Liu Siying had been a lovely and pretty girl with a nickname of “happy-nut”.  But now, her severely burnt face and hands tell people that she would no longer be happy again, Xinhua reported on January 30.

In the afternoon of January 23, Liu Siying, a fifth-grade primary school pupil in central China’s Henan Province, was led by her mother to Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square with a beautiful dream of soon entering the “Falun World”. There, they set themselves ablaze.

“The flame could not hurt you. It will only pass through your body and you will reach the paradise in a twinkling.”

“It is a wonderful world, you could at least become a dharma king and many people would serve you.”

That’s the remarks of her mother and other Falun Gong practitioners who encouraged her to set fire to herself. She later told a nurse when she was rescued by the police and rushed to Jishuitan Hospital, China’s best hospital for treating burn patients.

She failed to reach the “paradise”. The flames changed all. The great pain and fear made the young girl cry time and again “Mom”, “Uncle, Help! Help me!”

The hospital diagnosed the girl with burns to 40% of her body, heavy aspiration injuries in trachea and fourth-grade burns to the face.

In an instant, a healthy girl became a life-long physically impaired.

Doctors at the hospital said it was after 16 hours of treatment that her shock caused by the burn was preliminarily controlled.

Her head was bandaged and her burnt left hand hung in front of her chest after undergoing a skin-transplant operation. Her trachea was cut to be equipped with an endotracheal tube. A reporter recorded the following conversation between Liu and a nurse:  
“Why did you choose to commit self-burning”?  

“Going to the paradise.”

“Where is the paradise?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s that world like?”

“A wonderful world.”

Pausing for a while, Liu said that it is a world “with gold everywhere and the road to the paradise is also paved with gold.”

“Why gold is everywhere there?”

“My uncles and aunts practicing Falun Gong told me.”

“Are you sure that you could reach that world?”

“I’ve not thought of the question. It depends on how hard I practice the Falun Gong.”

“How do you get to the paradise?”

“Physical body remains here and the spirit leaves.”

“How do you know that?”

“From the book ‘Zhuanfalun’ (Turning the Wheel of Law) and from Mom.”

“Why did you fail to reach that world?”

Keeping silent for a while, she murmured “Mom fooled me.”

“Do you still believe in ‘Zhuanfalun’?”

She tossed her head with “no” and asked the nurse “Could you help me find mom?”

“Your mom is in this hospital,” the nurse replied. Nobody has the courage to tell her the truth -- her mother has died of serious burns.

Nurses said that Liu had been a well-behaved girl. Her mother taught her to practice Falun Gong last March and she became acquainted with a number of Falun Gong practitioners. They praised her cleverness in learning Falun Gong and said that she could become a “dharma king” in “paradise”.

When she was sent to the hospital nurses learned that the girl loves music and toys. So they brought her an electronic music bear as a gift.

“Siying, what are you going to do after you complete treatment in the hospital?”

“Study hard! Study hard!” she repeated again.

In her class, Siying had always got high marks. She had told her classmates that “entering into the year of 2001, the new century, the grass is green, the spring is new and we should try to bring more new things in the new spring.”

Now the spring is coming, Siying is in a hospital bed.

Doctors said that all her fingers might have to be amputated.