Behind the scenes of Shen Yun

Deep in the woods of New York State, behind guarded gates, lies a vision of ancient China reborn – a private sanctuary called Dragon Springs, 400 acres where faith and art share the same stage. It is the creative center of Shen Yun, the epic stage production of Chinese history, legends, and politics. 

“We are putting on stage the tyranny of the CCP,” said Ying Chen, a vice president and conductor with Shen Yun.

The Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, calls the group behind Shen Yun an evil cult. Known as Falun Gong, it’s a spiritual movement rooted in Buddhism. In 1992, founder Li Hongzhi started teaching Falun Gong’s meditation exercises, which spread quickly throughout China.

And Beijing responded. In 1999, China banned the religious group, referring to it as “public enemy number one” for challenging communist rule.

Ying Chen says practitioners were imprisoned and tortured, including her own family. “My mom and my brother was sent to a labor camp,” she said, “and he endured 18 months of agony, and his survival was a fragile miracle. He was literally tortured every single day.”

Founder Li Hongzhi settled in the U.S., and in 2006 launched Shen Yun. It would ask much of his followers, including Jeff Sun and Qingling Cheng, who both grew up in Falun Gong families. “Li Hongzhi made it quite clear that Shen Yun was the highest form of how practitioners can support the movement,” said Cheng.

Their parents had sent them in the late 2000s to a boarding school at Dragon Springs where young performers train for Shen Yun. We spoke with Sun and Cheng, now married, from their home in New Zealand.

“The entire community I grew up in was very proud of me,” Cheng said. “They thought it was a great honor to live with Li Hongzhi in that compound.

Sun said attending Shen Yun was “as if, like, I made it to Harvard.” 

He was 15, she was 13 …  nearly 9,000 miles from home. According to Cheng, “Everything was very isolated, and our main job is to dance.” 

Regarding contact with the world outside Dragon Springs, Cheng said that, if their parents asked any questions, “we had to tell that we were happy, that Master (which is Li Hongzhi) was taking great care of us.”

The reality, Sun and Cheng claim, was they were part of a group of child laborers living in constant fear.

“I was in survival mode,” said Cheng. “It’s about not exceeding 100 pounds every day. It’s about following the footsteps of the person in front of me so I don’t get yelled out of line.”

Sun said, “There’s no one we can talk to. The adults there who are your educators, [are] also your persecutors. You want to speak how you feel to them but the next day you get told that you’re thinking different to everybody else, that you are the problem.”

That was the weight of the mind. The body, they say, would bear its own. “Two kids kind of pushed my legs open in the side split, and it was the most amount of pain I’d ever experienced, ever,” Sun said. “I had internal bleeding. My entire inside of my leg, both legs, was purple. But every day I still had to do the same thing.”

Cheng said, “My shoulder was stretched for [an] abnormal amount of time once, and I lost all feeling in it. So, I had issues, from showering to going to the bathroom.” 

She said, when telling her instructors about her injuries, “I was faced with an eye roll. I have not had or seen a single pill of medicine during my entire duration.”

Sun and Cheng are part of a growing group of former dancers contending that medical care was discouraged, a belief they say is rooted in Falun Gong teachings. “Any injury that you have, if you mention that you want to go the hospital, or if you wanted help, it will be denied,” Cheng said. “And it will be quickly, very quickly associated to, ‘You got injured because you disobeyed Li Hongzhi … It is your fault.'”

In 2015 they were kicked out of Shen Yun. Last spring they sued, one of two federal lawsuits against the performance group alleging forced labor.

Describing his time with Shen Yun, Sun said, “Every time I think about what happened to me, it kinda breaks me apart, you know? And nobody deserves this. I mean, we’re all kids, you know? We wanted to impress our parents. We wanted to do what we thought was right.”

“Sunday Morning” asked Shen Yun about these allegations – and they invited us into Dragon Springs, where spokeswoman Ying Chen showed us around.

We observed young men and women in total quiet. “It’s a little bit like praying,” said Chen. “We settle down our minds and try to purge distracting thoughts, and just stay really focused.”

As to why men and women were sitting on opposite sides of the room, Chen said, “We have very conservative values in the school. So, we usually keep them separate.”

Asked why Shen Yun invited the media into Dragon Springs – which they have not done until now – Chen said, “I think part of it is because they talk about a compound. Does it look like a compound? I think it’s true that we work hard. This is a place that provides top-level dance training, and also it’s a faith-based community.”

Asked to respond to plaintiffs’ accusation that they were denied medical attention they may have needed, Chen replied, “I cannot speak to what they went through. But I just find it very shocking and very different from the practice here and our policies here.”

Regarding the suggestion that the Chinese government is behind the lawsuits, Chen said, “These lawsuits emerge at a time when Beijing escalated its global campaign against Shen Yun. It’s really hard to see it as a mere coincidence.”

And just this month, the Chinese Embassy called Shen Yun “a cult’s propaganda,” using “culture as cover” to “deliver indoctrination.”

Shen Yun company members Regina Dong, Shindy Cai, and Piotr Huang were also sent as teenagers to Dragon Springs.

Dong said, “The CCP has been trying to sabotage us since Day One. We’ve got death threats, bomb threats. And this tactic that they’re using now is very similar to what they were using to persecute Falun Gong.”

Huang said his parents did not pressure him to come to Dragon Springs: “Not at all. Now, if they came and tried to drag me away, I wouldn’t go.”

He says he has access to medical attention. “When I was having pain in my Achilles a few years back, my company manager, she gave me the contact to our doctor. I had an MRI done.” Huang said he got instructions from the doctor on what to do going forward.

Cai, however, said she never gets sick, and believes her faith has protected her: “I actually do think so, because I almost find it strange sometimes. I’m like, you know, usually I’m supposed to come down with, like, a flu, but never. And I think a lot of it has to do with the energy.”

For Jeff Sun and Qingling Cheng, they returned to New Zealand, and no longer practice Falun Gong. 

Asked to respond to Shen Yun describing them as “disgruntled performers,” Cheng replied, “Yes, we are disgruntled. What happened to us was not our fault. We were children. And we’ve been living with the shame. And I don’t want to live with it for the rest of my life.” 

New York’s Department of Labor is now looking into Shen Yun’s working conditions and child labor practices, just as the show’s 20th season goes on tour.

Each year is a new show, but the final scene is always the same: a Chinese city on the edge of destruction until the deus ex machina – a mystical being resembling Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi – descends from the heavens to save the world.

But for now, the story of Shen Yun seems neither so simple, nor perhaps so sacred.

     
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Story produced by Dustin Stephens. Editor: Ed GIvnish.