Shen Yun Performing Arts principal dancer Kathy Wu grew up thousands of miles away from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of religious believers, but it still left a scar on her family. Because of the regime’s policies, she would never again see the grandmother who helped raise her, and this drove Wu to use her talent to show the world the stories the CCP tries to censor.

In 2025, amid the CCP’s escalating campaign to silence Shen Yun, Wu was cast as the lead in a story-based dance that shows how the CCP’s ongoing persecution of Falun Gong has torn families apart, and how the persecution has been unable to stamp out their faith.

“After I came to Shen Yun, I realized this was a powerful way to help people learn about Falun Dafa and the truth about the persecution in China,” Wu said. “Art touches people more naturally. When they see it with their own eyes, it feels real. They understand what’s happening, and they want to learn more about it.”

In 1998, she came to visit her daughter in Australia, who was pregnant with Wu and soon to give birth. Wu’s parents saw the drastic change in the now-healthy, even-tempered elderly woman and asked her what happened. She told them she had begun practicing Falun Gong, and, interested, Wu’s parents began to practice it too.

Wu remembers her grandma as a loving caretaker who one day disappeared from her life. She remembers how her mother fell silent when she asked why her grandma hadn’t come to visit, and her dad changing the subject with a joke. Only many years later did she hear the full story.

In 1999, the CCP began a violent persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. It began with a propaganda campaign slandering Falun Gong in state-run media. Then on July 20, the authorities carried out nationwide arrests of Falun Gong practitioners overnight. Since then, human rights organizations and international media, including The Epoch Times, have documented numerous cases of torture, brainwashing, forced labor, and even live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in a persecution that is ongoing today.

Wu’s grandma returned to China not long after the persecution began, as her visa to visit Australia was expiring. At the time, she had heard vaguely about the persecution, but it sounded too unbelievable. After all, why would any government want to persecute people who tried to live by truth, compassion, and forbearance and tried to be good people, she thought. And so she returned without fear.

But what Wu’s grandma had thought unbelievable was a reality. She used to do the meditation exercises with other Falun Gong practitioners at a park near her home, and now many of those practitioners were pressured by authorities to destroy any materials related to Falun Gong. She spoke up and said they could give the materials to her, and she hid them in her house.

But Wu’s grandma eventually came under the attention of the authorities, as she often contacted her daughter overseas to receive news about the persecution and international responses. A neighbor reported her to the authorities, and police raided her home one day when she invited other practitioners over to share the latest news. Still headstrong, she told them to arrest only her, claiming she was in charge and the others had nothing to do with this. During the raid, police discovered all the materials she had hidden for others, and it was all too easy for them to believe she was some kind of organizer, so she was arrested.

Over the next year, she was monitored by neighbors constantly and arrested several more times. In the late 2000s, she was sent to a forced labor camp. Authorities pressured her to write a statement renouncing her faith, but she refused.

Because Wu’s grandma was an elderly woman, she wasn’t subjected to the physical torture that some other practitioners detained for their faith had endured. Instead, authorities used psychological pressure to wear her down. This included lying to her and others, and convincing her husband to pressure her to renounce her faith. Her health deteriorated rapidly during the eight months imprisonment.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when authorities told her that her daughter and two granddaughters had come to China to try to visit her, and they had been arrested because of her and were now being tortured, all because she would not give up her faith.

Wu’s grandma gave in, signing the statement the authorities wanted. In fact, her daughter hadn’t come to China—she hadn’t been able to because the Chinese Embassy in Australia refused her repeatedly until she sought help from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Jun said that while her mother was on her deathbed, the embassy staff had turned her away, saying that if she had the right to practice Falun Gong in Australia, they had the right to bar her from entry into China, and even threw her passport out the window during one visit.

Jun dedicated that month to caring for her mother, and they were even able to meditate together. But after she left, her mother’s health rapidly declined again, and she passed away in December 2002. Jun was not allowed to return to China for her mother’s funeral or memorial service and has not been back since.

Jun, a journalist, turned her attention to exposing the CCP’s human rights abuses. She has published investigative works with interviews with whistleblowing CCP insiders, in the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times.

Wu was a dance student when she finally learned the full story in 2020.

She had colleagues who were also Falun Gong practitioners, including a friend who shared how her own family in China had been persecuted for their beliefs. Hearing this made Wu think of her grandma and prompted a long conversation with her dad, then later with her mom.

“I was really shocked. I thought, ‘Oh, how come I don’t know this story? How come I don’t know?'” Wu said. She said she had been so young when she first noticed her grandma had stopped visiting that it would have been difficult for her parents to explain at the time. But learning about what her grandmother went through and the kind of person she was ignited something in Wu. That year, for a competition, she choreographed a story-based dance inspired by her grandma, and in 2021, became a dancer with Shen Yun.

“Last year was the most intense,” Wu said. In the past, she would hear about a bomb threat hoax “every once in a while,” she said.

“But last year, it felt like every single theater we went to had a bomb threat. It was almost unbelievable,” she said.

This meant the company, the local presenters, the theaters, and local law enforcement were constantly coordinating to stay ahead of security risks, often arranging ahead of time for police to sweep the theater with bomb-sniffing dogs. The theaters her troupe has worked with have been supportive, she added, but it’s an added stress for everyone involved.

“It’s the feeling at the back of your brain, like someone’s holding a gun to your head, but you don’t know if the barrel is loaded. So it’s really, really stressful,” Wu said.

At the same time, it shows how worthwhile Shen Yun’s mission is, Wu said. She hears audience members all around the world say that they didn’t know this was happening until they saw the performance. “One of the major purposes of our show to spread the word about the persecution. It’s the truth about what’s happening in China—people often don’t believe it, but it’s been going on for almost three decades.”

Wu says that the CCP may try to slander Falun Gong and Shen Yun through its media, but audience feedback has shown that the people who see the performance for themselves do understand what Falun Gong and Shen Yun are really about.

“I try to, through my dance and my actions and my every expression and movement on stage, I try to show the audience,” she said. “We’re trying to tell you what’s happening in China. We’re trying to show you what the CCP is doing. And we’re trying to share the beauty and truth of China—what it could have been, what it was, its actual heritage, its actual culture. And that’s what the CCP is trying to ruin.”