2004 European Conference: Telling the Facts During the ‘China week’ Activity Held at Bruug Middle School in Switzerland

Greetings, my most honourable Master! Hello, my fellow practitioners,

I am a Swiss Falun Gong practitioner. In late April this year, a five-day ‘China week’ activity was held by my daughters middle school in the city of Brugg that I live in. Because of the efforts practitioners made together, we successfully held the Zhang Cuiying Art Exhibition to introduce Chinese calligraphy, Falun Gong exercises and the truth about Falun Gong. What we did, especially with regards to showing the true beauty of Falun Gong, won welcome and acknowledgements from the Mayor, the Headmaster as well as teachers and students. The whole activity ended successfully. Below is our sharing of this activity, please kindly point it out if there is anything inappropriate.

In September last year, I met my daughter’s tutors to see how she was doing at school, and wanted to use this opportunity to clarify the truth to her two tutors. They signed the petition immediately after they had learnt about the truth. For their interest, I also brought forward the idea of giving an introduction to Chinese culture at the school, including Falun Gong and human right status in China. Both tutors agreed that it was a great idea, afterwards they contacted me to make an arrangement. I was actually planning to hold the activity for just one day, but to my surprise the tutor suggested that the activity should last for a week. When I heard this I started to get scared as I was afraid that there were not enough Falun Gong practitioners around. However, I eventually agreed. I believed that Master [Referring to the founder of Falun Gong, Mr Li Hongzhi] would make arrangement for such a thing and that I shouldn’t think too much about it. Later on when I told another fellow practitioner, he/she said: “That is great! What a precious opportunity to clarify the truth.” Although we were short handed, our coordination would make the ‘China week’ impressive, and was to allow Chinese tradition and the truth of Falun Gong to touch people’s hearts. I thus started to plan the whole weeks activity.

When I was in Geneva in March I was reminded by a practitioner about the artist and Falun Gong practitioner Ms Zhang Cuiying, I tried to invite Ms. Zhang Cuiying to come to our cities middle school in person so as to introduce Chinese traditional painting and to also hold an art exhibition. She agreed to this on the spot. Moreover, Australian practitioner Dai Zhizhen and her daughter were also invited to come and reveal the persecution that their family has been subjected to, they would join the students to hold the activity of ‘peaceful petal’; we also arranged a Chinese calligraphy performance, Chinese cooking as well as collectively teaching and learning the exercises. Therefore, a varied and interesting ‘China week’ activity was planned in just a short time. However, when I met the tutor on the 19th of March, I did not expect the tutor to suddenly say that they no longer wanted to hold the activity as students had not behaved well recently. When I heard this, I thought, is it because I have not cultivated myself well in some aspects creating a loophole for interference? I sent forth righteous thoughts and denied the old force’s arrangement from the bottom of my heart, at the same time I remained calm and talked about other things with the tutor. Because I wasn’t moved by the tutors words and remained calm, several minutes later, the tutor suddenly enquired: ‘tell me about your plan.’ When I told her my plan for the week, the teacher quickly changed her attitude and said: ‘we are going to hold the ‘China week’ to give the students a big surprise’. I told the tutors that the painter Zhang Cuiying would come in person, they were very grateful and arranged for the activity to be held in the last week of April.

Later on when I visited the media and informed them about Zhang Cuiying’s art exhibition at the ‘China week’, I took notice to keep my heart pure, and started with the perspective of China’s traditional culture and art, I then talked to them about the awards that Zhang Cuiying had been given and her accomplishments. When I introduced the painter, I inserted the truth of the persecution and Falun Gong spontaneously, and I believed this method proved to be effective. During the time of the activity, several types of local media came to interview and take photos, and positive and objective reports were published. On the way home from the media, I suddenly had a thought: why not invite the Mayor to come and attend the painting exhibition opening ceremony? My daughters were a bit shy, after my persuasion, they finally went to the local government office with me. When they sent forth righteous thoughts, I went up stairs and knocked on the secretary’s door, and then told the secretary that I wanted to invite the Mayor to join the opening ceremony of our ‘China week’ painting exhibition. The secretary phoned the Mayor immediately, and told me the Mayor wanted to talk to me up stairs. But my daughters were not willing to come with me, I said to them: ‘you are both little Dafa disciples, do not forget what we are doing here, now please come with me.’ In the office up stairs, the Mayor welcomed us warmly. I talked to the Mayor heart to heart and said: ‘We sincerely invite you to come to my daughters’ middle school to join the opening ceremony of the Chinese painting exhibition, this is the first time we are going to hold this kind of activity at the middle school. It will be a great encouragement to the children if you could come.’ Then I gave him the details about Zhang Cuiying and introduced Falun Gong to him, and gave him a Falun Gong VCD as well as some newspapers and a picture album. The Mayor was very disgusted about Jiang’s persecution against Falun Gong practitioners; he believed a government shouldn’t do this under any reason. We finished our conversation in a relaxed and agreeable atmosphere. Finally the Mayor smiled and told me: ‘I will definitely come.’

I felt deeply about what Master said about ‘Dafa disciples’ righteous thoughts are powerful’. When our True Thoughts come forth, our words are powerful and have a great effect. When I was talking to the Mayor, I could feel the whole office was immersed in a compassionate and harmonised field, I deeply felt that Master was with us.

The 26th of April was the day of the opening ceremony for the painting exhibition, what the tutors didn’t expect was that the painter who had come to their school to be such an outstanding artist, and the works of art that she brought over were so wonderful, the small classroom they prepared was obviously not suitable. After having a discussion, the school decided to postpone the students’ music lesson and to hold the exhibition in the music hall. But it was only three hours to go before the exhibition opened, teachers worried that it was too late to organise. However, practitioners pulled together and worked cooperatively in order to make everything ready just on time. The music hall took on an entirely new look, which was elegant and solemn. The huge Chinese painting ‘Rectifying the colossal firmament’, elaborately drawn by Zhang Cuiying recently, was hung in the centre of the hall. Two sentences on both sides were written down in vigorous official script.

The whole exhibition hall was immersed in a compassionate and harmonised atmosphere. Tutors were surprised and said: ‘Wow! In such a short time you made it turns out so beautiful, there must be Gods helping you.’

At two o’clock in the afternoon, the Mayor of Brugg arrived on time to cut the ribbon for the exhibition. He said happily, ‘It is my honour to cut the ribbon for such a high quality exhibition. For students, this is a special painting exhibition. With such a high-level of culture been shown to you, I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to learn about China’s culture. When Zhang Cuiying presented a portrait of a Bodhisattva to the Mayor, he was happy and replied, ‘this Bodhisattva will definitely help me, her rays of light will bless me and help me to solve everything I meet as a Mayor’. He also said he would visit Ms. Zhang Cuiying again with his wife.

During the activities, the Falun Gong practitioners seized this precious opportunity to clarify the truth in different ways. In the class, Ms. Dai Zhizhen and her daughter Fadu exposed the Jiang group’s evil persecution against Falun Gong through their personal experiences; they also showed the wonderfulness of Dafa which was deeply touching for the teachers and students. In addition, we also taught pupils how to sing ‘Falun Dafa is good’ in Chinese, and how to use a brush pen to write down the principles of Falun Gong “Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance”, children took great interested in. It was gratifying to see “Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance” been planted in their hearts via this activity. One of the school teachers told us a little story: her son recently drove her new car out and scratched the painting on her car. Before this would easily have led to an argument with her son, but this time she remembered Tolerance, and didn’t lose her anger with her son. Before the exhibition finished, the Mayor came again and listened to the feedback about the exhibition. He was happy to see that both the teachers and the students were benefiting from the activity and thanked Falun Gong for bringing the wonderfulness into their school.

In the activities held during the ‘China week’, as the participating practitioners coordinated and cooperated well with strong righteous thoughts, the outcome of the activities held during ‘China week’ was effective. During the activity, a lot of my defects were also exposed, especially the attachment of ‘self’ and not listening to others opinions. As Master pointed out in the article “Teaching the Fa at the Meeting with Asia-Pacific Students”: ‘There's something you must pay attention to: you are validating the Fa, not validating yourselves. A Dafa disciple's responsibility is to validate the Fa. Validating the Fa is cultivation, and what you remove in the cultivation process is none other than the attachment to self …and only after you've let go of all your human attachments can you step out from the throngs of everyday people’. Thanks to Master’s compassion I was able to see a lot of my shortcomings. Let us work in full cooperation and with a unity of purpose to walk more righteously along our paths.

Thank you Master, thank you fellow practitioners.