What a strange night we had.For the last couple of weeks we'd seen this poster around SweetieMe's old stomping grounds. Both of us wanted to see it- Billed as a Chinese New Year Spectacular, we were expecting acrobats and dancing, fast paced excitement and some awesome martial arts.
We love live shows- we're big fans of musical theater, we see the Shakespeare Festival in San Diego every year, and between the two of us we've seen just about every Cirque du Soleil show that's been produced. Occasionally, we get to see the various travelling Asian cultural shows that come to town. Some of them good, some of them... Not so good.
This show, though. It was terrible.
I've never seen a public performance with such blatant propaganda. It was like watching singers and dancers carry a chip around on their collective shoulders, only it wasn't a chip, it was a granite boulder.
The first clue came when a woman started to sing a song called "Give way to reason," and was all about persecution on the way to truth. I had to laugh- it had nothing to do with reason at all.
But the kicker was a segment called "Persecution on the path to enlightenment," and was a modern dance interpretation of a happy father, practicing Falun Gong, who gets arrested, beaten and killed by leather clad gang members marked with crimson hammers and sickles on their backs. At the end of this mini-drama all is not lost as the father is reincarnated in view of the mourning townsfolk and then ascends to a golden heaven riding a lotus blossom.
I turned to SweetieMe, and unknowingly laughed "Is this a Falun Gong show?" Over the next several segments, the Falun Gong theme got stronger and stronger- songs about persecution and truth, heaven, saviors and wisdom in the face of evidence became more obvious.
I didn't know much about Falun Gong before we saw this show, other than it was a controversial spiritual movement in China and was relatively new. I did some quick research when I got home and discovered that the Falun Gong movement is sort of the Asian equivalent to Scientology, although it's much more political. They both tie into aliens, though!
One blogger summed up my experience perfectly when he wrote:
What I thought would be an energetic, bright and musical show filled with dragons, drums and excitement turned out to be what I imagine a Carnival Cruise is like if controlled by the Falun Gong.That's about right.
4 comments:
Members of the Falun Gong hold Canadian free speech hostage, shut down independent newspaper in Vancouver, Canada
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Newspaper+accuses+printer+censorship/1167993/story.html
It is so sad to see how many people get hurt by falun gong. An evil cult that have destroyed thousands of people's dreams of what they wated to originally become, broking up relationships of love because of eitiher one being of another race or because one is an "ordinary person" like falun gong call all of you who are not a dafa particle in the belly of the master as Li says himself. They believe the ordianry people are filled of karma= dirty thoughts and bad viruses while they are pure and clean and beyond every day people. SO falun gong people will tear apart relationships of these issues as well as mixed races. They also always have excuses and defend tehmselves with saying it is not in teh book yada yada.. One thing everyone must know is that teh book is merly a cover up for the real information of what they should do and how to behave which is published on their websiet as well as by assistants around the world and told at small local meetings.
Falun gong is mind-controlling cult. Also thousands of people have died frim being convinced though manipulation that they should not continue with their medicine. They travel home to other members and sit and read teh "book" out loud with the manipulated idea that their is energy in the words that will cure the person. If the person dies they simply say either that the person had reached such an high level so he could leave them behind and use hte situation as a test or they will say that he or she did not have enough belief so he or she died because the person coudl not let go of the "attachment" to sickness... Thousands do die all the time, and brake up relations, go astray in life, live for this cult and work for free for the cults many medias... They cover up with having educated assistants as owners of hteir medias and businesses but it Li their founder who decide everything fomr name of the media to exactly what they shod do next. They have one goal. To ruin the government in CHina and get the power to Li. Most volunteer workers of course does not know this since they live under the manipulation that they will ascend to heaven if htey get rid of all ther attachments and do all the projects their master has told them to do. However among the assistants some know very well what is going on. It is just anohter simple and evil cult that use human rights to cover up their real identity and get people's support to keep developing their cult.They even have a school where their children get manipulated into believeing in all those crazy ideas. This is NOT nad has Never been a part of traditional Chinese believes. Most people in China are normal nice decent people, and not some strange evil people using communism to kill falun gong people. That is a trick to make you look at something else than what they are really all about!Don't mix up the human rights abuses that exist in all developing countries today with excusing an evil cult to run wild and kill people and destroy their lives.
The dance performance they have now is also just a way to manipulate people to belive this is a part of the Chinese tradtions, it is not! It is pure propaganda.
PLEASE Watch out for these people!!! They are fast in defending themselves and trained by the years to be manipulative and give you smart explanations of any critism.
Help Stop the Evil Cult falun gong everyone!!
What the "spectacular" really worries me is that those Falun people claim their cheesy, blatant style to be authentic Chinese... Yet that's among the corniest performances I've ever seen.
For those who want a taste of high quality Chinese choreography, check out a few examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYl-xLwFiOs
http://space.tv.cctv.com/act/video.jsp?videoId=VIDE1232890829944888
Btw, they were both broadcast in mainland China during spring festivals (note the CCTV logo), nationalwide. What did the Falun people say? "We'll be arrested for doing that in China"? LOL.
Crouching dancer, hidden jargon
At the food court in Vancouver’s Sinclair Centre, a young well-dressed Asian woman was last week handing out glossy leaflets promoting something called the Divine Performing Arts, or DPA.
She spoke softly, explaining to those who took her yellow pamphlets that the show, which is slated to hit a Vancouver stage next month, is about China’s culture and heritage.
The literature promoting the show is full of superlatives like gloriously colorful, exhilarating, elite, masterful choreography, gorgeously costumed, stunning and breathtaking.
But is this really a show about China’s traditional arts?
Look beyond the pamphlets and the website of the Divine Performing Arts Company, and it is quite evident that this spectacle is nothing more than a vehicle to showcase the beliefs of the Falun Gong movement and denigrate the Beijing regime.
Truth be told, Divine Propaganda Arts would be a better moniker for the show that has been panned by some big name critics in New York and Toronto.
Toronto Star theatre critic Susan Walker described the show as "spectacularly tacky" and heavily laden with "Falun Gong messages as to negate any pleasure the dancing and singing might have afforded."
A scathing New York Times review said dozens of people walked out of the show because of the heavy Falun Gong propaganda underscoring the performances by the lackluster dancers, singers, drummers and flying angels.
To be fair, the show has also received its share of positive reviews as well – most of them collected by volunteers from audience members to divinely end up in The Epoch Times – a Falun Gong-friendly newspaper chain.
So what and who is the Divine Performing Arts?
For those answers one has to look at the Falun Gong movement, which portrays itself as non-hierarchical parallel units when facing problems and solidifies into a considerable structure when propagating the bizarre belief system that is focused on a mystery man called Li Hongzhi.
This self-styled prophet and possessor of unique supernormal abilities has claimed his teachings are at " . . . a higher level than those of Buddha and Christ . . . ."
Li claims to have been found at age 12 by a "Taoist immortal" who then led him up the mountains to train him in the art of telekinetically implanting the falun, or law wheel, into the abdomens of his followers, where it absorbs and releases power as it spins.
The man - who has been variously described as an anti-Chinese doomsday cult leader, head of a sinister organization and a spiritual master - apparently also can fly, believes that Africa has a two billion-year- old nuclear reactor, and that aliens who look human, but have "a nose made of bone," invaded Earth to introduce modern technology.
Chinese media have a different version of Li, portraying him as an unexceptional student with a flair for the trumpet who held jobs as a guesthouse attendant and a grain store clerk, who founded the Falun Gong movement before taking off to the United States, where he is reportedly somewhere in New York.
Take what you want from this man’s teachings, which are enshrined in the Falun Gong bible called Zhuan Falun, but the international Falun Gong movement now claims 100 million followers worldwide after China outlawed the group and cracked down on its members.
Today, this army of adherents, which is mainly ethnically Chinese, is quick to criticize China for using "fronts" to discredit the Falun Gong movement, while the group itself uses the same two-faced technique.
In the Falun Gong diaspora, followers run printing presses, newspapers, websites, TV stations and stage productions to highlight communist China’s alleged repression of their movement.
While maintaining a public distance, these businesses all acknowledge by word and deed a special relationship with the Falun Gong movement.
Readers of the Asian Pacific Post newspaper in Vancouver know this all too well. The award-winning paper was held hostage by Epoch Press, which is operated by Falun Gong followers, because the followers did not like the "balanced approach" to a story about the Divine Performing Arts show. (See ‘Hypocrisy in slow motion’ on www.asianpacificpost.com)
Maria Chang of the University of Nevada, who wrote a book about the Falun Gong, said the Falun Gong movement treats organizations it has created as front components to influence public opinion through propaganda campaigns.
Describing such strategies as counterproductive in democratic societies, Chang in a published interview said: "Being secretive and deceptive will just play into the image they’re a kooky group with something to hide."
The Falun Gong movement also claims to be apolitical, which is as believable as having a spinning wheel in your tummy.
Much of their actions, from morbid street skits to silent demonstrations to noisy parades, are aimed at drawing attention to their plight and creating agitation against Beijing.
Similarly, the Divine Performing Arts show is nothing more than another theatre of the absurd in Falun Gong’s on-going proxy war against China.
It’s just crouching dancer, hidden jargon.
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