PureInsight | May 31, 2004
[PureInsight.org] Sending faxes to China is an indispensable approach to clarifying the truth. From the time of the individual-based operation in the very beginning to the mutual cooperation we experience as a whole body today, practitioners around the world have done lots of work. We have passed through all kinds of tribulations and tests, gained many experiences and have created a path for validating the Fa. It's been over one year since the Global Fax Coordination Team was established in February of 2003. Its formation, growth and maturation is part of the process of the Fa-rectification with Master, toward the salvation of sentient beings; is a process of each practitioner walking his or her own cultivation path with righteous thoughts and righteous actions; is the process of all practitioners striving forward together, eliminating interference, and forming one body. Today, we'd like to report to Master and to fellow practitioners some of our experiences during the course of our clarifying truth with Faxes. Please feel free to correct us if you find anything inappropriate.
Compared to other methods of truth clarification, sending faxes has certain unique attributes which make it very powerful. First, as a fax is transmitted via the mode of an image, the likelihood of it being blocked is pretty low. Also, a fax can be sent and received immediately and is very convenient to send. The information a fax script can hold is relatively large. Practitioners are able to plan its text's content and format well in advance so as to achieve both depth and variety.
During the early phase of the persecution, practitioners only sent faxes manually. One elderly lady, a medical doctor, participated in fax work early on. She would send forth righteous thoughts every night before doing so. Now living in the U.S. she would send faxes back to her hometown in China. Since she lived in a remote area, the telephone/fax machine was relatively popular and a convenient mode for her. Because since the villagers in that town used the phone line for both in-coming calls and for receiving faxes, usually when she tried to fax a message, someone would pick up the phone. She would then clarify the truth and the scientific nature of Dafa, and then ask them if she could send additional information by fax. Because of her compassionate and pure heart, her fellow villagers would either thank her for her kindness or their attitude would changed from hatred to sympathy after learning the truth. But sending faxes manually is very time-consuming.
However, with relatively few overseas practitioners who also have limited time, it's not possible to cover large areas of China using the manual method alone. As a consequence many practitioners started to look for ways to send faxes automatically. With strong support from practitioners involved in automated phoning, a large scale auto-fax shaped up very quickly, which dramatically increased the quantity of faxes transmitted. In the meantime, many local fax teams and individual practitioners in various areas also started to operate independently. Their deep understanding of the Fa as well as their wisdom gained from the Fa made them the driving force of the fax project. This individual-based operation proved to be an effective way to eliminate interference from evil forces.
In order to make the auto-fax also possible for individuals, practitioners started to test some fax software on their computers. One of the critical issues was that this software needed to be compatible with a calling card, which is both cheap and safe for practitioners to use. As software developers could not provide any solution to this problem, practitioners decided to take up the challenge themselves. After days of trial and error, they finally figured out a simple solution.
However, overcoming the obstacle of making the calls did not make it easy for large-scale use of the auto-fax software. Several coordinators of local fax teams encountered huge interference. Many times the software just did not work properly though no technical problems could be identified. Practitioners who were responsible for technical support quickly realized that we were at the critical moment of using this fax software on a large scale, and that we must eliminate the interference with strong righteous thoughts. Besides working very hard to solve technical problems for fellow practitioners, they regularly shared understandings and sent forth righteous thoughts with others.
During one experience sharing conference, one practitioner from Toronto pointed out that the project coordinator should serve as a paving stone for other practitioners and willingly bear the burden and complaints. That's truly the case. When seeing so many practitioners with pure hearts to save sentient beings, how could we complain? Here is another example: one practitioner often took part in fax project though he's also responsible for many other important Fa-rectification projects. In order to allow the Chinese people to receive faxes during daytime, he chose to send faxes late at night. Because he did not know the configuration for silent transmission, he wore earplugs during sleep time every night. We were particularly touched when we accidentally discovered this fact. Fellow practitioners have also always reminded us that we must not throw away those fax numbers that fail once, and that we should try a second time or third time. Every opportunity is so precious. With the vital opportunity at hand, we are determined to blaze our path righteously, take true responsibility for Dafa, fellow practitioners, as well as all sentient beings. As fax software gained more acceptance and new practitioners continuously joined the team, the fax operation in decentralized manner also shaped up.
At end of 2002, the Chinese Telecommunication Bureau unexpectedly increased the basic rate to China by ten fold. As a result, the transmission cost of a 2-page fax jumped from $0.20 to $2, which brought the large scale auto-fax operation to a halt. This had an impact on many practitioners who were on strict budgets. We all realized that this barrier was solely interference from the old forces, which we must completely reject. One local coordinator said he would continue to send faxes even if it cost $10 per sheet. We should never give up this truth clarification channel, and we would definitely conquer this with our unshakable hearts. Another practitioner also shared his understanding. He said that everything was created for the Dafa. The original cheap rate to China was solely for us to clarify the truth, while the rise in price was just the result of jealousy of the old forces, who didn't want us to do this so easily. What we needed to do was to clarify the truth with righteous thoughts under any circumstance. Consequently, we kept sending forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the interference while we sent faxes either manually or via software everyday. Shortly after this discussion, the rate dropped to an even lower price than the original one.
From this, experience we truly understood the significance and necessity of endorsing the rule of "A great way has no form." Accordingly, we established a diversified operating principle which combines centralization with decentralization, and integrates both automatic and manual operations.
Because many local fax teams and individual practitioners used to operate separately without sufficient communication between them, the efforts to collect fax numbers and prepare scripts were often duplicated. Master stated in the "Explaining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference:"
For Dafa disciples as a whole, in the process of validating the Fa, when you work together in concert, the Fa power is great.
During this US West Fa Conference, the key coordinators of local fax team shared their understanding of how to better the truth clarification work with faxes. In order to send faxes in large scale more effectively, we decided to put the auto, manual and software-based faxes under unified management, which would form a single entity with diversified functional units. With the support from the practitioners of the internet team, the website for fax coordination was put into work very quickly. Thereupon, works like coordinating fax tasks, editing fax scripts, organizing and preparing fax numbers, and providing technical support were all taken care of by dedicated practitioners, and all these services were provided via the fax website. During "Teaching the Fa at the 2003 Midwest-U.S. Fa Conference," Master told us:
The better you cooperate with each other as a whole the more powerful you are, and the more powerful you are the greater your impact.
The formation of the Global Fax Coordination Team unites the local fax teams in both US and the world, which truly achieves the coordination of faxes as a whole.
Soon after the creation of the global fax coordination team, the lawsuit against the evil head began it preliminary procedures. The practitioners of the fax team worked as a whole and delivered this message back to China quickly, which served to intimidate the evil. During the past year, the faxes continued to grow, and the fax numbers collected by practitioners in China and abroad were constantly flooding in. Practitioners around the world have sent more and more truth-telling faxes to China by various approaches (through manual, automatic and software means).
Even more touching is the fact that many Western practitioners are also involved in the fax project. Though majority of them do not know Chinese, they work very diligently with a pure heart to save sentient beings and place their trust in our fax editors. A Western practitioner once said during some enormous interference, "The interference proves that I did something correct, which scared it."
After the initial results of the Fax coordination team proved effective, the most pressing issue became to better manage the fax team, in particular, we wanted to better understand the significance of clarifying truth with Faxes and the role of the Fax team. During every Dafa conference, we would hear lively experience-sharings from practitioners who are involved in truth clarification via the phone and online chatting, and we have learned the remarkable work they have done to clarify the truth to government officials. We would also see many poignant films made by the media team.
But the direct results of the fax teams work are hard to see and this fact has elicited some questions. How much effort should we put into faxing? How big an impact do we hope to achieve? Should we do something else that would have "bigger" impact? By constant Fa-study and sharing, as well as practice, the practitioners who coordinate the fax team have become more and more clearheaded and reached a consensus: the fax is a unique and indispensable way to clarify the truth, and it has become the one of most crucial kinds of automatic truth-telling projects. So many Chinese practitioners have been arrested and put in jails for distributing flyers, yet here we can deliver tons of truth-telling faxes to countless offices in China by simply clicking some computer keys. Shouldn't we continue to do that? The answer is absolutely "Yes!" and we should do it well, persistently, and on a much larger scale. Master said much the same thing. He mentioned in many of his lectures that the fax as one form of truth-clarification has potential for great impact. Additionally, Minghui suggested several times that practitioners overseas should handle the main portion of the faxing tasks to China. Chinese practitioners face great risk using this method since all the fax machines in China are registered and under close monitoring by the Telecommunication Bureau. We can send faxes to several million fax machines in China, and our mission is to ensure that the truth is transmitted to those fax machines constantly so that the precious Chinese people know the truth.
Now I'd like to share some of our experiences in editing fax scripts. Initially, many practitioners just faxed Minghui articles directly to China. Gradually, we realized that Chinese readers might not feel comfortable with some words and terms in the articles. So the editors of Fax team decided to compose a comprehensive fax script that would be better accepted by the Chinese general public. Considering most of the fax receivers are office clerks and well-educated governmental officials, we conceptualized our fax script as a mini newspaper with diversified and balanced information. At the same, we also wanted to make it act as a bridge to other channels of truth clarification (i.e., internet, TV, and radio), which would truly achieve the effect of us working as one body. As a result, the "Shen Si Ming Jian" Series came into existence. In "Touring North America to Teach the Fa," Master told us:
It's hard to save people nowadays. You have to explain things to them by following the logic of their attachments. For the sake of saving them, don't create any obstacles for them.
Since people might have different attachments, our script covers various topics such as "The Magnificence of Dafa," "Stories of Cultivators," "The Truth of the Persecution," "An Exposure of the Lies," etc. We managed to balance the content in both breadth and depth, which would give readers more opportunities to learn the truth. In each article, we try our best to depict the facts impartially and yet try to lead the reader to the right conclusion by following our rational analysis. In addition, we take into full consideration the psychological limits to the tolerance of the general public, and avoid all sensitive words that might arouse their resistance. In order to constantly improve our scripts, we have incorporated a feedback email address in the script to help us gather comments from practitioners in China.
Because receivers have to pay for the paper at their end, most faxes do not exceed two pages. Fully utilizing the very limited space creates a challenge for fax editors, so seamless cooperation as a whole is extremely critical.
Creating a good fax script takes many steps. During each step, each contributing individual must clearly understand his/her role and voluntarily undertake different tasks. As a consequence, we form a real one-body. For example, some practitioners gather appropriate truth materials; some undertake an initial revision of the original articles; some help collect feedback from other truth-clarification teams and practitioners in China.
Normally the chief editor works very hard during the final typesetting when a deadline approaches. In addition to various editing work, he also faces strong opinions from fellow practitioners at times. On these occasions, he calmly explains the rationale for his decisions, while simultaneously taking into serious consideration various other points of view. After a first edit, a second or third version might be required as more feedback flows in.
In such a cultivation environment, practitioners of the fax editing team improve dramatically and truly form a one body. Master explained in the "Expalining the Fa During the 2003 Lantern Festival at the U.S. West Fa Conference:"
Now a God, he doesn't look at whether your idea was adopted. At those times he looks at whether your attachment was let go of. If you let it go, and your idea wasn't implemented—with regard to that matter you were able to let it go, and were even able to help do it better—then you improved, and you were able to raise your level. What's cultivation? That is cultivation.
One day, one practitioner in the team said to the chief editor: " It's definitely not a easy job to serve as the chief editor, how do you manage to balance different views about the script from people?" The chief editor answered: " There's no such kind of title in my mind. I just regard myself as a paving stone, as a vehicle to serve other practitioners. Since other practitioners trust us so much, we ought to provide them the fax script with highest quality possible, in order to achieve the goal of clarifying the truth.
With the help from practitioners of other truth editing teams, the fax scripts have become better and better. To date, 10 Shen Si Ming Jian have been formally compiled and sent to China via millions of faxes. They are also published on the Zhengjian Net.
In April of 2003, as the Chinese Health Ministry delayed and withheld the fact of the SARS epidemic, the disease broke out of China and spread to many other countries. Chinese people became the direct victims of the cover-up. In order to make use of this great opportunity, practitioners on the Fax editing team decided to make special texts with SARS as the key theme. After Fa study and sharing, we gained a better understanding of the roles of the SARS text. Master taught us in "Clearheadedness" in Essentials for Further Advancement:
I often say that if all a person wants is the well-being of others and if this is without the slightest personal motivation or personal understanding, what he says will move the listener to tears.
We were clearly aware that under such a potential threat to their health, people felt insecure, and what they really needed was someone with their true welfare in mind. We understood that we had to put our heart into the text and let people in China truly see our compassion. The SARS special script was completed very quickly and provided an analysis of SARS by medical experts overseas and information on how to prevent it. In order to let the Chinese people understand the danger of the governmental cover-up, we also included the story of Dr. Jiang Yanyong that was blocked at that time. Most importantly, we embedded the principle of Dafa into the text in a very subtle way, so that the reader could be influenced by Dafa subconsciously. In less than two months, we delivered two SARS special issues. These were the two issues we received the most feedback on and many of them were very positive. In one particular response, the reader expressed his gratitude, and he asked us to resend him the SARS issues since his was taken by someone else. All the feedback clearly demonstrated that our efforts paid off.
At present, practitioners across North America, Australia, Europe, and Asia all participate in sending faxes to China, and form an irresistible fax network. In order to boost the effect of truth clarification and save time for practitioners, we are currently engaged to improve the quality of our fax texts further, promote the automatic operation, as well as utilize the feedback email as a second channel for truth clarification. In addition, we hope to categorize fax numbers for different professions, which would allow us to target them with specific messages. From the perspective of efficiency and convenience, we'd like to encourage practitioners to switch to software-based fax, however, there are still certain technical difficulties in setting up the current software. We are working very hard in developing an easy-to-use automatic fax tool, which we believe would allow more practitioners to join us in the near future.
During the past several years, though Dafa disciples around the world have done a fabulous job in clarifying truth with different approaches, there are an enormous number of sentient beings that have not yet been saved, which is why so many automatic truth clarification tools have been developed by practitioners. There are 450 million telephones, several million fax machines and 80 million active internet users in China. If each of us can take one more automatic truth clarification tool, then the truth will flow into China on a much larger scale, and many more lives will be saved.
Practitioners in China have risked their lives to use cable TV to clarify the truth; their magnificent feat has not only allowed more people to know the truth, but also set an example for us in clarifying the truth in large-scale means through novel ways. In terms of the global fax team, our overall capacity of transmission has been increased dramatically since its inception, and the fax numbers we collect from various channels also grow exponentially. We do hope more and more practitioners will join us in our ultimate goal of reaching each fax machine in China with at least one truth-telling fax every 2-3 months.
I would like to end with Master's poem "Hurry Up and Tell Them:"
As Dafa disciples tell people the facts,
It's like sharp swords shooting out together from their mouths,
Shredding apart the rotten demons' lies.
Lose no time and save them, hurry up and tell them.
Let's all walk the last leg of our journey well!
