as soon as possible. She also told him that his mother complained of breast distension and pain but would not go to the hospital. Instead, she stayed home sitting in meditation, and prayed to Li Hongzhi all the day for salvation.

Zhou Zhengyi was so shocked on the sight of his mother that he was a moment determining if she was the same woman whom he last saw more than a decade ago. Because before him was a dark and skinny woman with sinking eye sockets and a vacant expression, and a little hunchbacked. She remained silent when asked how she fared in the past decade.

When he insisted on taking her to the hospital, she told him: “The master is helping me purify my body. I’ll be well as I send out righteous thoughts”. In the end, she was forced to the hospital by her family to The Second People’s Hospital of Benxi County. The examination showed that the mammary cancer had developed to terminal stage and cancer cells had spread.

On October 12, 2010, Liu Liping died at the age of 45, with an infinite longing for consummation. Even when dying, she was still expecting Li Hongzhi to save her from the worldly sea of bitterness.

In this way the Zhous, once a happy family, was destructed by the invasion of evil Falun Gong.