PureInsight | September 13, 2004
[PureInsight.org]
Chapter 3: Escape from Police
June 9, 2003. 11:45 p.m. Beijing, China
Li looked at her husband to see him taut and ready to run. He had been arrested too many times; the police sirens were now a familiar sound for him. Meanwhile, Li saw her father glance back at the two of them.
Li felt sick in the stomach. She clutched her husband's hand.
"Zhang, my father has betrayed us", she said, tears welling up in her eyes.
Li's father sighed. "My daughter, I don't know what to say. I only wish you and your husband had stopped being involved in this foolishness. If you had only been a little more concerned about social stability and what is best for China's future…"
Li cut him off in mid-sentence. "What's best for China's future, dad? A leader who had given the police sadistic license to gang-rape and murder my young sister-in-law? A state-run machinery under the command of a tyrant who would rather torture my husband to death than spend time on improving the livelihood of Chinese citizens?"
Zhang pulled Li's arm. "Let's go", he said, with the solemn air of one who has had to run away too many times from being illegally arrested.
Zhang and Li dashed out of the front door. Her husband had been an athlete when he was younger, but Li was able to match him step for step. Li realized that it wasn't fear that lent her strength; it was hope – hope that her freedom would allow more people to learn the truth about Falun Gong and be saved from the lies with which Jiang's regime had permeated Chinese society.
It was starting to rain again as they stepped out on the grass. Good, Li thought to herself. The rain would give them cover.
Two police cars, sirens blaring, screeched to a halt in front of the main entrance.
But Li and Zhang were not taking the front entrance. Li had taken no chances with her father. She knew that he was more concerned about the Communist regime and his prestige in the Party, rather than on her and her husband's well-being. She knew about the house and had informed Zhang beforehand about exit routes in case something unexpected came about.
Zhang, fully drenched in what was now a thunderstorm, reached the wall first. Li knew that there was no gate at the back of the house; the only real exit was the main front entrance. But the wall at the back of the house was just under 6 feet tall and it would be easily scalable.
Zhang pulled himself up over the wall and turned around. As Li jumped up and grasped the top of the wall, he pulled her up over the wall. They both jumped on the muddy road that lay on the other side of the wall.
She heard the police shouting and swearing in the garden as they tried to figure out where the two victims had escaped to.
It wouldn't take them too long to figure it out, Li thought to herself.
Thunder rumbled in the distance and lightening streaked across the sky. Even though it was only early afternoon, the dark clouds had already covered the sky, making it look like it was already late in the night. Only the intense lightning provided fleeting light.
Li could hardly see her husband running in front of her as the rain poured down on the two of them.
From behind her at a distance, she could hear angry swearing from the police and the barking of dogs. They had figured out that Li and Zhang had scaled the wall and were in hot pursuit.
Zhang was about to turn into the main street. Li yelled, "Not there! Over here!" Zhang just about heard her and turned to follow her lead.
Li knew a small farm that was just a few seconds away. She had played in the field when she had been a young child, sometimes happily losing herself there in the tall crops much to her parents' annoyance.
She hoped that the field would allow them to lose themselves this time.
Li and Zhang dashed into the narrow irrigation channels that gave them their only clear path. Sometimes, Li slipped in the wet mud, but she managed to regain balance and keep going.
She heard angry swearing and the barking of dogs again. Her heart skipped a beat – this time, they were much closer. Probably at the outskirts of the field.
Zhang pulled her arm. She looked at him in puzzlement.
"Enough running", he whispered to her. "They'll probably hear us if we run now."
He pulled her into the thick vegetation and crops that surrounded them.
There was hardly any space for them to squeeze through the tall and sturdy vegetation that grew in the field. But after they had walked for what seemed like a safe distance, they stopped. Tucked in among dense and tall plants, they were hopefully invisible to anyone who didn't look too closely.
Zhang wrapped his arms around Li and pulled her closer to him. They both heard the policemen as they walked around the fields looking for them.
One policeman let out a long stream of abuse and then said, "Why do these Falun Gong practitioners give us so much trouble? Why don't they just die? Or better yet, why don't they just kill themselves to reach Consummation, or whatever they call the goal of their spiritual meditation?" Then, he cursed again.
Another policeman laughed cruelly, "Don't say that. You know, it would be a disadvantage for us if Falun Gong practitioners died. They are the easiest to take advantage of. You know, we can arrest them, beat them, use them for forced labor, extort their entire life savings … and they can't do anything about it!"
The other policeman laughed more intensely, "Oh, that's true! It would be a rough day for us if Falun Gong were still legal. How could we get so much free labor then? Who could we abuse with such liberty if comrade Jiang hadn't launched the persecution of Falun Gong and issued the order of 'All Falun Gong deaths count as suicide'?"
The second policemen let out a sadistic laugh as he said, "Did you know that Jiang is supposed to have issued an order that we can rape the wives and daughters of male Falun Gong practitioners, and no one can question us?"
Li felt her husband's body tighten as he pulled her closer to him in his embrace.
Li knew that it was the subconscious reaction of a man who loved her and would give up anything to protect her. She closed her eyes, listening to his rapid heartbeat.
Raindrops dripped from his chiseled face onto her hair, but she didn't mind.
The policemen's voices continued to go up and down as they scoured the field. After half an hour, the rain was still pouring down and it showed no signs of abating.
The police left cursing. One of them shouted, "Well, there goes the 20,000 yuan that we would have gotten if we had arrested them and tortured them to break from Falun Gong!"
June 9, 2003. 7 p.m. Beijing, China
It was night when they got back home. Zhang and Li had stayed in the field for some more time to make sure that the policemen had left. They had then decided to walk home along a longer but quieter road, taking pains to avoid police who might get suspicious about the dry mud along that clung to both their clothes.
As soon as they entered the house, Li collapsed into a small wooden chair. She looked at her husband as he came by her side and absentmindedly ran his hand through his hair. He seemed to be thinking about something.
"Our daughter?" Li asked him.
Zhang nodded. "Yes. But like you said earlier, I think it's better for her to stay with your father right now. I don't want her to go through the pain of being separated from all her loved ones and being uncared for … like some children of Falun Gong practitioners I know about."
Li nodded, tears coming to her eyes. Two of her close friends, husband and wife, who both practiced Falun Gong, had recently been tortured to death one after another in Beijing's notoriously cruel labor camps. The elderly parents of her friend, the wife, had passed away from grief.
Their 3-year child had been left alone, with no one to look after her.
Li glanced at her husband, sadness in her eyes. "At least we're lucky we're still alive."
Her husband grimaced. "We have to stay alive, lady!"
He closed his eyes, his eyes turning moist and solemn. "We have to stay alive so that we can validate the truth about Dafa. We must stay alive so that we can let people know that we Falun Gong practitioners have been the victims of the most severe human rights abuses in world history, and that we are not the criminals that the Chinese government would like its citizens to think we are."
He put his face in his hands and stayed silent for a while. When he spoke again, his voice was broken.
"We have to stay alive so that we can prevent injustices like what happened to my sister from ever happening again in China."
Li, eyes moist, went to her husband's side to comfort him.
