Artists on a Mission

How does a young man in China, who loses his father to torture and mother to prison, end up in New York, dancing their story on stage?

This is the inspiring story of why Shen Yun came to be, who these remarkable people are, and what they must overcome still today.

The story begins in China in the ‘90s. The nation had just emerged from decades of violent political campaigns, including the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese people were fed up with the Communist Party, its ideology, and its heart-wrenching human toll.

At the same time, a grassroots phenomenon known as the "qigong boom" had emerged. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, parks throughout China were brimming at dawn with millions of people performing slow-moving exercises to improve their health and find peace.

In 1992, Mr. Li Hongzhi from the northeastern city of Changchun introduced an ancient spiritual practice, one that had not been previously taught in public—Falun Gong.

Completely free and producing powerful results, Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, spread quickly throughout China. People from all walks of life practiced and loved it—factory workers, academics, and government officials. Beyond the health benefits, Falun Gong quenched their spiritual thirst—it taught living by “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance,” letting go of unhealthy attachments, and being good, kind people. By the late ‘90s, the Chinese government estimated there were 70-100 million people practicing Falun Gong in China.

Falun Gong's rapid growth startled a few top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, most notably Party Secretary Jiang Zemin. They launched a clandestine probe, searching for evidence to ban Falun Gong, but found nothing. In spite of that, and in spite of much opposition from other government leaders, Jiang banned Falun Gong in 1999, instantly deeming 100 million people enemies of the state.

The propaganda and violence that followed have become one of the biggest human rights stories of the twenty-first century. Millions have been sent to prisons, labor camps, and “reeducation” brainwashing centers. Thousands have been confirmed tortured to death—through sleep deprivation, beatings while hanging by the limbs, and shocks with electric cattle prods” Perhaps the most murderous of all is the now well-documented forced organ harvesting from living people.

When the CCP launched the persecution on July 20, 1999, the violent onslaught sent global shockwaves. Some Chinese in the diaspora practiced Falun Gong, as did an increasing number of non-Chinese. They were blindsided by the sudden atrocities in China and unprepared for the propaganda the CCP disseminated worldwide.

Quickly, they scrambled to try to get the international community to pay attention to what was happening in China. They held sit-ins, rallies, vigils, and parades; they distributed flyers, collected petitions, and knocked on doors in Washington, Ottawa, and Geneva. Some started websites and media companies; others helped people in China circumvent the Internet blockade. Many made nightly phone calls directly to the guards in Chinese prisons.

Among the Falun Gong practitioners outside China were elite artists—professional dancers, painters, and accomplished musicians. They wished to use their skills to play a part in trying to stop the persecution. At the same time, they wanted to show the world the beauty, legends, and spiritual traditions of China before communism.

In 2006, they came together in rolling hills of New York's Hudson Valley and, with the leadership of Artistic Director D.F., created Shen Yun.

The performance was an instant success. In its first season, Shen Yun toured around the world to critical acclaim across four continents. Audience members spoke of being inspired by the beauty and stories depicted on stage, and by seeing ancient traditions brought back to life. 

But the story of the persecution in China was never far from the artists’ hearts. Many had escaped persecution themselves.

When the Story is Personal

These performers, who carry with them haunting memories and a burning urgency to rescue loved ones back in China, somehow managed to transform all this pain into beautiful and moving art.

When audience members see the smiles and genuine joy with which these artists perform, they cannot imagine what someone like Principal Dancer Ellie Rao above has been through. As a 4-year-old, police burst into her home and took her father for nothing more than his faith. She watched by the window as they drove him away. She never saw him again—he was tortured to death.

At 9, she fled with her mother to Thailand and eventually found asylum in the United States.

Principal Dancer Hungwei Sun, known for playing heroic warriors, grew up without a mother. When he was a child, his mother was jailed for seven years because she practiced Falun Gong. Hungwei was sent to live with relatives in Taiwan. By the time his mother was able to flee China and reunite with her son, they had been apart for 12 years. They consider themselves lucky.

A recent survey in the company found that over 90 Shen Yun performers had been directly affected by the persecution. Some had been jailed. Others lost family members to torture. Some had relatives imprisoned still.

This is why the story of Falun Gong is part of each Shen Yun show. Every performance has about 20 different dance and music pieces, and a couple of them are dedicated to the real-life story of Falun Gong practitioners—the persecution they face and the courage of their peaceful resistance. Shen Yun was started by Falun Gong practitioners in the face of horrible persecution. This story isn’t just close to the heart of every performer; it's at the heart of the company’s mission.

This terrifies Beijing. The CCP spent countless resources telling the world that there is no persecution, yet here is Shen Yun putting it center-stage at the world’s most prestigious theaters. Not only that, Shen Yun is performed by Falun Gong practitioners, the very group the CCP set out to eliminate.

Moreover, Beijing sees Shen Yun bringing back to life traditional Chinese culture, undoing nearly eight decades of the CCP’s systematic efforts to eradicate it.

By portraying China before communism, Shen Yun brought hope to so many people, both Chinese and not, enabling them to imagine a China without communism.

Exporting Repression

Not only is Shen Yun barred from performing in China, but the CCP has used a wide range of tactics to try to silence Shen Yun around the world.

Initially, Beijing sent out multiple performing arts companies to try to compete with Shen Yun. When that failed, it tried using diplomatic pressure to cancel Shen Yun shows.

PRC embassies and consulates around the world sent letters, called, and visited theaters where Shen Yun was scheduled to perform trying to pressure them to cancel the shows. They used thinly veiled threats of economic repercussions and dangled promises of bringing performances from China. These tactics rarely worked. 

For years, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, London Telegraph, and many other papers carried paid inserts by the China Daily, the CCP’s official English mouthpiece, called “China Watch.” These inserts used the same typesetting and style of the newspapers and were barely distinguishable as paid ads. But their content included titles that, for example, called Shen Yun, “A Blasphemy That Masquerades as Art.”

The CCP harassed and arrested family members of performers still in China.

Multiple times, Shen Yun’s bus and truck tires were slashed in such a way that they would explode at high speeds. The cuts were made on the front tires, making it more likely the driver would lose control of the bus. The cuts were discovered during pre-trip inspections.

The CCP sent spies to try to sabotage the company—only to have them arrested by the FBI and go to jail.

All that having failed, the CCP and its assets turned to disinformation, lawfare, and threats.

Starting in 2024, theaters where Shen Yun was about to perform started receiving emailed threats of mass shootings, or claiming bombs had been placed in the theater and would be detonated if Shen Yun is allowed to perform. Although over 200 such emails have been recorded so far, and all have been reported to the police and FBI for investigation, in no case was there ever an actual threat. These were all hoaxes.

The email senders used VPNs and were hard to trace, but finally a Taiwanese police task force was able to trace them back to Xi’an, China, and the Huawei Research Institute.

Most recently, the CCP ramped up its disinformation campaign to try to silence Shen Yun. Leaked documents from China’s Ministry of State Security detail this strategy of using social and mainstream media to turn public opinion against Shen Yun and Falun Gong.

Sure enough, some of the tactics that immediately popped up where social media accounts whose only purpose is to attack Shen Yun, fake accounts impersonating Shen Yun performers, Chinese language influencers producing a steady stream of takedown videos about Shen Yun, and bot activity amplifying the negative content.

Unfortunately, some of these narratives, which trace back all the way to Beijing, did indeed make their way into mainstream discourse. (Learn more: 9 Things Some Media Reports Get Wrong About Shen Yun)

Yet, even having experienced persecution in China, and now transnational repression reaching their homes in America, Shen Yun’s artists remain as determined as ever.

Dancer Louis Liu was a 3-year-old in China when he was taken to see his aunt, Gao Rongrong, at her hospital bed. A vibrant woman in her 30s, she had been fired from her job at an arts college for practicing Falun Gong and was later sent to a labor camp. There, guards tortured her for seven hours straight, shocking her face with electric batons. From her hospital bed, police standing guard beside her, her cheeks charred and disfigured, she looked at Louis with a tenderness he will never forget. She died of her injuries a year later.

“When I perform in dances showing what’s happening in China today,” he says, “it’s my chance to give voice to those persecuted in China, to give voice to my aunt.”

On February 3, 2025, Louis was preparing to perform in front of nearly 3,000 people in Dijon, France, when local personnel received the following email: “I placed multiple bombs in the theater. If you don’t want the theater to be blown into rubble, please cancel the Shen Yun performance immediately.”

Only a little over an hour before the show, everyone in the theater, including Louis, was evacuated. After a thorough police search, they were allowed back in to quickly get the show ready. Audience members waited in the cold for 40 minutes, but as can be seen in the photo above, apparently no one left.

The support from audience members around the world has been incredibly encouraging for the performers, as has seeing theater workers standing with them shoulder to shoulder.

Shen Yun emcee Nancy Zhang was already in makeup and costume and getting to go on stage in Toronto when the alarm went off. Everyone in the theater had to evacuate due to a bomb threat. For the first time in this history of Shen Yun, the email caused a show to be canceled.

For Nancy, the incident immediately sent her on a flashback to her childhood in China. She was 8 years old, standing outside as usual, waiting to be picked up after school. But no one came for her. Both her parents had been rounded up that day for being Falun Gong practitioners. Her father was sent to a brainwashing center; her mother jailed for three years.

“The persecution devastated my family,” she said in Toronto. “Today, we are in a free and democratic society. This is not just about Shen Yun. It’s about whether a foreign regime can dictate what Canadians are allowed to see, what stories can be told, and which voices can be heard.”

The canceled performances were rescheduled, and Shen Yun returned to Toronto two months later.

Shen Yun’s artists are—to borrow the name of a new documentary about Shen Yun—unbroken.

Last year, they joined a parade through New York City’s Chinatown marking the July 20 date when the persecution started.

For 27 years, Falun Gong practitioners have been threatened and demonized, and many have suffered greatly. But today, in spite of everything, they carry on, believing that goodness will ultimately prevail.