JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—Since its inception in 2006, Shen Yun Performing Arts has become renowned around the world for showing audiences 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, a China before communism that was previously little known to the West. Yet many audience members don’t realize that
Shen Yun originated in New York, not China.
“Most Americans don’t know, you really can’t see this in China,” said Tim Mernigan, a software engineer, who saw a performance with his wife, Mary Jo Mernigan, at the Jacksonville Center for the Performing Arts on Jan. 21.
The couple had lived in China for a little over a year, and shared a key reason why Shen Yun is banned by the Chinese communist regime: it reveals the regime’s decades-long persecution of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa.
“We saw the Falun Dafa. We saw them out in the streets and stuff, and we know what happens over there,” said Mr. Mernigan. “We understand the persecution that goes on there. We want to come out and support this
artistic expression. Because I think it’s really important in this country for people to understand.”
Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a spiritual discipline that teaches the three principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance, as well as five meditative exercises. Its popularity grew to such that nearly one in 13 people in China had taken up the practice in the 1990s, before the communist regime banned it in 1999, mass detaining thousands overnight. Even today, Falun Dafa practitioners in China are subject to
persecution, including detention in labor camps, torture, and forced organ harvesting.
In fact, some of the founding
artists of Shen Yun had faced religious persecution by the Chinese communist regime for practicing Falun Gong, and came to America in pursuit of freedom of expression.
The Mernigans said that Shen Yun’s portrayal of the truth of Falun Gong and the persecution, which makes up just part of the two-hour program, was eye-opening and beautifully done.
“We want to support the art,” said Mrs. Mernigan.
The values of truth, compassion, and tolerance were relevant and universal, according to Mrs. Mernigan.
“We did not share maybe the same religion, but we share the same values,” she said.
She saw in the
performance that the traditional Chinese culture was a spiritual one, in contrast to the communist regime’s atheist culture.
“It’s true because if you don’t believe in a higher power, how then are you going to, like in the last scene, how are you going to help the person that is hurt?” she said. “I don’t practice Falun Gong, but it doesn’t mean that I need to cancel you or hit you or be violent against you. We could still be friends. We could still have dinner. We can still talk. We can still enjoy a performance. Even though the spiritual part is not my religion, I can still support it.”
Reporting by Xinxin Teng and Catherine Yang.
