OTTAWA—One of Canada’s largest developers brought his family to take in Shen Yun Performing Arts at the National Arts Centre Wednesday night and said the show helped him better understand his Chinese neighbours.
“It’s good. It’s different. It’s like learning a little bit more about the Chinese ways,” said Francis Lépine, president and owner of Groupe Lépine, one of Canada’s top ten residential development companies.
According to Groupe Lépine’s website, the company operates in Ottawa and Montreal and has developed over 9 million square feet in residential construction since inception, including several towers in both cities.
Mr. Lépine said the show helped him understand Chinese culture and would help him better understand Chinese people living in Canada.
“We’re all a bit brought up differently and we all have different cultures. Whether it’s values or however you want to call it, then it makes a little bit better to understand where they come from, where they’re coming from and how they grew up,” he said.
He said he appreciated how the show captured cultural traditions from different areas of China.
“It’s not a small place. It’s fairly big. We tend to think that it’s all the same but no, it is a very large region and there’s ... variations of cultures from the different regions,” he said.
Shen Yun tours the world with an all-new program each year on a mission to revive 5,000 years of divinely inspired traditional Chinese culture. Most of that culture has been destroyed under 60 years of atheist communist rule, but prior to that, China was a land steeped in spiritual traditions.
Mr. Lépine appreciated that element of the show.
“Under the communist regime, I understand there’s no religion. I don’t think anybody believes in [the Chinese] government,” he said. “There’s got to be something more than that [to believe in].”
Mr. Lépine noted that the traditional spirituality of China shared similarities with Western religious he was familiar with, key beliefs like belief in gods, heaven, and the importance of being honest and a good person in life.
Reporting by Donna He and Matthew Little.
Shen Yun has three companies touring the world. The Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company will perform at the National Arts Centre on Dec. 19–23. For more information visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.
