Kefei, Yifei’s younger sister had heard about the severe, inhumane abuse female Falun Gong practitioners endured in a labor camp at the order of Chinese Communist officials. Heartbroken, the sisters felt they needed to take action and speak out against the CCP’s brutal persecution against Falun Gong. They went to Tiananmen Square to make their appeal.
Here is an image we obtained in producing our latest film “Finding Courage” with quite a story to tell. It is of Yifei (the main character in our documentary) on Tiananmen Square in 2001 holding a banner to appeal to Chinese Communist authorities to stop the persecution of Falun Gong. Holding up banners was often the only way Falun Gong practitioners could send out their pleas for help and reach out to the authorities amidst the nation-wide crackdown. Jiang Zemin, the Communist Dictator of China ordered the entirety of the military, police, all of the government agencies, and the media at the outset of the persecution in 1999 to "ruin their reputations, bankrupt them financially, destroy them physically."
In an interview with Yifei for our film, she stated that many practitioners from all over China went to Tiananmen Square when the persecution of Falun Gong started to make their desperate plea to stop the violence against them. “At that time we still had some hope in the Chinese government. We hoped they would listen to the people and hear their heartfelt wish. We wanted them to know that Falun Gong is good. But once Falun Gong practitioners got to Beijing to appeal, they were arrested. So many went to Beijing and disappeared.”
Shige Chang, pictured above, took the photo of Yifei holding the banner on Tiananmen Square.
Yifei’s friend Shige Chang was on Tiananmen Square that same day. She was surprised and happy to see Yifei, but Yifei didn’t see her. Shige had a camera with her. In a spur of the moment decision, she quickly took the photo and left just before the police arrived. Luckily she didn’t get caught. It took her a long time before she felt brave enough to get the photos printed. She had no idea if they would even turn out (it was on film, not digital) and the photo developed. She sent it to Minghui.org for publishing. Yifei saw the photo on Minghui when she got to the United States, but she always wondered who took it.
One day, over a decade later, Shige met Yifei in California. They reconnected happily. Shige told her how she took the photo. We interviewed her friend Shige Chang for our movie about the photo and about how she witnessed Kefei’s ill treatment while they were both detained in China.