LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Mr. Le, a scholar from China, was touched to the core after he attended the world-acclaimed Shen Yun Performing Arts presentation at the Robinson Center Music Hall on Jan. 2.

He said that when he came to Arkansas in 2010 and saw a Shen Yun promotion in a mall, he had never heard of the New York-based company.

“But I watched the show on a VCD when I went back to mainland China and felt very shocked and moved to tears.”

Mr. Le said he realized Shen Yun had accrued “much mighty virtue” by aspiring to reawaken China’s 5,000-year-old divinely inspired cultural heritage.

“In my opinion, Shen Yun represents Chinese culture so well and promotes it so well, which made Chinese culture be brought out to the world in such a delicate form,” he said.

So when he returned to Arkansas this time, he was always asking when Shen Yun was coming back. So when he saw an advertisement, he bought tickets right away.

The Chinese mainlander repeated three times how he found Shen Yun’s presentation of classical Chinese dance and music “very touching.”

“Very touching, very moved, I am always in a state of being excited,” he said.

“I feel like Chinese culture has been destroyed too much in the last 100 years, especially in the last 60 years. So even Chinese people themselves don’t understand Chinese culture and blindly admire Western culture.”

China was once known as the Divine Land, its glorious culture said to have been brought down from the heavens, the Shen Yun website explains. But under the last 60 years of atheist communist rule, this divinely inspired culture has been all but completely destroyed and cannot be found in China today.

Mr. Le said that because of globalization, the whole world together needs to understand China and its 5,000-year ancestral culture.

“Is the real China the one that is seen on the surface nowadays? Is it the bizarre and motley China or the delicate China [that] Shen Yun represents—a China that is full and rich with cultural background?”

“I feel that Shen Yun truly makes people in the world understand Chinese culture by way of the arts.”

Mr. Le said that Chinese people living overseas should not miss an opportunity to see Shen Yun and understand ancient Chinese culture, and feel proud to be Chinese.

He said Shen Yun is meaningful and could help improve understanding of Chinese culture among his Chinese and American friends.

“Many people think that Chinese people don’t have belief, especially religious belief. But the songs in [the] Shen Yun show express a very deep message of belief, which contains universal values and features of Chinese culture—and it is very good, very, very good.”

Translation by Ariel Tian. Written in English by Raiatea Tahana-Reese

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.

Read the Chinese article