NEW YORK—For the better part of the 1990s, millions of Chinese gathered on a regular basis to do the slow-moving, meditative exercises of Falun Gong or studying the teachings of the spiritual practice’s founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi. An abundance of photography and literature documents the extensive spread of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa.
On May 13, a quarter century to the date that Mr. Li gave his first Falun Gong lecture in an austere Northeast Chinese classroom in 1992—and nearly 18 years since the beginning of a brutal communist persecution ordered by regime leaders—3,300 adherents hailing from multiple countries gathered in New York to form a set of words in celebration of the moment.
At Gantry Park, on the eastern riverbank of the Hudson River in Queens, opposite the Manhattan skyline, 1,300 people mostly from nations across the Asia-Pacific region donned yellow clothing and sat down to meditate. The message formed by the event organizers, who had laid out and tested the crowd configurations in advance, read in Chinese and English, “25 Years of Spreading Dafa.”
On Governors Island, 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners from North and South America formed a similar scene, with the Chinese characters reading “The Fa [Chinese for ”Law“] Rectifies Heaven and Earth.”
