37: Shen Yun the Chinese Dance Cult that is MUCH More Complicated Than You Think

This popular dance show is operated by religious practitioners labeled an ‘evil cult’ by the Chinese Communist Party — here’s what you should know about Shen Yun.

Transcript

Hey guys!!! Welcome back :) It's that time of year again :) NO not Christmas. It is the season of seeing Shen Yun advertisements everywhere and like most weird slash good stories start.... I was at brunch with my friend and we were walking around town and there was like a ad for shenyun in a boba shop just like this huge poster and then I was like man I've always kind of wanted to go like it looks really pretty I've seen all the commercials and stuff but it's just so expensive it was like 250 bucks a ticket for the city that I'm in and I was just like well that's like as much as seeing like Hamilton or something like I I'll just go see like one of those but maybe I'll go see shenyun someday and my friend was like oh yeah like I went it's really good and I was like oh like how is it and she was all like oh well I mean the traditional dancing was fantastic but then there was like this political part which you knew was coming but she didn't know how crazy it was there was like this car crash and then like they throw a baby off stage and then like there's this Red Tornado thing happening on a screen behind it with like the Karl Marx and stuff his head like swirling around and she's just like it was wild it was wild and I was like are you kid--- are you joking? like no I'm serious like this really happened and so that is what today's adventure is once I heard that once I heard that craziness I was just like well I need to understand this I need to understand why so today we'll be talking about Falun Gong and its connection to the dance troupe shenyun on Reese Grey Analyzes we look at creations and experiences in art media music and even video games to explore exactly why we think the way we think question what we believe and learn something new and today and so you're probably thinking well like what what's Falun Gong because I kind of didn't know what it was to begin with well Falun Gong nowadays is what people refer to as a as a cult basically they call it a cult and Falun gong was actually banned in China and the leader of the Falun gong movement moved to the USA and settled in New York in like the '90s and in order to spread the the story of Falun gong art is a great medium to to educate people um so it combined like traditional dance and Fallon gong and anti-chinese sentiment and the Chinese Embassy even puts out a warning to not listen to Falun Dafa or Falun gong because it is a cult and to like avoid being deceived by the Falun gong organization so let's research this and kind of figure out like is this a cult or is it something that was unfairly banned from China so we're going to go through that today so the establishment of Falun gong was in 1991 actually it's a really new movement so and forgive my pronunciation I know roast me in the comments so this was made by Lee Hongxi so it's a like a spiritual practice like combining qigong and exercise qigong is really similar to like yoga or tai chi so it's just kind of like movement and meditations and awareness and Oneness and all of that so not really a a religion of sorts but kind of like a way to Center yourself like yoga and taichi and its moral philosophy was based off of like the four tenants which I'm going to say horribly Jen Shan and ren run oh my God that's my friend's last name and she laughs every time I say it run oh my God so it's truthfulness compassion and forbearance that are the three pillars of qigong so Falun gong originally it takes off people love it Yum Yum Yum Yum Falun gong so awesome and the Chinese government actually endorses it too they're like oh yeah this is good this is good stuff like you're getting people active you know we stand behind you Falun gong we like it so at first the Falun gong Li Hongxi leader and the Chinese government were pretty cool this did not last long the practice just like skyrocketed to fame basically and there was tens of millions of people practicing Falun gong and these were all types of people like people in the Communist Party in politics people in the military regular everyday people kids old people and parents and everyone was just really into it but remember those like pillars that we talked about they kind of started to conflict with um the ccp's ideology uh of like communism that they were trying to uphold within China at the time so Falun gong had a focus on like spirituality and morality but the CCP was atheistic and more Marxist in its ideology and so they saw Falun gong as a competitor and because it was getting so popular the Chinese government was like all right that's enough that's enough of it now and now you guys cannot do Fallen gong anymore it was becoming too much of a pretty much like a movement in ideology within the country so the CCP viewed itself as the ultimate moral and ideological Authority in China and then with Falun gong they started they were fearing that they were starting to lose that Authority in the country and so seeing them as a potential competitor they're like no more so really fast like 5 years later China takes it back they're like no we're done now no longer friends because in 1996 the people who practice fall on gong their membership surpassed that of the Communist Party in some regions with at that point in 1996 being between 70 to 100 million people and then at this time Lee hongi was all like he was thriving he wanted to publish a book on this you know get really get the ball moving people loved it and China was like no you can't publish the book you're not allowed to do that so they nixed that and in the book there is apparently some like like authentic knowledge of like daoism and stuff in there but there's also like crazy stuff in there too like harnessing your inner power in order to do like a magic of some sort or like to like harness that energy within yourself in order to have powers right which That's not healthy that's not that's not it and if you like dig into people's experiences with Falun gong people do say this like they lost a lot of like time and had an obsession with like getting these skills there was this one story I read where someone trusted that them themselves was a Healer and like quit their job and everything and went into like massage therapy and was like so obsessed with it so obsessed with the fact that they were like a master energy worker right and then they kind of fell into that rabbit hole for a couple of years so like with anything that is like a spirituality or like a religious type of thing you just have to have a type of awareness that you're not being taken in advantage of by people or like delusional or something I know that's a huge discussion for another day but anyway this fall on gong stuff so he ski dadles from China he's all like well if I can't do it here I'm going to move to the US and do it over there and so that's what he did move to New York and in 1999 the CCP officially labels it as an organization for Heretics so they were done for and it was said that practitioners of Falun gong in China there was like organ harvesting there was like persecution and arrests of course and forced labor these are continuous allegations of the CCP for various groups um of of groups in the in the CCP so so in July of that year of 1999 the CCP started this huge campaign against fall on gong which apparently led to the most strict crackdowns like in history with reportedly Millions being detained people were sent to labor camps and then of course people may have been killed for the organ harvesting and then that year as well there's a lot of propaganda going on um even on television stations and stuff that Falun gong was superstitious and it was anti-science and this sparked a lot of protest within China because they felt like this was a misrepresentation of what Falun gong actually was so in comes like Mass demonstration so people coming together and standing peacefully in solidarity against the propaganda that's being spread by the CCP and what was the straw that broke the camel's back was that there was academic article published about the dangers of Falun gong so there was a mass demonstration in Tian Jin in 1999 the article criticize Falun gong for Spiritual manipulation and so thousands of protesters stood in solid it at the University of TianJin and they were like demanding a retraction of that article and at that protest the police detained people and then this just snowballed into more and more protests for weeks and weeks and then just a month later we have the jongen high protest where there was more than 10,000 protesters this time because the movement grew and grew and people were seeing how serious this was and this one they were not only begging for the freedom to practice Falun gong but they were begging for the release of the people who were imprisoned and the sheer size of this just shocked the CCP they were just like oh my God like how do we how do we even handle this and this is kind of why like the Falun gong leader was trying to get International recognition for these human rights abuses so so far you hear this and you're like oh no this sounds like you know the these people were wronged so far but you get into what's happening now with Shen Yun and it gets it gets concerning and and this is why so in 2001 when Fallen gong was already banned we had the biggest incident which was [youknowwhat] Square where the CCP aired footage of people practicing Falun gong and then people setting themselves on fire which people say was propaganda to make people who followed Falun gong look crazy and so there's this Narrative of the CCP trying to make Falun gong people look like more of extremists than they are and then people who follow Falun gong who are just like well it's just a meditation type of practice so there's two different camps of of things happening here and so we move on over to the US and the creation of Shen Yun Performing Arts happen around 2005 and 2006 so five is years after Lee hongi comes to the United States so this Performing Arts shenyun show was created in New York and they integrate dance and music like traditional Chinese dance and storytelling just kind of like a basic showing of like the morals that they stand for an objection to tyranny so that's the huge themes in uh shenyun show so this Performing Arts shenyun think it is a huge multi-million doll just huge industry right and they're listed as a nonprofit and you wonder like why there's so many ads everywhere and that's because when you're a nonprofit your advertising fees you can negotiate with the advertisers and get really really good rates and this Shen Yen guy is known for being super cheap and like refusing to pay large sums of money so basically there's a lot of people who just go around and hustling saying touting the story uh of like the background of Falun gong and getting really really cheap and easy advertising to sell their exorbitantly High price tickets which they say is to fund you know these people who are performing for Shen Yun but I'll leave some stuff in the description but some of these dancers don't even get paid like a wage so this is how your employment as a shenyun dancer typically goes so so this is where we we drop into the the culty bits here so there's a compound called Dragon Springs compound and Le hongi lives there as well and these dancers work year round in tour and many of these dancers are recruited through a specific Performing Art Center which is the Fei Tien Academy of Arts so this is like a fallen gong affiliated school where practitioners like parents uh send their kids and you know Shen Yun that's that's your goal that's where you go and dancers can receive like Scholarships in order to go here and then you're like well why would why would they want to go here so bad there's the familial pressure and then also they pay for your lodging and your food because you all live in the same compound together and then if they do get paid I saw that their salary ranges from like 24,000 to 40,000 which is like below the poverty line in the United States and they're working in training all year like they're specialized individuals here with special skills and they are not getting paid an adequate amount for them so all in all it's like super exploitative business practices all around had it be that this is true now that's that's you know what I see and I know the propaganda game is strong and even when academic articles are manipulated to have false information it's so difficult to get a grasp on on what's reality and so I like to go from like the experiences that people say of being in shenyun and being in Falun gong in New York which I will leave in the description really good documentaries about it and I think of course like people's stories are where we can find the most Merit when we're not sure like like when other things are being manipulated so and then for people who do go to the shows as well sometimes people feel like they're tricked into like this propaganda show because like the titles for the show are like 5,000 years of Chinese history and some are like more innocuous than others like others are like the story China doesn't want you to know and stuff like that and so it's all basically different from City to city that you go to but no doubt people love the show they think it's a beautiful show but it's just at the same time very odd and it doesn't tout like human rights and freedom of speech necessarily but how Falun gong is the right way of life and you know people who do not follow it will descend into hell like these are the what people pick up on when they are finished watching the show and they're like ah so it's just its own type of propaganda huh so it's all this huge propaganda game and all of this sprouted because I was just so caught off guard when my friend actually saw this show and she told me she's like hand to God that happened and so I'm just shocked and that's Falun gong and shenyun as I know it and and now now we all know a little bit more I hope you guys enjoyed today if you guys have any other weird stuff you'd like me to like dive into I would love to hear any suggestions and as always love you guys bye