Artists on a Mission

How does a young man in China, who loses his father to torture and his mother to prison, end up in New York, dancing their story on stage?

This is the inspiring story of why Shen Yun came to be, who these remarkable people are, and what they must overcome still today.

The story begins in China in the ‘90s. The nation had just emerged from decades of violent political campaigns, most notably the Cultural Revolution, and then the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese people were fed up with the Communist Party, its ideology, and its heart-wrenching human toll.

But at the same time, a grassroots phenomenon known as the qigong boom had emerged. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, parks throughout China were brimming at dawn with millions of people performing slow-moving exercises, including tai chi, to improve their health and find peace.

In 1992, Mr. Li Hongzhi from the northeastern city of Changchun introduces a spiritual meditation practice. It is an ancient discipline, but one that had not been broadly taught until that day—Falun Gong.

Completely free and producing powerful results, Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, spreads quickly throughout China. People from all walks of life practice and love it—factory workers, academics, and many government officials. Beyond the health benefits, Falun Gong quenches people’s spiritual thirst. Rooted in Buddhist traditions, it teaches living by “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance,” letting go of unhealthy attachments, and being good, kind people. By the late ‘90s, the Chinese government estimates there are 70-100 million people practicing Falun Gong in China.

This rapid growth startles a few top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, most notably Party Secretary Jiang Zemin. They launch a clandestine probe trying to find evidence to justify banning Falun Gong, but find nothing. In spite of that, and in spite of much opposition from other government leaders, Jiang outlaws Falun Gong in 1999, instantly deeming 100 million people enemies of the state.

The propaganda and violence that follow have become one of the biggest human rights stories of the twenty-first century. Millions have been sent to prisons, labor camps, and “reeducation” brainwashing centers. Thousands have been confirmed as tortured to death—through sleep deprivation, beatings while hanging by the limbs, electric cattle prod shocks, and being bound to the “Tiger Bench” and “Death Bed.” Perhaps the most murderous of all is the now well-documented forced organ harvesting from living people.

When the CCP launched the persecution campaign on July 20, 1999, its suddenness and violence sent international shockwaves. Some Chinese in the diaspora also practiced Falun Gong, as did an increasing number of non-Chinese. But they were relatively few compared to the Falun Gong practitioners in China, and were caught off guard by the sudden atrocities in China and the propaganda the CCP disseminated worldwide.

Quickly, they scrambled to try to tell the world about what was happening in China and try to get the international community to call for an end to the persecution. They held sit ins, rallies, vigils, and parades; they distributed flyers, collected petitions, and knocked on doors in Washington, Ottawa, and Geneva. Some started websites and media companies; others found ways to help people in China break through Internet censorship. Some made nightly phone calls directly to the guards in Chinese prisons and labor camps.

Among the Falun Gong practitioners outside of China were elite artists—professional dancers, painters, and accomplished musicians. They wished to use their skills to play their part in trying to stop the persecution. At the same time, they wanted to show the world the beauty, legends, and spiritual traditions of China before communism.

In 2006, they came together in rolling hills of the Hudson Valley in New York and, with the leadership of Artistic Director D.F., created Shen Yun.

The performance was an instant success. In its first season, Shen Yun toured around the world to critical acclaim in four continents. Audience members spoke of being inspired by beauty and virtues depicted on stage, and by seeing five millennia of civilization that had been almost completely destroyed, being brought back to life.

But the story of the persecution in China was never far from the artists’ hearts. Many had escaped persecution themselves.

When the Story is Personal

These performers, who carried with them haunting memories, the burden of family members left behind, and a gnawing urgency to rescue those still suffering in China, somehow managed to transform all this pain into beautiful and moving art.

When audience members see the smiles and genuine joy with which these artists perform, they cannot imagine what people like Principal Dancer Ellie Rao above have been through. As a 4-year-old, police burst into her home and took her father for nothing more than his faith. She watched by the window as they drove him away. He was tortured to death and she never saw him again.

At 9, she fled with her mother to Thailand and eventually found asylum in the United States.

Principal Dancer Hungwei Sun above is known for his impeccable precision playing the role of heroic warriors. He grew up without his mother. When he was a child, his mother was jailed for seven years because she practiced Falun Gong. Hungwei was able to attend school with relatives in Taiwan. By the time his mother was able to flee China and reunite with her son, they had been apart for 12 years. They consider themselves the lucky ones.

A recent survey in the company found that over 90 performers had been directly affected by the persecution. Some had been jailed. Others lost family members to torture. Some had relatives imprisoned still.

This is why the story of Falun Gong is part of every Shen Yun show. Every performance has about 20 different dance and music pieces, and a couple of them every year are dedicated to the real-life story of Falun Gong practitioners—the persecution and the courage of their peaceful resistance. Shen Yun was started by Falun Gong practitioners in the face of horrible, and still ongoing, persecution. This story isn’t just close to the heart of every performer; it is at the heart of the company’s mission.

And this terrifies Beijing. The CCP spent countless resources telling the world there is no persecution, and here is Shen Yun putting it center-stage at the world’s most prestigious theaters. Moreover, Shen Yun is performed by Falun Gong practitioners, the very group the CCP had set out to eliminate.

And Beijing sees Shen Yun bringing back to life traditional Chinese culture, undoing nearly eight decades of the CCP’s systematic efforts to eradicate it.

By portraying China before communism, Shen Yun brought hope to so many people, both Chinese and not, enabling them to imagine a China without communism.

Exporting Repression

And so, not only is Shen Yun not allowed to perform in China, the CCP has used a wide range of tactics to try to silence Shen Yun, an American company, around the world. Beijing sent out multiple performing arts companies to try to compete with Shen Yun. When that failed, it used its embassies and consulates to try to pressure theaters and governments to cancel Shen Yun shows. It targeted Shen Yun’s website with multiple cyberattacks, sent out spies to try to sabotage the company—only to have them arrested by the FBI and go to jail. In recent years, the CCP and its assets have turned to disinformation, lawfare, and threats.

PRC embassies and consulates around the world annually send letters, call, or visit theaters where Shen Yun is scheduled to perform trying to pressure them to cancel the shows. They use thinly veiled threats of economic repercussions and dangle promises of bringing performances from China to try to get theaters to cancel contracts. These tactics rarely work.

For years, many newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, London Telegraph, and many others carried paid inserts by the China Daily, the CCP’s official English mouthpiece, called “China Watch.” These inserts used the same typesetting and style of the newspapers and were barely distinguishable as paid ads. But their content included titles that, for example, called Shen Yun “A Blasphemy That Masquerades as Art.”

On multiple occasions, the tires on Shen Yun’s buses and trucks were identically slashed. The cuts were made in such a way that the tires would not deflate right away but burst at high speeds on the highway. The cuts were typically made on the front tire, making it much more likely for the driver to lose control of the bus and cause a fatal accident.

Starting in 2024, theaters were Shen Yun was about to perform started receiving emailed threats of mass shootings or claiming bomb had been placed in the theater and would be detonated if Shen Yun is allowed to perform. Even though over 200 such emails have been recorded so far, and all have been reported to the police and FBI for investigation, in no case was there ever an actual threat. The senders used VPNs and were hard to trace, but finally a Taiwanese police task force was able to trace them back to Xi’an, China, and the Huawei Research Institute.

Most recently, the CCP has ramped up its disinformation campaign to try to silence Shen Yun, and the story of Falun Gong, internationally. Leaked documents from China’s Ministry of State Security detail this strategy, with the goal being to use social media to influence mainstream media and turn the public against Shen Yun. Sure enough, we started seeing social media accounts pop up whose only purpose is to attack Shen Yun, amplification of Chinese language influencer assets, bot activity, and AI impersonations of Shen Yun performers. Unfortunately, some of these narratives, which trace back all the way to Beijing, did indeed make their way into mainstream narratives.

Learn more: 9 Things Some Media Reports Get Wrong About Shen Yun

Yet, even having experienced persecution in China, and now transnational repression reaching their homes in America, Shen Yun’s artists are as determined as ever.

Dancer Louis Liu was a 3-year-old in China when his mom took him to see his aunt, Gao Rongrong, at her hospital bed. A vibrant woman in her 30s, she had been fired from her job at an arts college for practicing Falun Gong and was later sent to a labor camp. There, guards had tortured her for seven hours straight, shocking her face with electric baton. From her hospital bed, police standing guard beside her, her cheeks charred and disfigured, she looked at Louis with a tenderness he will never forget. She died of her injuries a year later.

“When I perform in dances showing what’s happening in China today,” he says, “it’s my chance to give voice to those persecuted in China, to give voice to my aunt.”

On February 3, 2025, Louis was getting ready to perform in front of nearly 3,000 people in Dijon, France, when the following email was received: “I placed multiple bombs in the theater. If you don’t want the theater to be blown into rubble, please cancel the Shen Yun performance immediately.”

Only a little over an hour before the performance, Louis and everyone in the theater were evacuated. After a thorough police search, they were allowed back in to quickly get the show ready. The audience members waited outside in the cold for 40 minutes, but seemingly no one left.

The support from audience members around the world has been incredibly encouraging for the performers, as has theater workers standing together with them shoulder to shoulder.

Shen Yun emcee Nancy Zhang was already in makeup and costume and getting to go on stage in Toronto when the fire alarm went off. Everyone in the theater had to evacuate due to a bomb threat. For the first time in this history of Shen Yun, the email caused the show to be canceled.

For Nancy, the incident immediately sent her back to her childhood back in China. She was 8 years old, standing outside as usual, waiting to be picked up after school. But no one came for her. Both her parents had been rounded up that day for being Falun Gong practitioners. Her father was sent to a brainwashing center; her mother jailed for three years.

“The persecution devastated my family,” Nancy said in Toronto. “Today, we are in a free and democratic society. This is not just about Shen Yun. It’s about whether a foreign regime can dictate what Canadians are allowed to see, what stories can be told, and which voices can be heard.”

The canceled performances were rescheduled, and Shen Yun returned to Toronto two months later.

Shen Yun’s artists remain—to borrow the name of a new documentary about Shen Yun—unbroken.

Last year, they joined a parade through New York City’s Chinatown marking the July 20 date when the persecution started.

For 27 years, Falun Gong practitioners have been threatened and demonized, and many have suffered greatly. But today, in spite of everything they carry on, believing deeply the goodness will ultimately prevail.

Watch Sincere Pictures' documentary Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun