PureInsight | February 16, 2004
[PureInsight.org] Hearing that Jiang Zemin would stay in Houston, Texas for three days from October 23 to 25, 2002 to visit President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Xiao Yu, Elder Sister Sun, and I flew to Houston on October 21, 2002, and were prepared to join a public peaceful rally there protesting Jiang Zemin's persecution against Falun Gong. (Please see "More Than 2,000 Falun Gong Practitioners Arrive in Crawford and Hold Press Conference" for details.) It rained the next day and the sky was gloomy. While we were practicing the Falun Gong exercises in the roofed porch with our eyes closed, I felt someone approaching us and opened my eyes. It was a westerner coming to join our group practice. He, too, closed his eyes and started to do the standing meditation. Apparently, he also was a Falun Gong practitioner.
[Note: In China, "Xiao" is a common Chinese nickname for younger people appended by their first name. For example, a young man named Wu Minli is known as Xiao Wu among friends and colleagues around the same age. "Xiao" means small or younger in Chinese. "Elder Sister" is an affectionate way to call women outside one's family that are slightly older. For example, it is proper to call a woman named Li Mei who is older than you as Elder Sister Li in Chinese.]
After we finished the exercises, we introduced ourselves to each other. The young man is Brian from Ireland. He also arrived in Houston last night like us.
"Brian, do you have any plans today?" I asked him.
"No," he shook his head.
"We would like to go to Chinatown today to distribute truth-clarification materials. Would you like to join us?"
"Sure."
Thus the four of us carried Chinese truth-clarification materials that we had brought from Toronto, Canada and were ready to take off. Because we did not know our way around the area, we went to the information desk at the hotel and inquired about directions to get to Chinatown. The staff at the information desk told us to take a particular bus that would stop near the hotel and go to Chinatown.
We followed his directions. In ten minutes we arrived at a bus stop, and saw a bus standing by in front of the bus stop. We asked the driver if this bus would take us to Chinatown.
The black driver explained in a friendly manner, "Not this bus. But you may take my bus and transfer to No. 2 bus, which will take you to Chinatown."
Thus we went on the bus. Brian wanted to clarify the truth about Falun Gong and Jiang Zemin's persecution against Falun Gong, but I realized that we had forgotten to bring any English truth-clarification material with us. What a pity! What do we do? Then it suddenly occurred to me that I had some English postcards addressed to the Canadian Prime Minister, urging him to help rescue Falun Gong practitioners in China. I passed one of these postcards to Brian, who used it to help clarify the truth to the driver.
Brian said to the driver, "These three ladies are from Canada and I am from Ireland. We heard that the Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin will come to Houston tomorrow, so all of us hurried here to protest his persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. These people you see on the postcard are our families and friends in China. Because they believe in the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, they have been subject to abduction and torture…"
The black driver kept nodding while listening to Brian, and then he took off after Brian finished his speech.
After making a few stops, the driver pointed ahead and told us, "You can get off here and transfer to the No. 2 bus that will take you to Chinatown."
While we were getting off the bus, a No. 2 bus stopped and took off. We felt a bit frustrated. Now we had to wait another 20 minutes for another No. 2 bus to arrive.
But the driver suddenly said, "Don't worry. I will catch up with the bus." He stepped on the gas and the bus surged ahead like a flying bullet. It is much more exciting to actually be on a bus when it is chasing another bus than watching a high-speed chase in the movie. We were pleasantly surprised by the driver's action. In a very few minutes, our bus caught up with that No. 2 bus and drove ahead of it. The driver dropped us off at the next No. 2 bus stop and bid us farewell before it returned to its regular bus route.
All of us grinned in delight at this wonderful experience. Then we got on the No. 2 bus and went to Chinatown.
As soon as we got off the bus, my feeling of excitement and anticipation was replaced with doubt: Can this be Chinatown. It appeared to be a ghost town with almost no pedestrians and a large number of cars sitting quietly in a parking lot. I had expected the Chinatown here to be full of traffic of people and cars!
I called a local practitioner in Houston to confirm if we were at the right place. "Mrs. A, we are trying to go to Chinatown, but I am afraid that we might have come to the wrong place instead."
"Where are you right now?"
I described our location to her.
"You are at the right place. In fact, you are right at the center of our Chinatown," she said affirmatively.
"Then why isn't anyone walking in the street? We see nothing but a lot of cars left in the parking lot."
"Welcome to the Chinatown in Houston. It is nowhere as prosperous as the Chinatown in Toronto."
This was not at all what I had expected, so I discussed with Xiao Yu, Elder Sister Sun and Brian whether or not we should stay here and distribute the truth-clarification flyers while there was no one here.
After a discussion, we came to a decision: Xiao Yu and Elder Sister Sun would stay in the parking lot while Brian and I would go stand in front of a Chinese supermarket.
It started to rain again. The thick, dark streaks of clouds grew larger. Their edges rolled and swelled in big puffs. They were spreading wide in the sky, foretelling heavier showers and wind to come.
Xiao Yu and Elder Sister Sun stood in the parking lot in their rain suits, waiting patiently for the car owners to come. Each time they saw a person coming for his car, they ran to him and passed him a flyer. Brian and I stood outside the supermarket flanking its entrance, while passing its customers our truth-clarification materials.
Perhaps the Chinese people here have never seen a westerner distributing Chinese materials. As they took the truth-clarification materials from Brian, they surveyed him in curiosity. A young girl evensmiled and asked Brian, "Do you understand the content of the flyer?" Brian beamed and nodded.
During my chat with Brian, I learned that he was one of the 36 western Falun Gong practitioners that went to Tiananmen Square on November 20, 2001. Their trip was truly an earth-shaking heroic action that had stirred Beijing. I told Brian that one of my friends in Beijing wrote me in a letter: "Westerners came and advocated Falun Gong in Tiananmen Square! That really showed them!" Brian gave me a humble smile and did not say anything.
Suddenly a fiery white streak of lightning zigzagged, and a gray curtain fell from the clouds and hung there, hiding the sky beyond it. That was the rain. Then a growl of thunder came. I was beginning to worry about Xiao Yu and Elder Sister Sun. There was no roof above them in the parking lot. "They must be soaking wet by now," I thought.
While I was thinking about them, a cellular phone rang and interrupted my thoughts. A fellow practitioner in Houston called and asked us if we could help clean a house. To accommodate a large number of European practitioners that would arrive in Houston the next day (October 23), practitioners in Houston found several houses where they could stay for free. However, these places needed cleaning. I asked Brian whether or not he would mind clearing the houses with us; he nodded and agreed right away.
Next I walked to the parking lot to find Xiao Yu and Elder Sister Sun, who were still running all over the parking lot distributing truth-clarification materials. Their hair and clothes were soaking wet.
Then local practitioners in Houston came to get us from Chinatown. Before this we were complete strangers to one another, but they took us to their home, and offered us a fresh change of clothes and lunch. We were surprised to find that Brian could wield chopsticks with dexterity. More surprisingly, he enjoyed eating Chinese Zha Cai (preserved mustard seasoned with salt and hot pepper.) We decided for Brian that he must have been a Chinese in his previous life. While we were almost shouting to each other in excitement to exchange our discovery of his skills with chopsticks, Brian did not seem bothered at all being the topic of our conversation. He beamed at us with his eyes, as though he found our enthusiastic conversation quite entertaining.
After lunch, we each picked up a cleaning tool or supply such as brooms, rags, vacuum cleaners, etc., and started to clean one house after another. Although we had been out all day long, we were still very hard at work during cleaning with a radiance of excitement on our faces. We thought of the "Saturday cleaning" we used to do in middle school. Despite the loud noise of the vacuum cleaner, we chatted and laughed during the housecleaning chores. A fellow practitioner in Houston suggested that we move here to save on hotel expenses. I shook my head, "The houses here are arranged in circles. We would not know how to walk out of this labyrinth." Everyone burst into laughter upon hearing my reply. The roaring of our conversation, laughter and noises from the vacuum cleaner almost shook off the roof.
Finally the rain stopped. It was dawn when we finished cleaning the houses. We bid farewell to these Houston practitioners and returned to our hotel.
That was our first day in Houston in that trip. It was an ordinary day, but was filled with laughter. It both rained and shined that day, but we will always remember it as a day of sunshine in our hearts.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2003/12/26/25080.html
