My Extraordinarily Special Daughter

My daughter was born in Beijing in 1992, the Year of the Monkey. At the time, I almost died from birth complications, and the whole family was distressed. Her grandma exclaimed, “What kind of important person could this child be, entering this world with such earth-shaking drama?” 

(1) 

My daughter learned to say “no” when she was only 1-1/2 years old. That day, she had done something naughty. I had put on a stern face and begun to scold her, but surprisingly, she was not scared or upset at all. Looking at me, she just frowned and said very clearly with much effort, “No, mom! No angry!” 

It was her first attempt to say “no,” clearly and forcefully. It seemed as if she cared more about my well-being than about being reprimanded. Instantly, I knew that everything I had gone through, and would go through for her, would be worthwhile. 

(2) 

My daughter began to worry about life when she was just 2-1/2 years old. One day, I took her for a walk to a primary school, and we sat in the playground. She looked longingly at a classroom and asked me, “Mom, can I go to school too?” “No, you are too small,” I said. She was silent for a while, then, with a deep sigh, she said, “Mom, when will I EVER be taller?” She emphasized the word “ever” with such force, as if she had been bothered by this problem for a long time. I was lost for words as I looked into her eyes, pondering silently whether she was actually some sort of a reincarnated philosopher. At last, I answered her in a very non-philosophical way. “Eat more, and then you will gradually grow taller.” 

(3) 

When my daughter was 3-1/2 years old, she actually taught me a lesson. In a serious tone of voice, she asked me, “Mom, why are there bad people in the world?” 

Astonished, I looked at her and thought, “Yes, why indeed? If there were no bad people, only good people, wouldn’t the world be great?” Hundreds of thoughts and thousands of possibilities flashed across my mind, but in the end, I couldn’t answer her question in a way that a three-year-old could comprehend. I could only tell her honestly, “I don’t know.” 

She tilted her head and said proudly, “Well, I know!” 

Taken by surprise, I said, “Really? Then tell me why there are bad people.” 

“They keep on doing bad things, so they turn into bad people!” Gosh, that is it? 

(4) 

One day, when my daughter was 4-1/2 years old, my husband and I took her for a car ride. It was probably an auspicious day. We saw many wedding cars along the way, each one more luxurious than the last. My daughter gazed excitedly out of the window. After a while, my husband teased her, “When you get married, do you want to ride in a limousine?” 

Sinking back into the seat, she answered instantly in a serious tone, “We will see when the time comes.” 

After that, she didn’t take a second look. Once more, her reply shocked and amazed me. How did she manage to remain so emotionally unmoved at that age? 

(5) 

My daughter was bright for her age. She was already in the second year of primary school when she was five and a half. When I went to a parent-teacher meeting, I saw a big sign near the school gate, which read: “Learning to be; Learning to know; Learning to do; learning to be healthy and strong.” After returning home, I asked her, “What does the saying ‘learning to be’ mean?” While I was preparing to give her a lengthy sermon on the subject, she smiled and said with ease, “I know! It is just to be a good person!” 

Instantly, I forgot the speech I had prepared and just wanted to admire her. 

(6) 

When my daughter was six, one day I overheard her talking to her grandma in the next room. “Grandma, please practice Falun Gong. It’s really good for your health. Believe me!” 

It’s true. My daughter knew that I had been extremely weak and in poor health for several years. But after practicing Falun Gong (which is a meditation practice based on Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance), I had completely recovered. So she was making a similar plan for her grandma, wanting her to become well too. 

Grandma said, “I don’t know how to.” 

“Let mom teach you.” 

“But my eyesight is bad, and I can’t read the books.” 

“I can read to you!” 

Grandma couldn’t find a reason to refuse her, so she tried to satisfy her by saying, 

“Fine, fine, I will learn when I have time.” 

My daughter, however, was not so easily fooled. She was overcome with emotion when she finally said, “Grandma, I don’t want you to die.” 

(7) 

When my daughter was nearly seven, the local television stations started broadcasting many defamatory and offensive programs against Falun Gong. The lies were so bizarre that I couldn’t believe my ears, and the bombardment was so heavy that I could barely think rationally. While watching one program, my daughter asked with wide open eyes, “Mom, why do they say Falun Gong practitioners are bad people?” 

My heart ached like it had been “bitten by a thousand snakes.” 

I knew she would never think of Falun Gong practitioners as “bad people” since she never saw any of them doing “bad things.” Besides, I had reminded her to be a good person all the time. 

I could not handle the confusion in her eyes, nor her innocent, urgent expectation of an immediate answer. I had no idea how to respond to her question and only wanted to cry out in anguish to all those who had spread the lies.

Fortunately, a friend came to my rescue and said, “They’re the ones with a guilty conscience!” 

(8) 

When my daughter was seven and a half, I was sent to a forced labor camp for practicing Falun Gong. My daughter came to visit me a few months later. The moment she saw me, she started talking intently, “Mom, I’ve learned to play the flute. We now have a ‘little twinkle bell’ in our house.” 

She kept on chattering about the fun she had with the “little twinkle bell”, though by the end of her twenty-minute visit, I still had no idea whether it was a toy, a pet, or a person. At least I was relieved to hear her talking like that. I thought to myself, “Thankfully, a young child doesn’t know the harsh taste of sorrow. It seems that she is happy and untroubled by her mother not being around.”

More than a year later, I learned that her grandma had strictly forbidden her to tell others about my detention in a forced labor camp, where only criminals are supposed to be held. No matter how unjust it was, detention is considered shameful and demeans a family’s reputation. 

Being young, however, she was unable to restrain herself. She confided her secret to her teacher in an essay. Perhaps, subconsciously, she thought of her homeroom teacher as the mother she was missing. Grandma scolded her for that, because she wished to avoid any discrimination against her granddaughter. To avoid this, her father had to transfer her to a new school. 

(9) 

By the time of my release from the camp, my daughter was eight-and-a-half. I was lucky to be alive at all after narrowly escaping certain death. A few days later, I found a note on the table in my daughter’s handwriting. She had written, “Mom, I advise you to stop practicing Falun Gong. Please take a look at this book.” 

Her school teacher had given her a book that described Falun Gong practitioners as murderers and psychopaths. I tried to explain to her that I was a good person, and that the book had been fabricated and was full of lies. 

But she interrupted and shouted desperately at me, “I know you are a good person! But the television says Falun Gong practitioners are bad people! I don’t know who to believe!” 

In her dark, grape-like almond eyes, beyond the despair, there was an even deeper look of someone who had already been through too much of life’s hardships…

My heart felt a stabbing pain. I wondered how much this young life had endured during my absence. How much had her young heart been hurt? How did she respond when her teachers and school friends asked where her mother was? What other torment did she suffer during my absence? It hurt me to watch her trying to choose who to believe among her teacher, the media, those around her, and her own mother. 

I had to tell her about many things that I would not normally discuss with such a young child: the Cultural Revolution, President Liu Shaoqi, who was killed during the Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Although these happenings were very brutal, there was no other way to confront the lies, and convince her to believe me and love me again. 

A few days later, she nodded her head knowingly while telling me what she had discovered. “It seems that whoever is in power stirs up something: Mao Zedong had the Cultural Revolution; Deng Xiaoping had the Tian’anmen Square Massacre; and Jiang Zemin has the persecution of Falun Gong.” 

(10) 

When my daughter was nearly nine, I faced the danger of being sent back to a forced labor camp. I had no choice but to flee my country, leaving her behind with her father to manage without me. A year later, still having not found me, the police took her father away to an unknown place. 

On my daughter’s tenth birthday, I phoned her to wish her a happy birthday. She said, 

“I am not happy at all!” 

Tears welled up in my eyes. I asked her, “Is there any news about your father?” 

“It’s all your fault! It’s all your fault!” was her answer… 

I was speechless. Coldly, she said from the other end of the line, “Do you have anything else to say?” 

Tears flooded down my cheeks. I knew this wasn’t really what she meant. Those words, “It’s all your fault,” must have been something she had heard from others. When I was by her side, she had already learned to distinguish right from wrong. But people who have lived for years under lies and iron-fisted rule not only grow accustomed to believing that power equals truth; they also lose the very concept of right and wrong. Some even find it impossible to forgive those who refuse to deaden their consciences and accept ideological enslavement—and are therefore persecuted.

Once again, my heart ached more sharply than if it had been cut by a knife. This was the first time in her ten years that my daughter had spoken to me in such a tone. I would never blame her. But when I thought of how her pure, innocent young heart—nurtured by lies—was now sprouting poisonous hatred, my heart felt as though it were splitting open, bleeding drop by drop.

I remembered a story I had once read somewhere about a female writer from the former Soviet Union. When this writer was unjustly imprisoned, her teenage daughter wrote to her and asked, “Mother, please tell me—was it you who were wrong, or were the people who imprisoned you wrong? If you were wrong, I will hate you; if they were wrong, I will hate them.”

Fearing that her daughter would suffer if she hated those in power, the mother steeled her heart and told her daughter that she herself was wrong. As a result, both mother and daughter carried that pain for the rest of their lives.

I did not want to repeat the path of that Soviet woman writer. But I was far away, communication was difficult, the home phone was monitored, and the letters I wrote to my daughter were always confiscated. Protecting a young, tender heart that is under the enormous pressure of a nationwide machinery of lies and propaganda turned out to be so incredibly difficult.

(11) 

Recently, my daughter turned eleven. In my dreams, I often flew back to my home and worried about her losing her innocence and inborn intelligence, and thus getting lost.

But on many other occasions, I think of sending word to my extraordinary daughter. 

This is what I would say: In order not to be enslaved by lies, in order to reunite with you in dignity, in order that your future daughter and your daughter’s daughter would never have to suffer what you have suffered, in order that thousands upon thousands of little girls like you could remain by their mothers’ side, to be loved and pampered, your mother is doing her utmost. This is the darkness before dawn! Soon, you will be able to witness an amazing phenomenon – the truth will overpower all lies and falsehoods; brutality cannot subdue compassion and justice; our days of enjoying happiness and merriment under the sun will once again be here. 

(The above article was written in 2003 and has won a Special Prize in the Global “Red China’s Lies”  Writing Competition initiated by The Epoch Times in 2003. )

Jennifer and her daughter playing in a park in Pingdingshan City, Heinan Province in 1996.