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Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe
Date: 2025-04-14 Source: New York Times

What a Times investigation has found about abusive conditions at the secretive enterprise.

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Rachel Abrams

From “The New York Times”, I’m Rachel Abrams. This is “The Daily.”

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A few days ago, one of the most ubiquitous live shows in the country, Shen Yun, began its latest run at arguably its most prestigious venue, Lincoln Center. It’s drawn thousands of people to a performance that is colorful, acrobatic and according to many of its performers, shockingly abusive.

Today, my colleague Nicole Hong on “What a Times” investigation has found about the secretive and sprawling enterprise.

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It’s Wednesday, April 2nd.

Nicole, I have seen billboards for Shen Yun literally all over New York City. They are pastel colored. They show people dancing. They’re wearing this long, flowy, diaphanous clothing. But I will admit this. I don’t think I’ve ever actually bothered to look into what these billboards were actually advertising.

And now you’ve done this big investigation into Shen Yun, which I’m really excited to talk about. We’re going to get to in a minute.

But first, can you just tell us what exactly is Shen Yun?

Nicole Hong

So on the surface, Shen Yun is this performing arts group. They tour around the world, they perform traditional Chinese dance accompanied with a full orchestra. And most people know them because of their advertising.

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Every once in a while, something comes along. So masterful, it leaves you in awe.

Nicole Hong

Their billboards are everywhere.

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So inspiring, it changes your life.

Nicole Hong

We’ve seen TV ads, flyers on storefronts, direct mailers into our mailboxes.

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This season, take an incredible journey through 5,000 years of culture with Shen Yun.

Nicole Hong

And they’re often advertising these vague slogans.

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See it at least once in your lifetime. Shen Yun, an all new production every year.

Nicole Hong

Like many people, I have seen these for years and never thought twice about what this group was. They were just part of the landscape.

Rachel Abrams

Yes.

Nicole Hong

But in late 2023, my reporting partner, Michael Rothfeld, got a tip from someone who was familiar with the inner workings of Shen Yun and said we should take a closer look at their operations.

So we started making phone calls. And of course, we also decided to go to one of their shows in Boston.

Rachel Abrams

And what was that like?

Nicole Hong

So the tickets were actually quite expensive. Our tickets were over $200.

Rachel Abrams

Wow. OK. It’s like going to Broadway.

Nicole Hong

Yeah, and the show is basically a series of short, very choreographed dance and music pieces. And a lot of the scenes are retelling traditional Chinese folktales and mythology, and the level of dancing is very high level.

As I was watching it, it reminded me of Olympic gymnastics or ballet. It’s a lot of flips and splits in the air, that kind of thing.

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Rachel Abrams

So that is not at all what I was expecting. I mean, I expected that you were going to tell me that it was a show with dancing and colorful costumes and being transported to faraway places, but I did not expect that there would be this whole underlying religious and political message.

Nicole Hong

This is not just a dance group. Shen Yun is about spreading the message of this religious movement, Falun Gong, to a mainstream audience. And I got to witness this firsthand, because when I went to the Boston show, the man sitting next to me I saw at intermission was googling on his phone, what is Falun Gong?

So that indicated to me that the message was penetrating. It was coming through to this audience member.

Rachel Abrams

Which is what they want.

Nicole Hong

Exactly. But at the time, we didn’t fully understand the bigger picture. We didn’t yet know what was really happening behind the scenes. And when we dug more into Shen Yun, what we uncovered through many, many months of reporting was this massive operation built on exploitation and coercion, all in service of Falun Gong’s religious leader, who has turned Shen Yun into a major source of wealth and influence for his movement.

Rachel Abrams

So tell me about this man and this religious movement.

Nicole Hong

So this religious movement, Falun Gong, began in China in the early 1990s, and it was started by this man, whose Chinese name is Li Hongzhi. He was actually a grain clerk. But somewhere along the way, he starts traveling across China to introduce this new movement he’s created. It combines elements of Buddhism with these ancient Chinese energy-based exercises that are known as Qigong. These are basically slow movements, where you move your hands and arms around the body to circulate energy.

And Li is teaching his followers his version of these exercises, along with spiritual texts that he’s written. And he’s promoting this religion, not only as a way to improve your health physically, but he’s also saying that this can help you reach enlightenment, that this is the roadmap to becoming a better and more moral person.

Rachel Abrams

OK. So far, all of this sounds pretty on par with what you would expect a lot of religions to be.

Nicole Hong

Yes, but once you get deeper into the teachings, there are more mystical elements that come up. For example, he has said that advanced practitioners can develop supernatural powers like the ability to levitate or the ability to see through walls.

Rachel Abrams

So very quickly, it sounds like it becomes a national movement.

Nicole Hong

Yeah, and not just a national movement, but an international one. Li actually started taking his lectures and his teachings to the Chinese diaspora, overseas, and it catches on in many countries, like Australia, Canada, and the US as well.

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Nicole Hong

Falun Gong is banned in China. China puts out an arrest warrant for Li.

Nicole Hong

They start calling this group A, quote, “evil cult”, which the group has vehemently denied.

Rachel Abrams

So how successful could the show actually be?

Nicole Hong

So this show has ended up becoming this huge moneymaker for Falun Gong. We are able to look at their tax records because it’s registered as a nonprofit, and by the end of 2023, they have $266 million in assets. They’re making tens of millions of dollars a year in ticket sales, and they’re stockpiling assets at a rate that would be extraordinary for any type of performing arts company, let alone this nonprofit dance group.

Rachel Abrams

So how is this possible? How are they making so much money with this show?

Nicole Hong

What our reporting uncovered was the extent of that sacrifice, because the success of Shen Yun has also come at this extraordinary cost, and much of it has been at the expense of Li’s most loyal followers, who have sometimes dedicated their entire lives and livelihoods to carry out his vision.

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Rachel Abrams

We’ll be right back.

So, Nicole, your investigation pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of this show. And what you found is a system that’s far more complex and sounds like it exploits people in a way that might not be apparent at first blush. So walk us through how all of this works.

Nicole Hong

So there are three main ways that Shen Yun is essentially built on the backs of its followers. One has to do with the performers in Shen Yun, the dancers and musicians. The second has to do with the Falun Gong followers who helped to finance the shows. And the third way involves the Falun Gong practitioners who run and operate this sophisticated media network to promote the show and also attack its critics.

Rachel Abrams

So let’s start with the first piece that you outlined. The people who are actually performing in these shows, how do they fit in?

Nicole Hong

So we interviewed dozens of dancers, musicians, and instructors who used to perform for Shen Yun or work for Shen Yun. And what we learned was that many of the performers in Shen Yun are brought to New York when they are as young as 11 years old. They come from all over the world, and they’ve typically grown up in Falun Gong households.

This is the religion that they practiced with their parents, and their parents were very eager to send them to Shen Yun because this dance group is seen as a holy honor for any practitioner to participate in.

And the way they join this group is that they’re brought to this enormous 400-acre compound called Dragon Springs, where Li himself is based. And just to illustrate how they view him there at Dragon Springs, there is this giant golden Buddha statue. The face of this Buddha looks a lot like Li.

Rachel Abrams

Oh, wow. So it sounds like he’s basically made himself into a godlike figure.

Nicole Hong

Yeah, many Falun Gong practitioners see him as a living God. They want their kids to be close to Li. And so these young performers end up living and training at Dragon Springs, sometimes well into their 20s.

Rachel Abrams

So what does daily life actually like for these young students who end up living at the compound?

Nicole Hong

What we found in our interviews is that it was a very grueling environment, both physically and mentally. Many of them described often working or training 15 hours a day, six days a week. They’re essentially working a professional workload as students, but they’re getting little to no pay.

We spoke to a lot of people who said they weren’t paid at all during their first year on tour. Their access to outside information is heavily controlled. Some students told us they got in trouble if they were caught watching unapproved movies or listening to music that was created after the year 1900.

Rachel Abrams

Wow. OK.

Nicole Hong

You’re encouraged to inform on your classmates if you see them breaking the rules, and then the rule breakers can actually face these public critique sessions in front of all of their peers. And one of the things we heard repeatedly from people is that they were discouraged from seeking medical help if they got injured, and this is tied to Li’s teachings. He says that negative karma causes illness, and that if you’re a true believer, you can expel that from your body.

So, for example, we spoke to one dancer who said that right before a performance, she was practicing a flip and then dislocated her kneecap. One of her classmates popped it back into place, and she just performed through it for two hours.

Rachel Abrams

Completely excruciating pain.

Nicole Hong

But she was terrified to ask for medical treatment, and she also didn’t get any because if you do, you get shamed as someone who is not a devout Falun Gong practitioner.

There was also this former violinist in Shen Yun’s orchestra who told us that he started feeling these sharp pains in his shoulder, so he was brought to see Li, who touched his shoulder and then told him he was healed. When the pain kept going, the violinist classmates told him, oh, that’s because your faith is not strong enough. It wasn’t until years later that he discovered the cause of the pain was actually a bulging disk in his spine. And this was a consistent theme that we heard from a lot of people.

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Rachel Abrams

The conditions sound so extreme. Some of the injuries that you just described having to dance through a busted kneecap. Why do people put up with this or why their parents let them stay?

Nicole Hong

It has a lot to do with what Li was telling the performers about their duty to Shen Yun. We learned that Li was telling them the purpose of a Shen Yun show is not only to educate audiences, but to actually save them from the end times. This end times that is coming. The idea is that if audience members believe in Falun Gong’s message, they’ll be saved when the universe is destroyed.

And some of the performers said they were told that any mistakes they made on stage could actually doom their audiences to hell.

Rachel Abrams

So these young people aren’t just performing, they actually believe they are responsible for people’s salvation?

Nicole Hong

Yes. One of the dancers we talked to said he had this attitude that if he did not do well as a Shen Yun performer, then the universe wouldn’t be saved and it would be his fault.

Rachel Abrams

Wow.

Nicole Hong

So this is the kind of pressure that a lot of these performers, many of whom are teenagers, are hearing.

Another reason that many of them are terrified to leave is financial. They get free tuition, free housing, free food. It’s a full scholarship to a boarding school, essentially. And when they try to quit, many of them are told if you leave, you’re going to have to pay all of that back.

Now, we did not actually hear from anyone that they tried to seek repayment, but the threat of it was enough to keep many of them there.

Rachel Abrams

So basically, all of these different incentives, all of these different pressures, are allowing Li to get cheap or free labor from these young people?

Nicole Hong

Yes, and that’s not the only way his followers are propping up the mission. They’re also giving large amounts of their money to Li’s movement.

So the way these Shen Yun shows work, they put on hundreds of shows a year during their world tour, and there are a lot of costs to putting on a show. For example, the ads, the billboards. Someone has to go ahead and print the flyers and put them up in storefronts. Someone has to pay for hotel rooms and meals for the performers. Someone has to book the venue in each location.

Most of the costs for putting on that show are taken on by local followers of Falun Gong.

Rachel Abrams

Wait. So the followers are actually putting up the money for the production costs of the show?

Nicole Hong

Yes, and these are essentially unpaid volunteers who organize to put on Shen Yun shows. And if the shows do well, they get their money back. But any profit has to go back to Shen Yun. If the shows lose money, the followers are the ones responsible for making up that shortfall.

Rachel Abrams

So they’re in a very vulnerable position?

Nicole Hong

Right. We’ve also obtained internal messages to Falun Gong followers that say a show in this particular city is not selling well, so you guys, either need to work harder to sell tickets or you need to buy up some of them yourself.

And Li has publicly said that ticket sales are a sign of your spiritual devotion. So many followers feel this urgent pressure to sell as many tickets as they can, and this helps explain why, in your local city, you might see so many ads for Shen Yun.

Rachel Abrams

And all of this helps explain why they could be so incredibly profitable.

Nicole Hong

Right.

Rachel Abrams

But where is the money going? Like, how is it being used?

Nicole Hong

So we don’t exactly know. A lot of their financial records are opaque and we can’t see where the money is going. But we did uncover the story of one Falun Gong follower that could offer us a clue.

So there was this woman who was Shen Yun’s bookkeeper. She was a very, very devoted practitioner. Both of her kids performed with Shen Yun. She spent most of her time at Dragon Springs working for Shen Yun and for the Li family.

And around 2018, 2019, she was getting very sick. Because she was a diligent Falun Gong believer, she resisted seeing a doctor for a long time. When she finally did, she found out that she had kidney cancer, but she told her kids that she wouldn’t be able to pay for medical treatment because she had donated all of her money to Dragon Springs.

Rachel Abrams

Wow.

Nicole Hong

And this was a huge shock to them. But after the bookkeeper died of cancer, a Shen Yun employee accidentally mailed the bookkeeper’s credit card statement to her family. What they eventually saw in the statements were tens of thousands of dollars in purchases of luxury goods from brand names like Hermes, Van Cleef Ferragamo.

We’ve heard from many former performers that Li’s wife liked to dress well. She liked to wear luxury brands. The bookkeeper had also spent money on custom billiard cues, and we know that Li loves to play pool.

Rachel Abrams

So basically, the assessment was that these purchases were likely for the Li family.

Nicole Hong

What we found was that she was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for purchases that her family believed were for the Li family and for Shen Yen.

We also found that she was paying for the monthly cell phone bills of Li and his wife, and our reporting showed that some of the money was repaid to her family. But because it was all part of this confidentiality agreement, we don’t know a lot of the details.

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Rachel Abrams

So the purchases, the fact that she didn’t seek medical treatment, the fact that she didn’t have money when she did seek medical treatment, it seems like this bookkeeper is emblematic of how much these followers are giving to Falun Gong, whether it’s their money or their labor. And it also shows the extent to which this institution, and maybe even the lifestyle of the Li family, is made possible by these sacrifices.

Nicole Hong

Yeah.

Rachel Abrams

I also want to come back to something you said earlier, because you mentioned that even beyond all of that, there’s actually a third piece of this puzzle.

Nicole Hong

Right. That is their media arm, primarily a newspaper run by Falun Gong practitioners called the “Epoch Times.”

Rachel Abrams

I’ve heard of it, but tell us a little bit more about it.

Nicole Hong

And in fact, Kash Patel, who was recently confirmed as Trump’s FBI Director, actually had a show with the “Epoch Times” in recent years, where he got a sit-down interview with Trump. But beyond their political coverage, what our investigation found was that they have also published more than 17,000 articles about Shen Yun.

Rachel Abrams

Oh, wow.

Nicole Hong

And they’re typically glowing audience testimonials after each show. We found that they have this special team of reporters that go to the shows, who are almost always Falun Gong followers. They’re often working all night, getting very little sleep to get these reviews published as quickly as possible.

Rachel Abrams

And do we know how influential they’ve actually been, though?

Nicole Hong

So we don’t exactly know how much influence this coverage has had. Like, for example, we don’t know how many ticket sales can be attributed to “Epoch Times” coverage, but this is some pretty unusual editorial treatment for a newspaper to give to a dance show.

Rachel Abrams

Right.

Nicole Hong

We actually obtained internal editing guides that said anything negative about Shen Yun could not be published, and Li himself has way more influence over the newspaper’s operations than we realized. So, for example, we found out about this meeting in 2023, where he gave direct editorial guidance to top “Epoch Times” editors.

Rachel Abrams

So it seems clear that even if we can’t pinpoint exactly how influential the “Epoch Times” is in this larger ecosystem, it is part of this huge network that you’ve helped to reveal in your reporting. And that network seems like at the center of it are these followers, who in many cases, have been quite mistreated. I’m curious about the response to that part of your reporting about that mistreatment.

Nicole Hong

So since we’ve published our reporting, New York State regulators have been looking into Shen Yun for their labor practices. We also found out that there’s a federal criminal investigation into Shen Yun, including into their finances. And a former dancer has sued them and accused them of forced labor.

Nicole Hong

So it was especially devastating once they actually saw how the group operated that this thing that they had devoted their entire lives to turned out to be something completely different.

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Rachel Abrams

Nicole, Thank you so much.

Nicole Hong

Thank you, Rachel. [MUSIC PLAYING]