SEATTLE—Jin Xiuhong sees Shen Yun Performing Arts every year, and has brought dozens of people to enjoy the performance with her over the years, believing that the artists deliver a message that could only make for a more beautiful world.
“The programs only get better and better,” said Ms. Jin, the vice president of Federation for a Democratic China, a group formed in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of student protestors by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
This year, Ms. Jin said she brought American friends as well as some who have only left China in recent years, and “everybody loves it.”
“This is super beautiful—and it’s something you can enjoy wholeheartedly,” she said after seeing Shen Yun at the Marion Oliver McCaw Hall on April 3.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that teaches the three principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance, and the CCP has violently persecuted the practitioners since 1999. Shen Yun artists also practice Falun Gong, and often include in their programs stories set in modern-day China, showing the courage and faith of such practitioners and the Chinese people who hold onto traditional culture despite persecution.
Ms. Jin said this was one of her favorite aspects of the production, which is created anew every year, finding the storytelling that weaves in the important topic of Falun Gong “very creative.”
She said it was “incredibly unfortunate” that Shen Yun could not be seen in China, and said this spoke of the nature of the CCP.
“The CCP is an evil party ... that does not allow the true, the good, and the beautiful to exist, that’s how evil it is,” she said. “We believe the whole world should support the ‘quit the CCP’ movement that Falun Gong has inspired, and support the truth, goodness, and beauty that Falun Gong practitioners have created.”
She wanted to thank the artists and hoped they would continue to stop in Seattle on every tour. “We will never tire of seeing Shen Yun every year,” she said, wishing the artists good health.
Also moved by the stories about Falun Gong was Wang Mingyi, who immigrated from China two years ago and was seeing Shen Yun for the first time.
Mr. Wang said when he was in China, he had also been taken in by the CCP’s propaganda against Falun Gong, and did not understand the situation. Learning the truth about how the CCP has persecuted the practitioners for their faith after coming to America, Mr. Wang was moved to tears seeing this told through a story-based dance vignette in Shen Yun.
Mr. Wang said he saw in Shen Yun the kind side of China, the cultural side of China, and the classical legacy the millennia-old civilization had to offer.
“The kind cultural factors need to be preserved and passed on,” he said. “But the Chinese Communist Party is destroying this. It is very serious for the Chinese people. It wants to completely destroy China’s traditional culture and stimulate the evil of human nature. This is the most evil part of the Chinese Communist Party.”
He contrasted the three principles of Falun Gong with what the CCP seeks to accomplish and the communist regime’s atheist culture.
“We should all learn from the culture of truth, compassion, and tolerance,” Mr. Wang said. He said he admired Shen Yun for inheriting and preserving the good parts of Chinese culture, and hoped more people could experience it, even one day in China.
