They personify serenity, these half-dozen meditators sitting
cross-legged on the sidewalk, eyes closed, arms outstretched. Chinese music and gentle intonations
emanate from a boom box. The confirmed dead stare hauntingly from a photo display. It is a cloudless
Saturday morning outside the Liberty Bell pavilion at Fifth and Market Streets. And, as they do here
every weekend, these practitioners of Falun Gong are making a statement about freedom.
"We do this in such a public place for others' benefit," says pixieish Qing-Qing Qiu, a
research scientist for a Berwyn biotech company. "We like to introduce people to this thing
that can make their lives better. At the same time, we wish to attract attention to the situation in
China."
Qiu, a 30-ish Canadian citizen, left China in 1989 to study physics at Queens University in
Kingston, Ontario. Six years ago, she moved to this area and began postdoctoral training at the
University of Pennsylvania. She took up Falun Gong in February 1999, at the urging of her sister,
who was visiting from Beijing.
That was before the situation in China exploded.
Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa), an ancient mind-body exercise regimen roughly similar to yoga, became
wildly popular in China a decade ago, after a "master" wrote a best-seller detailing its
virtues. And though its bedrock principles are truth, compassion and tolerance, the Communists
outlawed it in July 1999, branding it a cult movement that threatened national stability.
According to Amnesty International, thousands of practitioners were subsequently imprisoned.
According to the Falun Dafa Information Center (www.faluninfo.net)
in New York, at least 430 have been tortured to death.
Members of Qiu's immediate family were among those persecuted. Her mother, carted off during the
initial Beijing police sweep, endured "reeducation" in a mental hospital. Months later,
Qiu's sister began serving a one-year sentence in a labor camp.
Qiu says the teachings of Falun Gong calmed her during those harrowing days. Today, they allow
her to avoid bitterness.
"I feel very sad, very disappointed, over what happened. But I am not angry. If I could, I
would tell the Communist leaders that what they did was wrong. And I would tell them that Falun Gong
has brought me great joy."
Frank Rubino is a Philadelphia freelance writer. Direct e-mail to Inquirer.Magazine@phillynews.com.
(Source: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/inquirer_magazine/3787141.htm)