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Xiao found a Falun Gong group close to where she lives and most mornings spends half an hour meditating, one hour doing the series of five basic qigong exercises and a further half-hour reading Li Hongzhi's book, Zhuan Falun (Turning of the Wheel of Law). It has nine lectures on such topics as the Third Eye, the "Cosmic Language" and Enlightenment. "It changes you into a totally different person," says Xiao. "You let go of a lot of human desires and become very peaceful, and then you don't fear anything. That's probably what the Chinese government is afraid of--that Falun Gong people are not afraid."
Xiao's mother, a Communist Party member, was detained for 44 hours in Beijing after the ban on Falun Gong was announced--"she is stubborn, she wouldn't sign the letter of confession," Xiao says. She was interrogated repeatedly about the group's organizational structure and was released only after finally agreeing to distance herself from Falun Gong. She is still closely monitored by her local party cell.
In the absence of any evidence of a conspiracy, however, the official media has accused Li Hongzhi of being a cult leader who promotes superstition and witchcraft. "If the scientific spirit cannot take root in peoples' hearts, pseudoscientific activities will continue to deceive people," says Zou Chenglu, a researcher at the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "We are not a cult," counters a middle-aged Falun Gong member in Beijing. "We are simply trying to learn how to be better individuals and how to prepare for our deaths. We're not attached to this world." Precisely what Falun Gong is attached to is still something of a mystery. In an interview with Time in April, Li Hongzhi spoke about the joys of levitating and claimed he knew many people who could achieve the feat--including David Copperfield, the well-known illusionist. Li also claimed that aliens have been invading humanity since the beginning of this century, with the ultimate purpose of replacing human beings by cloning. Such bizarre theories are not contained in his books, which stick to more familiar Buddhist concepts of karma, compassion and the search for enlightenment. Li fends off questions about how his followers are organized and denies that he had anything to do with the "spontaneous" April 25 protest in Beijing. Last week the government produced immigration documents to show that he had visited Beijing from April 22 to 24, but Li claims he was simply changing planes in transit to Australia. The battle between the cult and the commissars has now reverted to the Internet. The government has blocked Falun Gong sites from all mainland Internet servers and last week set up its own website--"Unveil Falun Gong for the Health and Life of the People." This Chinese-language site (ppflg.china.com.cn) contains criticism of the movement and testimonies from people who claim relatives or friends died because of Falun Gong teachings. Meanwhile the Falun Gong Research Society, which is headquartered in New York, has been putting out regular bulletins on its own site (www.falundafa.org) about the ongoing crackdown in cities across China. Some of this material is getting back into the mainland through e-mail. For the time being, the government has prevailed. Falun Gong adherents no longer dare to practice in parks, and other Chinese have been scared by the government's harsh crackdown--few have offered any support for the beleaguered movement. But in the long run, with the economy set to worsen, the leadership may regret having made millions of enemies in the past two weeks. The dragons might yet re-emerge from the sea. With reporting by Mia Turner/Beijing PAGE 1 | 2 THIS WEEK'S TABLE OF CONTENTS |
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