BALTIMORE—The Shen Yun Performing Arts revival of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization amazed the audience at Baltimore’s Modell Performing Arts Center at the Lyric on January 19.

This venue is ideal for the Shen Yun performers, as it has presented shows of different flavors throughout its almost 120 years of existence.

The Shen Yun websites says that its performance is “a presentation of traditional Chinese culture as it once was: a study in grace, wisdom, and the virtues distilled from the five millennia of Chinese civilization.”

Mr. Kai Jackson, a very well-liked former anchorman at WJZ, CBS Baltimore, who joined this month Sinclair Broadcasting Company Group in Washington, D.C., attended the Shen Yun performance.

He summarized his impression about the Shen Yun show, “I think it’s beautiful. I think the costumes are incredible. The dancers and the performances are amazing. It’s wonderful.”

He shared that “I feel like I’m learning a little bit about Chinese culture … China is such a vast country, that you get an idea that what you see in one part of the country is going to be different in another part of the country.”

The show is “a collection of short pieces, audiences travel from the Himalayas to tropical lake-filled regions; from the legends of the culture’s creation over 5,000 years ago through to the story of Falun Dafa in China today,” explained an article on the Shen Yun website.

Mr. Jackson had heard about the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party.

He said, “I did know about some of the oppression that had been taking place … but I didn’t know the show was going to highlight some of the oppression that is taking place in China, and that was interesting and educational.”

He had brought his children to the show and he felt that it was important that they learned also what was going on against a spiritual practice in China.

The message that he wanted his children to hear was that “to know that freedom is important. That freedom isn’t free, and it’s something that we always have to constantly strive and work towards and when someone is oppressed in another part of the world, we have an obligation to do our best to try to make sure they are no longer oppressed, if we can through the proper channels.”

The Shen Yun performance made a highly favorable impression in his mind. There he will tell his friends and acquaintances, “It’s just a beautiful performance with the combination of history, culture, costumes, and messages.”

He was delighted to see some familiar faces in the audience. “In fact, we saw a friend of our families here, with her husband. There are also some people here that we know as well.”

He parted by saying “I think telling someone and seeing it for yourself are a little bit different. You have to be here and see it.”

Reporting by Jane Pang and Heide B. Malhotra

New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit Shen Yun Performing Arts.

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.