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The Kennedy Performing Arts Center at night. (LI Sha/The Epoch Times)
In front of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., stands a bust of President Kennedy. I often stop and read the words on the back: “The life of arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose—and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”
In essence, human beings are both material and spiritual. Besides concerning themselves with food and clothing, they also think about the meaning of life and questions such as how one should spend his life, as Aristotle asked in a treatise on ethics.
The answer to that question is to be found in spirituality and religion. In this world, the most important form of expression is that of art. A good movie or stage performance should endow its viewers with wisdom, inspiration, and purification.
I have watched Shen Yun performances at the Kennedy Performing Arts Center, and each time I left I felt purified—in both body and soul. The joyfulness that I experienced made me feel that former President Kennedy could not have been more right when he said, “The life of arts … is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”
I have also watched a lot of movies and TV series made in China. The ones about history are full of power grabbing and intrigues. The ones depicting modern life are filled with lies, betrayals, hypocrisy, and sex.
I understand that a movie or a TV episode needs a plot and characters—both good and bad ones. But the purpose of making such programs should be to promote kindness and beauty, rather than to highlight the ugly and evil side of human beings.
In recent years, there has been no shortage of Chinese movies portraying grandeur and luxury, but the messages they convey are without merit. The shows and popular songs that China exports overseas have difficulty making their way into mainstream society in the West because of their confused, chaotic, and shallow content.
Performances such as acrobatics, which do not have any language barriers, are appreciated by most Western viewers for their skills only, but not for their artistic value.
However, this has changed with the coming of New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts.
A Higher Art
Dennis Kucinich, the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate and a senior member of Congress, said after watching Shen Yun: “The artistic performance that we had the opportunity to see this evening was striking in so many ways that one continues to search for superlatives to describe the motion, the form, the balletic nature, the music, and everything about it that is so inspiring.
“Let us always remember that behind that is the elevation of the human condition, behind that is what connects us to things that transcend this world. So as we celebrate Shen Yun, let us remember the deeper message behind their presence, and applaud it and thank them.”
Nathaniel Kahn is a renowned documentary filmmaker who has been nominated more than once for an Oscar. After he watched the Shen Yun performance in Philadelphia, he said he felt that every dance and every song was very inspiring and was helping people find their true selves: “All I can say is thank you so much for doing this [Shen Yun] as it’s enormously important, and if heaven is the way we saw it tonight, count me in.”
The spiritual inspiration and elevation of the soul achieved by Shen Yun is something no performing arts troupe from China can bring to the world. Yet this does not mean that the artists in China do not have the capability to do so.
On the contrary, many of Shen Yun’s choreographers and performers came from China. These brilliant artists came overseas to restore and revive the authentic and traditional Chinese culture because they were unable to do so under the Chinese communist regime’s censorship and control.
Suppressing Traditional Culture
A normal government in any nation should feel either proud or humbled when it witnesses non-governmental efforts to revive that nation’s authentic traditional culture, and the undertaking has astounding success. The Chinese communist regime, however, saw such an effort and went all out to suppress it.
Recently a number of overseas theaters where Shen Yun was scheduled to perform received e-mails or letters that were filled with absurd content such as the Earth exploding, the defamation of Jesus, and the like.
The messages declared that those who do not practice Falun Gong would encounter disaster. The authors of the messages claimed to be Falun Gong practitioners, but their intention was to depict Falun Gong practitioners as a group of mentally unsound and extreme-minded people, and at the same time to interfere with Shen Yun.
Shen Yun Performing Arts rarely encountered such incidents in the previous three years. Although the e-mails came from different authors, the similarity in their wording, their intent, their appearance in many countries, and the fact that they were addressed to theaters, Shen Yun supporters, and VIPs all clearly point to an organized effort.
Who would have the motivation and ability to organize such an undertaking? We can only suspect the Chinese communist regime, which has a record of interfering with Shen Yun performances and anything else it deems threatening to its absolute control.
The regime’s methods of interfering with Shen Yun include damaging a bus that carried Shen Yun performers, stealing money from ticket sales, jamming ticket hotlines with automated calls, pressuring theaters to cancel contracts, and pretending to be legitimate theatergoers with complaints about the show’s content, and the like.
It is common practice that theaters contact the organizer when management receives such missives. So lies spread in this way can be easily exposed and will only embarrass the Chinese regime and highlight its desperation.
Such pathetic actions truly reflect the regime’s deep-seated fear, paranoia, and sense of inferiority. What the regime fears most is that Shen Yun, which has swept across Europe, the Americas, Australia, and Asia, will eventually clear the clouds of deceit spread by the communist regime, and the vulgarity and ugliness of the Communist Party culture will only become more apparent.
The Chinese regime is afraid of freedom. It is afraid of free thought, free press, and free competition. The propaganda of the Party culture relies on its extensive media holdings and Internet blockades with software such as Golden Shield and Green Dam.
The Party’s grip on the minds and hearts of the Chinese people can survive only in an isolated setting after the communist regime eliminates any threat to its ideology through violence and deceit.
Read the original Chinese article
