‘Connecting to My Heritage’: Beauty Queen Miss Hong Kong on Shen Yun Performing Arts
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2014 Miss Hong Kong Erin Tjoe attends Shen Yun Performing Arts at the William Saroyan Theatre in Fresno, Calif., on March 22, 2026. Steve Ispas/The Epoch Times
FRESNO, Calif.—Erin Tjoe, a beauty queen who was Miss Hong Kong USA in 2014, on Sunday evening explored her ancestral roots with Shen Yun Performing Arts.
Tjoe, who is also an international music artist and entrepreneur, arrived at the William Saroyan Theatre to see the dancers and live orchestra of Shen Yun. This New York-based classical Chinese dance company strives to revive “China before communism,” a culture it says was “almost lost” during Mao’s destructive cultural revolution in the 1960s.
The artists entertain and educate in the modern day. They are shaking the dust off ancient tales, breathing life back into old fables, and making them fun, humorous, gorgeous, and all too relatable.
“I felt that I was connecting to my heritage, and it was just opening up a joy and peace about historical traditions,” Ms. Tjoe told The Epoch Times from the theater after the performance. “I would say that it was very, very unique. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The beauty queen particularly enjoyed the humor in one dance piece, in which the fountain of youth took the form of a magical peach tree. One of the elderly characters, played by a young dancer, gorged on a little too much fruit and was rejuvenated into a baby.
“It’s funny, and it was deep,” she said.
Cheryl Wengren and her mother attend Shen Yun Performing Arts at the William Saroyan Theatre in Fresno, Calif., on March 22, 2026. Lily Yu/The Epoch Times
Many in the audience appreciated the theatrical effects of the transformations, as well as mythical characters who seemed to fly off the stage only to seamlessly reappear soaring across Shen Yun’s patented animated backdrop.
It was “pretty cool how they jumped into the screen and back again,” Cheryl Wengren, a producer for ABC News in Fresno, told The Epoch Times of the performance. She said, “They had very vibrant costumes,” and she loved “the humor that they sprinkled in throughout the show.”
“I think you could be inspired by it for sure,” she said.
But bolstering its production value is Shen Yun’s potent moral message. Many artists in the company are passionate about spirituality. Some have even been persecuted for their religious beliefs under the officially atheist communist regime back in their homeland of China. They founded Shen Yun Performing Arts in upstate New York as a result of persecution, to create an arts platform for nurturing true Chinese culture and raising awareness.
That’s one reason the company is banned from performing in China today.
Michelle Bradford (L) and her grandmother watched Shen Yun Performing Arts at the William Saroyan Theatre in Fresno, Calif., on March 22, 2026. Lily Yu/The Epoch Times
“Restoring culture is a beautiful thing in any part of the world, so I can appreciate that,” said Michelle Bradford, a dean at Fresno Pacific University who also watched Shen Yun on Sunday. “I feel like the storylines are a very good reminder of how we need to be grounded in who we are as individuals and our spirituality. And we need to care for humankind because there are a lot of distractions in this world.”
Reporting by Lily Yu, Steve Ispas, and Michael Wing.
