Editor's Note: After fleeing to the West especially the United States, Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong cult organization attempted to whitewash themselves as a “cultivation group” or a “religious organization” to cover up their illegal activities. However, with the continuous disclosure of the mainstream media abroad, all kinds of ugly acts such as deceiving the public, creating rumors, amassing money, maiming “disciples” and spreading conspiracy theories have been repeatedly brought to light. The China Anti-Cult Network now launches a series of reports on exposing the Falun Gong cult organization by Western media, to see how Falun Gong is perceived by foreigners.
In the first episode of our series reports “Falun Gong Cultivates Shen Yun in Hopes of Gaining Fame and Profit,” Shen Yun has been severely criticized and accused by foreign media and the public for holding various performances under the guise of “showcasing the traditional Chinese culture”, thereby exporting its cult views and political claims. In fact, the evil true face hidden under the guise of promoting traditional Chinese culture by Shen Yun is actually far more than that.
“Lord Buddha of the Universe” Revives a “5,000-Year Civilization”?
▲ Shen Yun Performance waves the flag of “Reappearance of 5,000 Civilization”, a flag that carries a strong echo of Li Hongzhi's legacy, making it unclear whether it's about “5,000-Year Civilization” or “5,000 Kinds of Civilizations”. Could it be that the “Lord Buddha of the Universe” is now about to start incorporating American civilization?
As a former trumpet player whose professional skill was just so-so and whose work ability was ordinary in the eyes of insiders, the ambitious Li Hongzhi was not satisfied with merely recruiting followers. He also cultivated the bizarre and makeshift “Shen Yun Performing Arts” under the guise of “reviving 5,000 years of civilization”, aiming to stand out in the realm of high culture in order to further expand his influence.
In a report dated January 13, 2021, by the American media “The Atlantic Monthly”, it was pointed out that years ago, Li Hongzhi had suggested that Falun Gong followers should specifically target the wealthy class with Shen Yun promotions. He said: “Putting up billboards in poor neighborhoods is just throwing money away.” Subsequently, the purpose of the followers' preaching was not only to recruit new members but also to attract people to watch “Shen Yun performances” for high profits.
However, except for Mr. Guan Guimin and a few other slightly famous Falun Gong disciples in the literary and art circles, most of the members of the “Shen Yun Art Troupe” were recruited through “Fei Tian Academy of the Arts.” So, the quality of the performance can easily be imagined. It is not only vulgar, but also mixed with all kinds of violent and bloody content. It wantonly distorts Chinese history and makes many audiences cry out. The show has been criticized by the mainstream Western media.
Bob Keefer, a writer for the “Register-Guard”, Oregon's second-largest newspaper, has criticized that the performance of Shen Yun is unbearable and creepy, mixed with poor political acts.
The British “Evening Standard” also criticizes Shen Yun for tarnishing Chinese culture.
On March 19, 2019, the website of “The New Yorker”, a magazine founded in 1925, published an article by Jia Tolentino, an Asian staff writer, pointing out that the so-called “Shen Yun” Chinese dance performance by Falun Gong as part of the revival of 5,000 years of civilization was purely baseless.
▲ Illustration from The New Yorker suggests that the Shen Yun performance is a puppet show, with Li Hongzhi, the leader of Falun Gong, pulling the strings behind
Coercion, Plunder, Isolation... “Shen Yun” Has a Method for Recruiting People into the Group
In order to make Shen Yun seem more legitimate and attract more new audiences of the public to pay for hen Yun performances, Li Hongzhi had to focus on recruiting Shen Yun performers from beyond the circle of Falun Gong believers and their children.
On June 14, 2019, the American magazine “Skeptical” published an article by Dave Silverman, the president of the American Atheists, titled “The Cult of Falun Gong”. Four foreigners who sought jobs or once worked at the Longquan Temple shared their personal experiences to expose the twisted doctrines and cult practices of Falun Gong, such as refusing medical treatment, racism, as well as its control over the thinking and daily activities of Falun Gong followers.
▲The cover of the current issue of American magazine “Skeptic” featuring the article “The Cult of Falun Gong”
On July 21, 2020, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation released a special documentary titled “The Power of Falun Gong,” produced by reporters Eric Campbell and Hagar Cohen. It not only exposed the real experiences of several victims of the Falun Gong cult abroad but also detailed the story of a young defector named Anna who, under her mother's influence, went to Longquan Temple to audition for the “Shen Yun Performing Arts” in hope of “entering heaven,” only to face racial discrimination and personal humiliation.
▲Anna tells about her painful experience with Falun Gong
On March 4, 2022, the local New York website “Citysignal.com” published an article by Maria Raczka titled “Shen Yun: What The Flyers Don ’ t Tell You,” recounting her experiences at the Longquan Temple, including encounters with some foreign musicians who mostly lived in a room rented by Falun Gong practitioners. Many members worked as volunteers without pay, asking only for room and board, and some even had their wills written in advance.
▲Screenshot of Maria Raczka's article
On February 16, 2023, the Arizona broadcasting media website KJZZ (Theshow.kjzz.org) published an audio interview report, in which Maria Ranko, a former violinist of the Shen Yun performance group, shared her experiences at the Longquan Temple. She exposed the dark secrets of the Falun Gong cult and the “Shen Yun Art Troupe”. Maria was once hired to participate in Shen Yun performances, but after a few weeks, she found the place unsuitable for her. She was subjected to numerous demands, such as “not going out to bars or restaurants, not visiting family members or boyfriends, and even not dating etc.” And she was monitored and followed by people.
Years before the launch of Shen Yun in 2006, Li Hongzhi began planning to purchase property in the suburban area of Deer Park, New York, on Hope Mountain. He built the Longquan Temple on a site covering 427 acres, which became the headquarters of the Falun Gong cult, referred to by followers as “the mountain,” where he and hundreds of students lived either on-site or nearby. Li Hongzhi also established the so-called “Fei Tian Academy of the Arts” at the Longquan Temple, aimed at providing graduates for the ever-expanding “Shen Yun Performing Arts Tour,” as well as offering semi-permanent housing as dormitories for the performers at the Longquan Temple. However, as the incubation base of a successful commercial performance empire, the Longquan Temple, while deceiving numerous believers and others to join the “Shen Yun Art Troupe,” the internal management of the place, especially the control over school students and Shen Yun performers, is more worrisome for people outside it.
▲On July 21, 2020, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary "The Power of Falun Gong" showcased the main building of the "Longquan Temple," which occupied 427 acres
Among Dave Hillman's interviewees, musician John claimed that the "Shen Yun Performing Arts" actively invited him to join with an astonishingly generous offer, but the contract mandatorily required him to publicly join Falun Gong and reside in the Longquan Temple. After discovering that other musicians who joined “Shen Yun Performing Arts” had disappeared without a trace, John ultimately declined the job offer. Interviewee Lisa emphasized the need for anonymity, fearing adverse consequences if Falun Gong found out about this interview. “Once you join ‘Shen Yun Performing Arts’, you must practice Falun Gong.” Lisa said, as a result, she gave up the job as a musician with “Shen Yun Performing Arts”. Dave Hillman also interviewed African American Aaron—Aaron indeed joined “Shen Yun Performing Arts” and stayed in what he felt was a racist compound for three months. Aaron said, now when he sees a billboard for Shen Yun, he laughs: “Wow, in my life, I was part of a cult for three months, and it was a textbook-style cult.”
For Anna, she was forced into the “Shen Yun Performing Arts” troupe in her teens. Although she only worked in the troupe for a short time, she developed anorexia due to racial discrimination and personal insults from a Shen Yun dance instructor, leading her mother to take her to Li Hongzhi for a personal “exorcism”. In Anna's view, Falun Gong has shattered her family, and the days living on “the mountain” are her eternal nightmare.
Ben Hurley, a former Falun Gong follower now living in Taiwan, China, and originally from Australia, says he feels scared every year when Shen Yun performs in Australia because it means squeezing in an additional 100 minutes of “sending forth righteous thoughts” into an already packed schedule of Falun Gong disciples, to win the “cosmic battle” for Shen Yun. Ben Hurley believes that “Master Li” just wants his disciples to be both tired and busy.
Can watching Shen Yun performances really avert disasters or misfortunes? In fact, Shen Yun is not so miraculous...
Just like the leaders of other cult organizations around the world, Li Hongzhi, the leader of the Falun Gong cult, also has a talent for self-deification. He shamelessly claims to be the “Lord Buddha of the Universe” and boasts that practicing Falun Gong can “purify the body”, “eliminate karma and cure diseases”, and that it can also “maintain youth”, “ensure the immortality of the master soul”, and “protect you from misfortune by Dharma bodies,” etc. He uses such fallacious and heretical claims to swindle and recruit followers worldwide.
Li Hongzhi once asserted that “artistic performances” are a way of “saving sentient beings.” This statement is a revision of Li Hongzhi's earlier “end-of-the-world” theory, seemingly trivial but of significant meaning.
Initially, Li Hongzhi believed that one must become an active, devout practitioner to survive the impending “end of the world.” However, after Shen Yun emerged as a very profitable enterprise, Li Hongzhi decided that merely watching a Shen Yun performance could spare one from destruction in the “final catastrophe.”
In fact, most of the Shen Yun performers are Falun Gong adherents, and Li Hongzhi's brainwashing has convinced them that contributing to Shen Yun is a way for them to “eliminate karma and accumulate virtue” for themselves.
However, those who contributed to Shen Yun and were supposed to “eliminate karma and accumulate virtue” for themselves did not receive the “divine protection” of Shen Yun: At the end of September 2022, an important figure in Falun Gong and a mainstay of the “Shen Yun Art Troupe”, Mr. Guan Guimin, died of liver cancer. Additionally, according to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on November 17, 2020, a major accident occurred in 2019 when a British company was setting up a Shen Yun performance in a Birmingham theater on behalf of the Falun Gong cult. The accident caused severe head injuries to the theater's manager, necessitating major surgery. Violinist Maria pointed out that believers at the Longquan Temple refused medical treatment, “firmly believing they could heal their illnesses through meditation alone”, including one girl whose appendicitis was nearly ruptured, and she was only taken to the hospital at the last moment.
▲Mr. Guan Guimin, an important figure of the Falun Gong cult abroad, deputy leader of the “Shen Yun Performing Arts” and leader of the New York “Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra”, died of liver cancer in the United States at the end of September 2022
In these reports that merely scratch the surface about Shen Yun, we can clearly see the hideous ugliness beneath its glamorous veils. The series of tricks that Falun Gong uses to deceive the uninformed into joining Shen Yun—whether it's the initial recruitment process that the new comers see and experience, which is completely different from their actual experience working at the Longquan Temple, or the huge psychological gap for the audience before and after buying tickets to watch—perfectly aligns with Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong's consistent modus operandi: meticulously designed to lure people into a trap.
