SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Hawaii Audience Member Grateful After Seeing Shen Yun’s Presentation of China

May 11, 2025

5/11/2025Updated: 5/11/2025

HONOLULU—Tim Hopkins was grateful to have learned more about China after seeing Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Blaisdell Concert Hall on May 10.

“I had a chance to read a little bit about why Shen Yun was doing this. And I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for everybody to become more aware of just the beauty behind the culture of China, that is so much more than what we hear about today. And they bring it to us in this form. It’s just wonderful, I mean it’s very exciting,” said Mr. Hopkins, who has retired from the local food services industry.

Shen Yun, the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company, was established in New York in 2006, with a mission to showcase traditional Chinese culture from before the takeover of the Chinese Communist Party.

For thousands of years in the past, many aspects of Chinese society, including medicine, music, literature, poetry, astronomy, and construction, were “guided at the highest levels” by Buddhism, Taoism, or Confucianism, according to the company’s website.

Traditional Chinese culture is now on the “brink of extinction” in China after the Chinese regime has led a “decades-long effort” to destroy it, the company’s website says. Now, Shen Yun is bringing that past culture to life on stage under the tagline “China before communism.”

“I’m grateful that I have an opportunity to learn so much today. And understand that in our lifetime, we’re only exposed to a certain story about China today. But there’s so much more. It’s so rich. The culture, and just to have it expressed in this way. It’s just so wonderful,” Mr. Hopkins said.

According to Shen Yun, the Chinese regime is substituting what’s left of traditional Chinese culture in China with party ideology and turning arts into a “strong propaganda tool,” with the goal of safeguarding its power.

“We know that the inspiration behind all the work comes through and touches us,” Mr. Hopkins said. “I think that’s probably the goal of performers, is to let that come through. And it certainly has done that today.”

Reporting by Yeawen Hung and Frank Fang.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006