Editor's note: This is a self-account of an ex-practitioner of cultist "Falun Gong". Being a "Falun Gong" practitioner, he had become sadly bigoted and self-opinionated until he finally extricated himself from the mire of the cult. By retelling his nightmare and experiences as a "Falun Gong" practitioner Li has convincingly and penetratingly given a thorough exposition of the true nature of the cult. In this sense, his account is much worth reading. Things may be inconceivable in view of the account done in an abnormal regretful way and the sort of psychology under which he has long been tormented. If these are not to be correctly understood readers may find it hard to straighten out the mental entanglements and perverse thinking of Li and other "Falun Gong" practitioners.

Li's account may be regarded as a recountal of his repentance or remorse, as a fine piece of living teaching material. It tells us how "Falun Gong" as a cult has taken advantage of people's vulnerabilities and loopholes in our work to have caught us unawares and further brought the practitioners under control in the way their minds are poisoned and perverted and their human rights trampled upon. This points to the complexity of ideological work and the bitter struggle we have fought in beating back the onslaught of trickster Li Hongzhi with his cultist "Falun Gong" fallacies spread in China.

"Self-account" also shows that truth is by itself all-convincing and will not allow the least adulteration by cultist fallacies of "Falun Gong". Life has provided many instances of these for a sharpening of people's vigilance against "Falun Gong". Factual, reasonable, practical ideological work will help dump all cultist filth into the dustbin of history. This is especially so in the new situation of today's China.

It has been the consistent policy of the Communist Party of China to take good care of, educate and unite all former "Falun Gong" practitioners with the rest of society. "Falun Gong" practitioner Li Yixiang's self-account by way of repentance shows the great power of ideological work done by our Party workers and people on Li to help him come to his senses as a doctoral student away from "Falun Gong". This is as shown below by Li's self-account online all on his own: I am a student studying in Doctoral Class 5 in the Electric Machinery Department of Tsinghua University, at age 25. In May 1996, I began to practice heretic exercises, hoping to have an improved health. Soon I became obsessed with and fell into the trap of "Falun Gong" for it was said that the cult could help people have a prolonged life and help me to keep it. Cultist fallacies gradually dragged me away from leading a normal life and my life was no longer in the way I usually did, as a result. Since then I was found in many and various cultist activities and gatherings with eagerness and zest to help trumpet and beat gongs to clear the way for "Falun Gong". I had twice written a friend residing abroad about my views and attitude towards "Falun Gong", my protest against the government's ban on the cult, and my intent to withdraw as a CPC member from the Chinese Communist Party. With this, I splashed an open application to the university authorities for withdrawal from my postgraduate doctoral study at Tsinghua. My antics like these had brought serious political consequences without question on the campus and abroad. But leaders of the university didn't turn their backs on me for my stupidity. Instead of forsaking me, they took great pains to help me and do patient ideological work on me. To rescue me, they had many measures adopted and had even called on various social ties to help me break with cultist "Falun Gong". For their help and solicitous care and help extended from various quarters, including that of my dearest mother and mother's brother, I finally resolved to make a clean break with "Falun Gong". I am determined to get myself back onto the right road pointed out by the Chinese Communist Party and the university authorities. Being a "Falun Gong" practitioner no more, I find myself now most happy back to a normal life and as a young college student "refusing no man's food" on the campus of Tsinghua. 1. How Did I Fall into the Trap of "Falun Gong"

I was born in 1974 in Wuhan. After finishing my primary school days in 1986, I enrolled with an excellent mark score in a key junior senior high school known in Wuhan. In 1990, Northwest China University launched a college course for teenager talents enrolled on a nationwide scale. I was then at age of 15. Time flew by to make me a first-year grader for senior high school study. As I hoped, I was soon admitted to the juveniles' class by taking the fourth place on the name list of young enrollees in the university out of 500 teenager contestants from various parts of China. In December 1994, I sent in a written application for Party membership and had the honor to become a member of the Chinese Communist Party. After completing my course at the juveniles' class I directly went on taking up postgraduate doctoral study at Tsinghua. Looking back over the path I have traveled, I must say life has favored me and has all been plain sailing irrespective of an intervening nightmarish period of "Falun Gong".

People, moving on the campus of Tsinghua, were all young and talented, being completely devoted to their academic studies, as I had first found in the university. At an ebullient age, everybody on the campus seemed to have been born most hard working, leading a life most competitive and with a rosy future. But some time later, I felt I might become a loser on the campus for a poor health I had got. So things were in no way easy when speaking about my course study. Academic study had become something burdensome and intolerable to me. I found myself tired and most weak under a trying weight of large piles of books I had to read. Good physique was in crying need. I had to find an effective cure to my poor dilapidated body without doubt. I was forced to take up physical training for sure, doing morning exercises every day in order to catch up and take a due place in Tsinghua. With the passage of time my health was gradually improved as a result of physical training. But life seemed to have forced me onto a wrong path. I was introduced to Li Hongzhi's "Falun Gong" and the like fallacies as "truthfulness, compassion and forbearance" in May 1996. Subconsciously, unwittingly, and piteously, I was recruited. As a new recruit, I was first found among a troop of devout practitioners practicing "Falun Gong" on open grounds in the university. It was physical training that had got my health gradually improved but I contrarily attributed it to cultist exercises and my embracing of "Falun Gong" with which I became obsessed, as the first step I took, to inch my way into the trap of "Falun Gong".

Second, Li Hongzhi bragged about "truthfulness, compassion and forbearance" that had exerted the biggest captivating effect on me. Being a young man, having been born and grown up under an old traditional culture since childhood there had been called in my innermost heart a responsive chord for "truthfulness" and "compassion" as Li Hongzhi had spread. Since I was at a young age, knowing little about life, I was in no way to know things right from wrong, not to say a clear understanding of China's reform and opening up and many problems that had to be coped with on the course of the country's modernization. Following my instincts now as inflamed by Li Hongzhi's "truthfulness, compassion and forbearance", I made it my habit to make carping comments caviling indiscriminately at all things and social problems I found. Like many other fellow practitioners bewitched by Li's fallacies, tying myself up closely with "Falun Gong", I took part in every type of cultist activities, gatherings, meetings and assemblies organized. As a "Falun Gong" practitioner, I acted in the strictest cultist way with myself away from the life of normal people, in the words of Li Hongzhi, of the "ordinary (common) run". According to Li Hongzhi, they were would-be "devils" that had nothing in common with us "Falun Gong" practitioners. Moving and restricting myself among a pious small group of "Falun Gong" adherents, I shared with my fellow practitioners a life exclusive to our own. As "Falun Gong" practitioners we had cultist study sessions and exercises every morning and evening. At these, we also had exchanges of our views, thoughts and sentiments in the way we thought ourselves being an "elevated" group of adherents of no "ordinary run" inspired by "high ideals" and complete devotion and loyalty to "Master" Li Hongzhi. For us practitioners descending from many a varied institutional units, departments and social quarters, to all appearance, being a harmonious, deified and mutually dependent congregation assembled under the same cultist pennants of Li Hongzhi's "truthfulness, compassion and forbearance", we seemed to have been in a sublime retreat of Chinese Arcadia. In this "retreat", we found ourselves away from the secular world, free from a life of pressure, turmoil and worries since we had been taught to put ourselves day by day at a farther and farther distance from all worldly worries before our "all-round fulfillment" to ascend to Heaven.