
Stepping into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun - smacktoward
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/stepping-into-the-uncanny-unsettling-world-of-shen-yun
======
chb
Embarrassed to say that my wife and I were duped into purchasing tickets to
the show. We had thought it would be a highly choreographed, theatrical re-
enactment of significant events in pre-Mao China, and had not done any
research on it.

Instead, it was horribly amateurish propaganda (the entire "set" was a
projected CG image). Heavy-handed plays for sympathy and the demonization of
the Chinese state culminated in a spiritual Armageddon where a Christ-like
deity leads his followers out of a world-consuming conflagration.

The audience lapped it up (this was Arizona, by the way). There were no
misgivings or complaints voiced as we shuffled out of the theater. We felt
suckered, and, to this day, share knowing looks of sheepishness and
incredulity when we see billboards around the country advertising the show.

~~~
xkcd-sucks
To be fair, Chinese propaganda comes off as heavy-handed to a Western
audience, FG is putting on a propaganda show for literal survival, and FG has
received the treatment which happens to "bad" groups of people. FG is a nutty
cult, but (in my opinion) dont deserve to get organ harvested for belonging to
a cult. Other "bad" groups might be Uyghurs now, Hui 5 years in the future,
"intellectuals" fifty years ago, and lots more. The quote about "first they
came for the Jews, and I was silent because I was not one" comes to mind.

~~~
stickfigure
Did you read the article? The organ-harvesting thing appears to be disputed.

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forkLding
For those who don't know, Falun Gong is perceived like the Chinese version of
Scientology in China, although a lot of injustice was done to Falun Gong
followers and most of their assets frozen, there isn't much sympathy for them
and they're typically regarded as a bit weird, believing in Qi, faith healing
and all that.

~~~
HillaryBriss
is believing in Qi a fringe belief in China nowadays?

~~~
salty_biscuits
Someone once told me that the authorities in China are a bit hypersensitive to
organized woo, mostly as a reaction to the boxer rebellion. I don't know what
to believe.

~~~
pthomas551
More like the Taiping Rebellion...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion#Death_toll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion#Death_toll)

~~~
salty_biscuits
Well both really, important point is that there is a history that influences
the current ideology.

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jerf
Well, I guess my priors need a bit of tuning; they picked up from the
pervasiveness of the advertising that this must be a funded propaganda push,
but I assumed it would be from the Chinese government, not someone rather
bitterly opposed to them.

(This is not an *-ist comment; that governments promote their cultures in
other countries to create "soft power" is an established fact. I for one would
love in many ways to live in a world where all our conflicts were solved with
such soft power, rather than the harder kind.)

~~~
rdtsc
> but I assumed it would be from the Chinese government, not someone rather
> bitterly opposed to them.

I have to admit, I thought exactly the same. Just yesterday saw a booth with a
nicely dressed man in a suit, selling Shen Yun tickets and thought it must a
troupe from China and wondered how much propaganda is in it. I was imagining
something like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute).
Then today saw this on the HN front page.

It turns out yes, it is selling propaganda, but not the kind I thought.

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solidsnack9000
I'm surprised that an article like this does not mention the long history of
religious-revolutionary movements in China. Just a few:

0184
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Turban_Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Turban_Rebellion)

1351
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Turban_Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Turban_Rebellion)

1794
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Lotus_Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Lotus_Rebellion)

These rebellions usually have a frame story of an ancient way of life founded
on people's harmony with nature and one another. Because the government
operates at variance with this harmony, the government is not legitimate and
must be replaced.

Francis Fukuyama talks at length about the "Mandate of Heaven" concept and its
impact on legitimacy in China in his recent books.

~~~
SampleBourgeois
Don't forget the biggest of them all, the Taiping Rebellion

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion)

~~~
twblalock
That one is the best. When I tell people about it they think it is too
ridiculous to be true. A guy who thought he was Jesus's brother started a war
that killed tens of millions of people.

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hvs
My family and I went a couple of years ago. It seemed fairly benign, if a bit
corny/garish. The whole "evolution is evil" thing kind of comes out of
nowhere. Afterwards I looked up the group behind it and read about Falun Dafa.
It won't convince anyone to join their group, but it probably raises a fair
amount of funds for it. As entertainment it is moderately interesting, but I
wouldn't go again.

~~~
Simon_says
I believe evolution is evil, too. Doesn't mean it's not true.

~~~
jackcosgrove
Natural selection is progress through suffering and death. Evolution can
happen in many different ways.

------
badcede
"The fact that both Falun Gong and the Communist Party communicate via
propaganda makes it almost impossible to understand what’s really happening."

~~~
stcredzero
Generalized it for you:

"The fact that everyone in 2019 communicates via propaganda makes it almost
impossible to understand what’s really happening."

"Social media" is a bit of a whitewash. It should really be called, "Everyone
Propaganda!"

~~~
GauntletWizard
American Idiot really was ahead of its time.

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hprotagonist
_Shen Yun was a Baader-Meinhof object: once I saw it, I started to see it
everywhere._

More than that -- until I read this, I had half-convinced myself that I'd been
seeing these posters since the early 90s, not 2007!

~~~
snowwrestler
I love the next sentence:

> Shen Yun greeted me silently at the bus stop and loomed over highway exits,
> following me around on the physical plane of existence the way anything you
> shop for on the Internet starts to follow you around online.

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LiamMcCalloway
Jia Tolentino's pieces often resonate, in that particular way of things that
are at the right distance to what they are talking about: close enough to
understand them but far enough to show their place in time and space,
culturally.

~~~
gaogao
Her article on Juul is one of my favorites.

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obiefernandez
I got duped into buying tickets to this show for my wife as an anniversary
present a couple years ago. (This was in Atlanta, GA) We spent the first half
in utter disbelief of the crap we were witnessing, and left in disgust during
intermission. However we were definitely in the minority, and found that very
puzzling. Maybe the political religious stuff was going over most people's
heads?

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euske
The other day I found a video about the "cultural war" between Falun Gong and
Chinese govt., in the form of two disguised fronts (Shen Yun and Confucius
Institute, respectively) within the US soil. This was made by a Western guy
who's associated with neither of them. It's quite interesting.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tsXtk7psUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tsXtk7psUc)

Here in Japan, I see that a few large private universities are affiliated with
Confucius Institute, and I have seen a Shen Yun ad on YouTube. The cultural
war is certainly going on here too.

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vernie
I urge anyone who likes weird stuff to not read this or anything else about
the show and go see it immediately.

~~~
Glyptodon
Yeah, I'm interested in seeing it in a "I like roadside attractions and pulpy
weird stuff" kind of way, but not at the price they charge for tickets.

~~~
youeseh
Hey, you might even get away with asking for a free ticket! I remember walking
in by mistake and an old lady on her way out promptly asked if we wanted to
see it - she was very excited. I was just there to check out the theater
itself. Five minutes later we were in the theater, watching the thing, trying
to find ways to leave without offending the nice lady who'd just given us free
tickets to the show :)

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jscheel
I often see it advertised at Chinese restaurants around town. Whenever I ask
the proprietors if it part of Falun Gong, they all claim not to understand, or
they just say no. I can't tell if they actually know what it is and don't want
to admit it, or if they legitimately don't know.

~~~
stcredzero
_Whenever I ask the proprietors if it part of Falun Gong, they all claim not
to understand, or they just say no. I can 't tell if they actually know what
it is and don't want to admit it, or if they legitimately don't know._

Don't know, don't care, they got a restaurant to run! [1] They're probably
just getting past your question and getting onto the next task. My wife grew
up in mainland China. She thinks of them as wackos and/or somewhat like
"carnies." If they can live and let live, and they don't do something like
human trafficking, then they can believe what they want and make whatever art
and dance they want, as far as I'm concerned.

([1] I used to work at a local midwest bookstore chain that Borders seemed to
steal its ideas from. Customers got a totally relaxed vibe, even from the
workers. However, being a worker there was a _workout_! I probably did enough
walking for that one activity to qualify as a fitness program. So if you go to
a restaurant that seems hectic, there's a good chance it's not just hectic,
but that just getting through your shift is a heroic feat of endurance and
optimizing on your feet. (I've also worked in restaurants.))

~~~
jscheel
Fair point, though these restaurants are in a small, rural, southern town, so
they usually aren't exactly "hopping" :)

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perl4ever
"Chinese scientists with doctorates from prestigious American universities who
practice Falun Gong claim that modern physics (for example, superstring
theory) and biology (specifically the pineal gland's function) provide a
scientific basis for their beliefs."

...

"For further information, consult your pineal gland."

------
IOT_Apprentice
The Chinese government does not need or want a "Taiping Rebellion" equivalent
to that of the infamous Hong Xiuquan -- which was the largest war in human
history in terms of casualties and destruction. So to them, Falun Gong and
it's leader represent that kind of threat, once it reached tens of millions in
size. That is orders of magnitude larger than the student protests in
Tiananmen, and that was brutally suppressed. Totalitarian regimes are going to
be just that, brutal/monsterous and unforgiving.

~~~
Apocryphon
The Taiping movement sprung up during the failing days of the Qing when
governance was declining and life for the common people worsened, so maybe the
PRC government should focus on fixing that first before torturing dissidents

~~~
Laforet
The rise of Falun Gong was well correlated to a period of economic uncertainty
in the late 90s, especially in the Manchurian rust belt cities where
neoliberal reforms lead to massive unemployment and poverty. While the
allegation of torture and organ harvesting are substantive, these acts were in
no way targeted at FG followers or political prisoners in general. And FG's
attempt at monopolizing such victimhood only comes off as disingenious.

Nowadays FG is very much a shadow of its former glory these days in China
thanks to both supression efforts as well as improved economic prospects. Its
influence has aged much better outside China because the Chinese diaspora's
world view is more or less stuck in the 1990s, like it was the end of history
according to Francis Fukuyama.

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ilamont
I live in the Boston area and they are very, very persistent when it comes to
promoting the event. It seems like every local business has a Shen Yun poster
in the window, and they go to door-to-door with flyers. There are TV ads on
local broadcasters. And of course they are all over Facebook with ads. This
reflects not only the zeal of the volunteers but a very large budget to do the
broadcast ads.

The local media and most of the public seems to have no clue that it's a
propaganda gambit.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
They heavily blanket every metro area surrounding their home base in
southeastern NY.

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coupdejarnac
For those interested in China, serpentza's youtube channel recently did a
video about this. The youtube channel China Uncensored is also funded by
people associated with Falun Gong. It is ridiculous anti-China propaganda,
though some of it is warranted.

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JumpCrisscross
What are good, non-cultish Chinese dance productions in New York or the Bay
Area?

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jdlyga
Most Chinese people I know already have a clear understanding of how creepy
and weird Shen Yun is, and view it in the same light as Scientology. But that
message hasn't gotten out to everyone else yet. It's not a beautiful chinese
art, culture, and dance show.

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jinushaun
My wife and I went a few years back and felt like we got scammed. Low quality
acrobatics, with heavy handed propaganda and unexpected religious messaging.
We didn’t sign up for that.

