Book description
This true story of the Bai Family in China traces how their devotion
to truth placed them on a collision course with the Communist Party.
When they became practitioners of Falun Gong, it paved the way for a
painful and torturous, yet enlightening, path in life, especially for
the two brilliant brothers Xiaojun and Shaohua. After the Chinese
Communist regime began its systematic repression of Falun Gong
practitioners in 1999, Bai Xiaojun was tortured to death in one of the
laogai or "re-education through labour" camps. His
brother Bai Shaohua also disappeared in another such prison for three
years. Through blood and sweat, Shaohua made it alive out of prison
but was once again abducted in early February, 2008.
The details in this gripping account of how Falun Gong practitioners
are being repressed reveal the larger pattern of life, and death,
under a totalitarian regime.
Authors Long Tu and Yuan Meng, now living in Canada, compiled this
account through personal contact with members of the Bai Family. They
also write from personal experience. Long Tu is a computer program
designer and Yuan Meng an architect and urban designer. Yuan Meng was
herself imprisoned for 16 months in a laogai camp before
leaving China, where unusual "meals" caused her body to
swell and her back bones were broken during the persecution. They now
live in Toronto and wrote Pagoda of Light to honour their
imprisoned friends, noting that "the experience of the Bai family
is but one of thousands of examples."
"Human rights and freedom of religion are guaranteed by
international law. If they do not exist in daily reality for
practitioners of Falun Gong they have no meaning in the grandly worded
charters of human freedom."
-Hon. Jason Kenney,
Canadian Secretary of State for Multiculturalism
LONG TU and YUAN MENG grew up in China, but now live in Toronto,
Canada. Long Tu is a computer program designer and Yuan Meng is an
architectural and urban designer.
