http://bostonherald.com/entertainment/arts_culture/view.bg?articleid=1066025&srvc=home&position=also

‘Chinese New Year’ is a spectacular
By Bob Young
Saturday, January 12, 2008

The audience at the “Chinese New Year Spectacular” at the Opera House didn’t have to wait long to discover there was more to this cultural showcase than advertised.

A few lines into soprano Min Jiang’s operatic ballad “I Sing for You,” the subtitles on a giant screen began laying out the not-so-subtle subtext.

Pointed phrases damned the Communist Chinese government’s attacks on “our glorious culture” and its repressive tactics against Falun Gong, the self-improvement-through-spirituality movement whose philosophy permeated the show.

It was clear that the “Spectacular” was an earnest effort to offer up what its Falun Gong-affiliated presenter, New Tang Dynasty Television, argues is an important part of Chinese heritage and culture. So earnest, in fact, that the Chinese government recently put pressure on California and New York politicians to not recognize the event, currently on its fourth annual world tour.

The show’s 150-person troupe did a good job of presenting its case. The two-and-a-half-hour program featured dancers and singers in a dazzling array of costumes, and a crack orchestra that seamlessly fused Chinese and Western classical instrumentation.

Together, they put a high gloss on segments ranging from 12th century military adventures and Mongolian bowl dancing to fan dancing and the power of thelotus blossom.

Bright background scenes underscored the idealized tone with rainbows arching above flowered meadows and sun rays kissing snowy mountain ranges.

Two peppy hosts followed their scripts precisely, explaining between musical numbers what the audience would see and hear, and what it meant. Some of these bits were as obvious as the hammer and sickle on the backs of black-clad police thugs who beat Falun Gong members in one dance number. Explanations were welcome in other numbers, particularly those where the plot revolved around divine visitors, fate and deities.

While a number of performers stood out – lead dancers Wendy Su and Leon Chao among them – and the show’s choreography was competent enough, it likely took a true Falun Gong disciple to declare this Chinese New Year show spectacular. Mixing politics, religion and art is tricky business, and best received when the art transcends the agenda.

As soon as they said that I could fly if I practiced enough, I was out of there. I’ve also heard of the “don’t take medicine and all your ailments will disappear.”

What a bunch of crackpots. It’s no different than voodoo magic where belief overrides science.

The show will make stops in LA, SF, SD among many other US cities in January before they start their world tour that will cover many countries in Euro, Australia, and Asia including Taiwan.

Here is some CA show info:

2008-01-15 / 01-17
San Diego, CA, US
California Center for the Arts, Escondido

2008-01-18 / 01-20
Los Angeles, CA, US
Nokia Theatre L.A.

2008-01-23 / 01-26
San Francisco, CA, US
Orpheum Theatre

He took a step in a very vulnerable direction by sharing his personal story about his mother and how it affected his family. RESPECT THAT.

By the way, “a fiction of the lowest common denominator”? What does that even MEAN? Do you THINK before you write or do you just write in a fit?

I have read Mr. Li Hongzhi’s (the founder of Falun Gong) books, and Falun Gong does not teach “fasting,” does not teach “trance”, and does not teach people to be off-balance. Quite the opposite, in his books, Li Hongzhi explains the origin of “fasting” as related to qigong and why Falun Gong does not incorporate this technique; he explains why Buddhist monks traditionally meditate in a state of trance and why Falun Gong does not practice in a state of trance and why practitioners should not lose awareness when practicing; and he talks about the ancient Chinese principle of the “middle way” and why it is important in life not to go to extremes and that practitioners of Falun Gong should maintain harmony in the family, think of others first in every situation, and be kind. He also goes to great length to explain why “truth-compassion-tolerance” is the characteristic of the universe.

I do not know why ‘Mr. Lee’ writes the things he does, but I can tell you first-hand that the same kind of hate fodder can be found coming from the communist Chinese state-controlled media beginning in 1999 (when the government began to persecute the practice). At that time, Falun Gong had become the most popular form of qigong in China, with a Chinese government census estimating that between 70-100 million people were practicing. I think that all it would take to know for yourself that what Mr. Lee has written are truly “double-speak,” would be to read the original books of Falun Gong (www.falundafa.org), or you could could do as he suggested and go and speak to the Falun Gong practitioners in front of the Chinese embassy in San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, New York, etc. For the most part, they are retired old Chinese folk; they are quite rational, and they are there appealing for human rights because people in their country are being persecuted. Mr. Lee must assume that the majority of the people on the web have neither the time, ability, or the willingness to seek out the truth on their own. That is also precisely why lies can stand as truth for so long in a country like Communist China.

To my dismay, in my travels in China, I met Chinese people, even in Beijing, who still don’t know that students were shot down in cold-blood in the 1989 Tiananman Square Massacre. In Communist China, the media reports that it was the students who attacked the soldiers in the so-called “Tiananmen Square Student Riots”. When I showed the photo of the boy standing in front of the tank to a Chinese colleague of mine, she said that she didn’t believe it and that it could have been made in Photoshop. I could hardly believe my ears. Time Magazine rated that photo one of the top 100 photos of the century! Now that really shows how strong and perverse a grip the Chinese Communist government has over people.

However, I think we all know that grip is fast losing its hold. Things are changing in China. Information is spreading. Even as the Chinese Communist regime last year spent over a billion dollars to “purify the Internet”, and more recently, the regime recently passed a new law banning all streaming video content in China except for that on state-controlled websites staring in Jan-Feb 2008, still, more and more people are finding out different truths every day, and they are sharing with each other what they know and heard. Bye-bye ‘Mr. Lee.’