Large crowds gathered on the sidewalks in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens in New York City on Feb. 1, braving the chilly weather to celebrate Chinese New Year with a massive parade featuring more than 30 floats and 60 organizations.
One of the largest groups in the parade was made up of local Falun Gong practitioners. Some of them performed as a large, uniformed marching band; some performed dragon and lion dances; one group played the Chinese waist drums; an all-female group dressed like heavenly maidens; and some carried banners with such phrases as “Happy New Year” and “Falun Dafa Spreads Worldwide.”
Zhang Ren, a former human rights lawyer in China, was among those who came to see the parade. He told The Epoch Times that he was deeply moved and stunned to see Falun Gong practitioners participating in the event amid the communist regime’s severe persecution of the group in China.
“I admire Falun Gong’s spirit of sacrifice and perseverance very much, and it is also something we need to learn from,” Zhang said. “What China lacks most is ‘truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.’”
Those three words represent the core values of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, a spiritual practice rooted in traditional Chinese culture that consists of moral teachings and meditative exercises. The practice was introduced in China in 1992 and is now practiced in more than 100 countries around the world.
“China needs the concepts of ’truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance' to awaken people’s wisdom,” Zhang said. “I sincerely wish that Falun Gong practitioners will be able to return to China soon, paving the way for a free and democratic China.”
Many Falun Gong practitioners have fled China since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a nationwide persecution against the group in July 1999 out of fear that the practice’s popularity would undermine the regime’s authoritarian rule. According to official estimates, there were at least 70 million practitioners just before the start of the persecution.
Wu Pingqi, a businessman originally from China’s central city of Wuhan, said Falun Gong practitioners are not just standing up for themselves.
“They are also speaking out for the 1.4 billion Chinese people in China and for the suffering people,” Wu told The Epoch Times. “Their spirit is worthy of respect, admiration, and praise from every Chinese [person].”
Chinese New Year Parade
The parade, which fell on Feb. 1 this year, is an annual event in Flushing, home of the world’s largest Chinatown. The parade started at 11 a.m. local time at Union Street and 37th Avenue, in front of the New York Police Department’s 109th Precinct.Many New York politicians took part in the event, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, and Flushing City Councilwoman Sandra Ung.
U.S.-based rights activist Jie Lijian said seeing the practitioners in the parade reminded him of the atrocities the group has encountered in China.
“We know that many of them have been subjected to persecution in China. Some families have been torn apart and some died, some have been subjected to all kinds of torture, and there are those whose organs have been harvested,” Jie told The Epoch Times. “I don’t even know how they got through all of that.”
Since 1999, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated and untold numbers killed, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
Tian Faquan, a Chinese national who said he has made resisting the CCP part of his life’s mission, said he had high hopes for China after seeing Falun Gong practitioners in the parade.
“I hope a parade like this will become a reality [in China], not next year but tomorrow,” Tian told The Epoch Times at the event.
