Roundtable: 25 Years of Persecution | China In Focus

I was told in China by the Chinese police that truth, compassion, tolerance is illegal. I just remember seeing her in so much pain. I was just terrified. I remember watching the police car disappear. That was the last time I saw my dad. When I came to the U.S. in 2008, I saw exact products we made in the labor camp was sold here. I'm a mother trying to imagine myself in that scenario. It's just the worst kind of emotional blackmail. And that's being carried out by a government. Sadistic. Hello, everyone. I'm Steve Lance. I'm the host of Entity's Capital Report. Today, I welcome a very different group of guests. They may not have much to say about American policy, but each one of them has a story, a very compelling story that reminds us of the critical role America plays in the world stage and how much our foreign policy choices could mean to the voiceless throughout the darkest corners of the world. For us, it may be just boring policy and may sound distant. But for others, these policies give them protection, protection they need to survive atrocities that here in America we can only imagine. Twenty five years ago today, when the Chinese communist regime launched a nationwide eradication campaign against the spiritual group Falun Gong, tens of thousands of innocent lives and their stories were changed forever. As this atrocity is still alive today, more still needs to be done. I'm really honored to have you all sitting here with me today. And we're here, unfortunately, on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the persecution of Falun Dafa. And each of you brings a unique personal story to this persecution. And sometimes it's a persecution that is so distant to many people, the crimes that have taken place. And we're going to unpack some of those through your personal stories. Right now, I'm happy to have Ellie Rao joining us, Kay Rubachek, Minghui Wang, and William Huang. Just recently, the Falun Gong Protection Act passed in the House of Representatives, and this is a significant moment in history. And I want to get your thoughts on that. In particular, when you heard about this Falun Gong Protection Act passing in the United States, what type of message does this bill send to the CCP, to Beijing, outside of what some might consider a formality in the U.S.? Okay, I say it sends a wonderful message, right? It's an important message. But isn't it, you know, about time? Sorry to say, but it's about time. 25 years. 25 years of persecution. That's what we're talking about here. This isn't something that just started last year, and that we cannot forget that this is not over. It's not a finished persecution that we're talking about in memoriam of millions of people that have been killed. We still don't even know exactly how many people have been killed. So I say, great. Let this send a loud, strong, clean message. Let it pass ASAP, and it's about time. I think the passing of the Falun Gong Protection Act in the House is very significant. I can give you one example. When I was in Sihui Prison, I was persecuted there. One day, the guard told me that they received a letter from American Falun Gong practitioner, to urge them to stop the persecution of Falun Gong practitioner inside that jail. The persecution towards us during that period, short period, is relieved, definitely. How do you know they got that letter? The guard told me. I felt that, you know, the voice from outside China really helped the Falun Gong practitioner inside China. This kind of a bill is much bigger than a letter, right? So eventually, if it's passed, signed by the President, it will become a binding law. It really can help Falun Gong practitioner in China. Yeah, this can be law-binding. There's been quite a few resolutions over the last 25 years to raise awareness in the US government about the persecution of Falun Gong, and the peaceful nature of Falun Gong. But this is vital. There are still lives to be saved, and while there are, we should do it. Yes, indeed. Ellie, obviously, this must be deeply personal to you. How big of an impact do you think that this Protection Act will have? Well, I think this Protection Act is an extremely powerful and evocative message to China that the persecution needs to stop. And your father was persecuted to death by the Chinese Communist Party. Yes. Can you just tell us about that briefly? I was born into an ordinary family in China, but my childhood is not very typical. Both of my parents practiced Falun Gong, and they were severely persecuted in China. The last time I saw my dad, I remember I was four, and it was just a typical day. All of a sudden, there was a knock on the door. My grandma opened the door, and two guys came in. And then all of a sudden, there was five, six, seven guys. And in the end, they dragged my dad away. And then I ran to the window, and my grandma told me, don't go after them. And basically, I remember watching the police car disappear. And that was the last time I saw my dad. I'm so sorry. And that was because he practiced Falun Gong. Yes. It's interesting because I'm a film producer. That's what I've been making, programming for film and television for my professional career. I actually was an eyewitness as a foreigner, you know, not Chinese, of the persecution. And I've used my professional skills to interview many of them, dozens if not more than hundreds, because they don't always have the opportunity to speak. Some of them cannot speak English. And so I've really switched a lot of my producing work over to focusing on this topic, because it's a story that affects so many millions of people in China and now around the world. There's so many aspects about this persecution that are hard to believe. But the fact that we have this Falun Gong Protection Act going through now is making it more palatable, more acceptable to really look at the crimes. That's going on, which we really have to do. Minghui, this Falun Gong Protection Act, how significant is it to you and your family? I'm very grateful that my family, all three of us are here, me and my parents. I was born in 2000 and the persecution started in 1999. So for the longest time, I would be so scared hearing police sirens. That was my only reality for 11 years. When I was five, I was led into a door in this so-called re-education center. But it's actually just a brainwashing camp. Inside that room, there was like a chair and this lady was being tied to the chair. And there was this very thick plastic tube inserted into her nose. This lady was my mom. And that was the first time I clearly remember seeing her. Because I was staying with my grandparents from age one to five because my parents could not take care of me when they were in prison. I just remember seeing her in so much pain. I was just terrified, terrified at that point. What was this thick plastic tube? Was it oxygen to help her breathe or? She was put under force feeding. They did it so many times to her. Every experience of that was just better to be dead at that point than to be alive to experience that. They brought me into that room to witness that. They did that because they want her to see, look, your daughter is crying. Your daughter is having so much pain. Your daughter couldn't recognize you like this because you practiced Falun Gong. So why don't you renounce your faith right now? So they were using you to kind of coerce her. Yes. Most people probably have never heard of force feeding, but it is a torture method used in China. Yes, I personally experienced that. You know, I graduated from Tsinghua University, the top one engineering institute in China. People also call it China's MIT. I was in jail for two to five years just because of my belief in Falun Gong. So when I was in detention center, I felt, you know, we are so wrongly treated because we are trying to be a good person. Why we were persecuted here? So I had a hunger strike. I refused to eat anything or drink anything for two to five days. After that, I offended because, you know, my body is weak. Then they chained me on four limbs in a wood plank. Then they pinched my nose. I cannot breathe freely, and they used a chopstick to stick into my throat. Then I feel very painful. What was the chopstick for? Kind of like in book, I have to suck in something. Then they pour a liquid into my mouth. You know, it's very painful experience, definitely. I feel very hurt here. You know, one of my schoolmates, he was force-feeding many times. Once his air pump just broken because the force-feeding. They used like a plastic tube to stick into his stomach, but damaged the air pipe. So that kind of thing. He has to go to the emergency in the hospital. One practitioner from Guangzhou, even he persecuted death just because of force-feeding. It's definitely kind of a torture. Like what they did to Minghui. I mean, can you imagine bringing a five-year-old child into a room? I mean, I'm a mother. You know, just trying to imagine myself in that scenario where it's just the worst kind of emotional blackmail, and that's being carried out by a government. I mean, really, it's sadistic to do that, to impose that on a child. My mom went to the hospital to demand for my dad because he was persecuted to the point where he became a vegetable person. The hospital didn't give my mom the body. And they said, if you want it, we can give it to you for 100,000 yuan. So she refused. And a week later, when she went to the funeral home to check the body, she couldn't recognize if it was really my dad. So she actually highly suspected forced organ harvest on him. She saw a body, but it didn't look like him? Yeah, she couldn't recognize it. It just looked like it could be anybody. The Falun Gong Protection Act specifically goes after those who are complicit or involved in one of the most heinous crimes known to man, which is forced live, state-sanctioned by the Chinese Communist regime, organ harvesting, where they are known to extract organs from living human beings, cremate the bodies so that there's no evidence, sell the organs at top dollar, and they're doing this to healthy prisoners of conscience. You were a prisoner of conscience, literally. Right. One of the biggest challenges is the evidence of finding this because the CCP covers it up. What can you tell us about this crime of organ harvesting? I was persecuted in Sihui Prison, which is located in Guangdong province in southern China. And in 2015, in that whistleblower, he posted an article about extraction of a prisoner's organ to sell for profit in that prison. That's a very horrible story. I read the whole article. The whistleblower, in fact, is a guard inside the prison. I know him pretty well because he was the guard in the same ward in the prison when I was in there. In the article, there's a lot of detailed events of the person's name. Everything is true because I know all of them. The article mentioned that the director of that prison, he wants to make a great profit from the selling the organ of the prisoners. They select some poor or less educated prisoners and kill them and sell organs for great profits. You know, this is kind of a proof like false organ harvesting really exists in mainland China. For those of us who have been fortunate enough to grow up in the West, specifically in America, understanding what it's like living under communist rules, specifically, it's just something we can't really comprehend. You guys have all literally lived under the iron fist, under constant pressure of being wiped off the face of this earth, like with your poor father, Ellie. So what is it like now? Are there any after effects of this PTSD or emotional trauma that you could share with us? Actually, this is a very good point because I think I chose dance as a career because of this trauma. When I was little, I would always see someone else with their dad and I would feel a hole in my heart. But at the same time, I know that my dad gave me courage to do what is right, to tell the world that truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance is essentially good. The funny thing is, I was so shy when I was little that I couldn't talk to people. But they all say action is louder than words. So I decided to choose dance as a career since I saw Shen Yun in 2007. And I felt that it reconnected me with my faith and I also felt like Shen Yun was doing pretty good effort at exposing the persecution. You essentially bring William's story to life. Yes, and also my own story to life. The first time I saw Shen Yun, we had a piece based on basically my family story and the dad was persecuted to death and there was this little girl on stage and she really wanted to save her dad. And that touched me on a personal level because I felt that I was that little girl. How did you go, I can't imagine trying to, it's like playing yourself in a movie and you're reliving that painful story. How did you do that? It's hard to describe because on stage everything is compact and every single time we know that we're telling the audience something is going on in China and we want to bring them hope because it's always someone is persecuted but at the end of the day goodness prevails and because we believe in God, God will help us. And I remember this one time I didn't play the little girl. I played the fairy that came to the little girl when she was really sad. When I held her hand she had a tear drop dropped onto my hand and that one performance was really special to me because I felt that I was her at the same time. Oh wow, that's so touching. It's very touching. Honestly every time I saw the program about persecution in Shen Yun I will be moved to tears. It's very touching. Probably because myself experienced the real story of the persecution. I have a question for you. You said when you were very little your father was in a labor camp. So how did you communicate with your father at that time? My mom and I actually tried to visit him many, many times and we were denied because he wouldn't transform. So transform basically means renounce your faith, sign the paper saying you won't practice Falun Gong anymore and my dad refused to do that. So I started writing to my dad and I remember the first letter it was of a postcard. This is him writing to you or you writing to him? I wrote to him as the starting letter. How old were you? I was seven years old. Yeah, my handwriting was terrible. Can you still read it? It's better than my Chinese. Yeah, so it's in the back of a postcard. I started with, hey dad, how's your physical conditions? Maybe you're so unhappy inside being in the labor camp. Let me tell you a joke. And I told him a very, very stupid joke. But yeah, and then I also reported on, oh yeah, I have a month till I have the final exam and then I'm gaining weight. I'm also growing taller. So very, very mundane stuff. And then we had these kind of letter exchanges for basically the two years that he was inside the labor camp. Actually for one of my birthdays, he wrote to me like a poem that rhymes and it's a little bit funny. I think from that poem, I realized, wow, he really remember every single thing that I mentioned in the letters that I was watching TV a lot. I was learning how to swim but then getting a horrible tan. And then I was pointing out that some of the words that he was using was wrong or misused. It just felt like he was trying his best to fulfill his duty as a father, even while being in prison. He would include everything in that little poem as that was his birthday gift to me. And yeah, it's the best birthday gift I could ask for. One thing that I was kind of taken back by is everybody here at the table has been persecuted in one form or another directly, literally directly. But I think Kay, you kind of stand out. You're the only non-Chinese here. Tell us about your experience in Beijing. I went to Tiananmen Square in 2001. The persecution had been going on for a few years since 1999. I started practicing Falun Dafa in 1998. I had gained so many health benefits and it opened my mind and I felt really a greater sense of purpose. And then a few months later, I learned that someone had been killed, that there was a Chinese older woman who had been tortured to death for doing five sets of gentle exercises and reading a book, the same thing as me. And the shock from that was really hard. And so I found it so hard to believe this persecution that when I had an opportunity, I knew of some Americans actually who were going to China and they were going to hold a banner on Tiananmen Square. What did the banner say? Truth, compassion and tolerance. So basically I was arrested in China for holding three words in public and within 30 seconds, 30 seconds violently taken into vans and shoved into a basement prison cell in the Tiananmen Square police station. I got out, I'm here. 23 hours, I was arrested and what an experience. I felt I needed to see it firsthand because it was just, I just couldn't wrap my head around that this was happening, but it was real. How many by a show of hands here have been to Tiananmen Square on behalf of Falun Dafa? I see your hand go up slowly. As well. My mom actually went to Tiananmen Square when she was six months pregnant with me and it was, yeah, it was in 2000. I think when she told me the story, I was just thinking, wow, like you could have been arrested. You were pregnant. You know, there's so much could have gone wrong, but she described it like, yeah, that's the right thing. I did it. Extremely brave. William? I went to Tiananmen Square multiple times. Once I remember is in June 2000, this is one year earlier than yours probably. So I want to appeal for Falun Gong, also tell the truth about Falun Gong. The banner come out and the police came out, you know, to repress it, but the other side, another banner came out. So it's really amazing moments. A lot of practitioners were arrested on that day. It was sent to the Tiananmen, like a public security bureau there. What happens in detention? There's one like a big cage, you know, a lot of practitioners were squeezed in it. We cannot use toilet. We cannot eat or drink. Well, I think I was probably in the same place that William described. It's next to the Tiananmen Square and it's a basement prison cell. He's calling it a cage because it has these big iron bars. No, there is no toilet. There's a hole in the ground. The cells were tiled all over. The side and the floor. And I remember being in there for hours and just thinking they could do anything in here and just wash it down the drain. At the time, you know, I knew some of the torture stories and I thought, well, OK, these things could happen to me. I guess it's really the specter of communism. I like to call it is that mentality that you can treat people so inhumanely because that's what I think it's hard to accept from an American perspective, because we believe everyone's created equal, born under God, right? But under a communist perspective, human life is devalued to a point where you can treat people very brutally, just wash the evidence down the drain and that's it. So I, you know, I had some of these thoughts while I was there. That was an observation I had. One thing I'd like to talk about is one of the main factors that has allowed this persecution to really persist so violently in China is really foreign investment, foreign economic investment. When you go to Beijing, when you go to Shanghai and you see these buildings, they're built more beautifully than many in the United States in terms of architecture and landscaping, all to sort of create this illusion to entice that foreign investment. One of the most significant events that showcases China's economic prowess would have been the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. You know, I guess I just want to bring us all back to that time. And just where were all of you during that time period? I was in Australia and it wasn't long before the Olympics that the news of forced organ harvesting first came out from China about Falun Gong practitioners being targeted. I remember that time, I sent an email out to all of my journalist contacts and I said, does anyone want to look into this story? Could someone look into this story? Please. This seems like a really important story. And out of more than 20 journalists, I got one person that replied. Only one person was brave enough to do it. Yes, exactly. Back in 2008, I felt like nobody in the media was talking about it. That's why Shen Yun came in and made shows every year and to show the persecution and the forced organ harvesting. Because I felt like Shen Yun was doing this battle on its own, almost. And you were part of it too. And that kind of reminds me of what Minghui was saying before, is that how it went, the persecution went quiet, right? It's like the propaganda went quiet. That was around that time. It was quiet. And before that, it was like in your face all over China and anyone could access 24-7. There was this lies about Falun Gong and people were seeing through it. But then it stopped. The CCP learned they had to go quiet. Yeah. Even though the propaganda was quiet, the persecution was nothing less than before. Actually, when it gets close to dates like important events, like the 2008 Beijing Olympics, my family would just kind of feel that kind of pressure because they would add some people to stand outside of our apartment complex, monitoring us. They were not shy that they were following us. Actually, one day, the people that were following us, they somehow tossed a piece of paper that they were recording. And the security guard found it, the security of the apartment complex found it and gave it to my mom. And yeah, it's very detailed, detailed to the minute. So they were very close. Just like what you were saying in the labor camp. Yeah, exactly. They record down what stop we're getting off, what's the license plate number of the car that we went on. We talk about Big Brother here in the US. I mean, this is literally Big Brother. I have to say it reminds me of a vague recollection of the front page of the Boston Globe right around the 2008 Olympics. It was an aerial shot above a fence in Beijing at the Olympics where you had this really nice fence, but right behind it was a slum. And they built this. How much money did they invest to kind of create this literal facade? The time I was arrested, after 20 hours or so without food, you get pretty hungry. We'd been taken out of the prison cell by then and put into a conference room. And then start smelling this food. Smells pretty good. And they roll out trolleys of like restaurant, you know, Chinese food. The CCP's destroyed everything else except for Chinese food. Yeah, you know, the smell comes and you start thinking, oh, I wouldn't mind something to eat right now. But at the same time, they brought out massive cameras, television cameras, not small cameras, not personal cameras. These were big cameras and there was multiple. And they were right on me and the few people around me. And they said, eat, you can eat. Said turn the cameras off. They said no. Why would they do that? So that they could put in the media, look at how these, look at how we treat these foreigners that come here and supposedly break laws. I didn't break any law. I held up three peaceful words on Tiananmen Square. Didn't break a single law. But that's how they would have framed it in the media. So I refused to eat. They refused to not use the cameras. We got no food. They took it away because they didn't treat us well. It was all a facade. So it was very interesting being on that side of the story from what they would have put out on the media. It's okay. I actually, as a kid, I saw that photo of the 36 Western Falun Gong practitioners. You were in China then, right? I was in China and I saw it as a kid. It was very inspiring. What was your experience like in Tiananmen when you were doing it? I didn't know what was going to happen at the time. But it opened my eyes to how so many of the Chinese people had been brainwashed. And whether it was the Chinese police telling me, no, Falun Gong is persecuted all around the world. I'm thinking, you're crazy because that's not true. But they really believed it. They really believed it. When I first came to the US, I went to elementary school in Queens, Flushing. And my best mate was a Chinese kid from China as well. And he had high government official parents. And we were really good friends because I spoke English a bit better than him. And I was his translator. But my mom basically clarified the truth about my family. How we were persecuted in China. And it was just like this one day he came back and we were just chatting. And all of a sudden he says, I think you should stop practicing Falun Gong. This is your friend at school said that? Yes, yes. I was really, really shocked because I was only nine. And I keep on replaying this in my mind. And he didn't want to be my friends anymore. During cafeteria, when we're sitting, he will go up to many of my friends and he will tell everyone, oh, she's Falun Gong. We need to keep distance. And this was in America. And I think back to a point you made, Kay, with the media blackout, a lot of Western media outlets have built their whole career, their life on making connections inside of China and really want that access. And so they're somewhat selective. And they know that Falun Gong and the persecution is off limits. And I think that it's worth noting that along with the July 20th anniversary date of the persecution, it's also going to be the 25th year of the Epoch Times and NTD media coming to life and being born specifically for this reason. Our founders are Falun Gong practitioners and they established this media to let people know the truth, both inside and outside of China during that. You know, blackout. And one of those is actually sitting at this table with us, William. And you were arrested in China because of that. Tell us how the CCP views the Epoch Times. First of all, I cannot say I'm one of the founders. I just volunteered there at the time in China to help Epoch Times. As a journalist? As like a website reporter, something like that. Or editor. Because at that time, no newspaper yet, just a website. So we have office in Beijing. But later on, we saw Beijing may be too dangerous, too sensitive area. Then we moved to southern China in Zhuhai City. And we report a lot of uncensored news, including the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Because at that time, almost all other media was silenced. They will not report the persecution of Falun Gong. Basically, that's a very important human rights violation issue at that time, right? But they refused to report it. And at that time, the Dazhiyuan, the Epoch Times start to report such very important news. For example, in October 2000, a very bad thing happened in Ma Sanjiang labor camp in northeast China. You know, the CCP guard just raped 18 female Falun Gong practitioners and put them in the male cell. This horrible thing happened. To be raped? Yeah, to be raped. We report that. And those journalists that were inside China that were a part of the Epoch Times, they were volunteers? Yes, we are volunteers. And eventually, we were all persecuted. The chief editor at that time was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. I was sentenced to five years. I spent so many years working with just all different media outlets on this story and sort of helping to get them media access to stories in China and that. But when this blackout started in China from the CCP to stop any coverage of the Falun Gong story, everyone, most media listened. It was only just a few every now and then that might publish a story. So I found it extremely inspiring to, you know, when I first learned about the stories like about William's story and others from Epoch Times that this was starting in China. I remember back then when I learned about it. And it's extremely inspiring to know that there's people who were willing to take that risk. And they paid a huge price for it. You know, five years in prison, 10 years in prison. So how long, William, did it take you to kind of adjust to, you know, a normal way of living when you came here? And do you still have flashbacks of prison? And how do you cope with that? Yeah, I think that's a good question for me. Honestly, in the prison, during the persecution, I was treated badly by the guards. I had some hatred towards them, honestly. But after I came out, especially I came to the free country, once I searched one of the guards' name online, I got one of his picture. He went to some sightseeing sites in China. I felt I didn't feel hatred at all towards him because in fact, the guards or, you know, the police or whatever, they also persecuted us in somehow, some way, right? Because this persecution, not only for Falun Gong practitioners, also to ordinary people, because they were polluted by the propaganda of the CCP. And they have to be involved in this big crime. It's very bad for their future. This kind of compassion really dissolved my hatred towards the police who persecuted me in person. So I feel, you know, this is also my responsibility, my moral responsibility to tell the truth about the persecution and to let more people know about it. It sounds very Christian-like. I mean, when Jesus was on the cross, forgive them for they know not what they do. I think it just shows that there's universal values out there that many spiritual disciplines share. It's very powerful to be able to forgive somebody who essentially wanted you dead. On that note of the people who do the persecuting, it is really, there's some nuance to that too, because I've interviewed so many survivors, probably more than 100 survivors of this persecution, and others have been persecuted by communist regimes around the world. And one movie that I did called Finding Courage, we interviewed a whole family and their story of persecutions. But I found that they couldn't answer the question of why. How could people be the torturer? How could a human being do that, cause that pain to someone like a four-year-old child or something like that? So that's where I felt like I needed to interview people who carried out the persecution. And so I was able to find more than a dozen. And some of them were high-ranking officials from formerly of the CCP. And it's really fascinating interviewing them because I had a lot of concepts about what they would say and how they would think. And many of my notions were wrong. There was one man who ran not just one slave labor prison camp in China, but multiple. And the way I thought of slave labor in prison is wrong, as a morally wrong concept that you don't use human beings like that. But for him, he's like, what are you talking about? This is what we do. This is my job, right? So it helped me to have more compassion for these people. To William's point is that these are human beings that have been raised in the communist regime under that spectrum of communism, that construct for a long time, for many generations. And they have to live by those rules or they die, especially under the things like the cultural revolution and those times. Those hardened... And so they don't have a choice. They don't have a choice. You either break and be all with the party or you're completely broken inside. And many of them were broken inside. They face a lot of trauma, especially those who carried out the persecution and that they've realized they've done something wrong. I think that's really hard for them as well because there's a lot of guilt on their conscience. I think they're powerful stories and they're traumatic and it's been difficult for me. But I think I get through it by thinking about those who have survived it. When I have a difficult situation, I think of... Actually, there's one story particular that I think of. In the movie we made, Finding Courage, there was a man who was imprisoned for 13 years for printing flyers, right? Printing flyers. But the persecution, the torture that he had in the first 10 hours was more brutal than the next 13 years. He remade the torture chair that he had to sit in in that first 10 hours. And he showed us what happened to him in that torture chair. It was used to break his back. It was used to break his spirit. But he didn't break. He didn't give the information. He never renounced his faith. The strength of character in that person, his name is Leo Wong and he's in our movie. I've often thought when I'm facing a really big challenge, how am I going to get through this? Or this is really difficult. Or I need to decompress after hearing hours of testimonies about torture and things like that. I will often think about that particular story. It gives me a reference point and I think, my goodness, if that person can survive 13 years like that and still not renounce his faith and still maintain a smile now and be able to recover and he sees healing from extreme torture, broken back and broken shoulders and things. I think, what am I complaining about? It gives you perspective. So whatever complaints I have are very small when I compare my experiences to those who've survived and suffered so much. Ellie, when it comes to Shen Yun performing arts, many of the artists, including yourself, have faced horrendous persecution. Yet Shen Yun offers the audience and the world something so bright. Why such a contrast? Shen Yun's mission is to revive 5,000 years of ancient Chinese culture. And this actually connects with our faith, truthfulness, compassion, tolerance. This is actually intertwined with Chinese culture in a way. Like you were talking about how we overcome trauma. I feel like everybody's trauma is unique and it's a unique experience. But fundamentally, what gives us hope and brings us together are these moral values that we hold as human beings, every single one of us. And I just remember when I was little, my grandpa used to teach me Chinese characters. And there was this, San Zi Jing is this three-character classic that everybody knows. And the first sentence goes, Ren Zhi Chu Xin Ben Shan. When humans were born, we were all kind. And this message, I think it's also what Shen Yun wants to bring out. It's to hold on to kindness. It's innately human and also what humans are rooted in, no matter what culture. It's beautiful. Do you think that there will ever be a time where we see Shen Yun performing in China? If it's my greatest dream, and I truly hope that one day in the near future that we will perform in China. You'll be very busy when that happens. There's a lot of people there, I think, that would probably love to see Shen Yun. And I guess as we conclude, we'll end with the Falun Gong Protection Act. That's where we began. And as it continues to try to make its way through the Senate, what would your message, William, be to the U.S. government? Yeah, I definitely hope the Falun Gong Protection Act will pass as soon as possible. Because every day some people die because due to the persecution, especially the false organ harvesting. One point I want to add is the persecution of Falun Gong is not remotely happened only in China. Right now, the world is so connected to each other. I can give you some example. One example is my personal experience in the slave labor. I was forced to do slave labor every day, at least 16 hours a day. We were forced to make all kinds of handmade craft, especially the plastic flowers for decoration. Also the Christmas tree light chains, also Spider-Man toy. So these were sold to the U.S., right? They're on our shelves in the U.S. Exactly, exactly. This point I want to make. When I came to U.S. in 2008, I saw exactly products we made in the labor camp were sold here in the grocery store, packed, made in China with a very low price. If the persecution now stops, every American people, their daily life, they go to the grocery store, they possibly buy the products made in the labor camp. Maybe some is by the Falun Gong practitioner. So the persecution really related to everyone. Another example is the false organ harvesting. Western company, they export the pharmaceutical equipment and the medicine related to false organ harvesting in China, right, this kind of connection. Also the organ transplant doctor or expert in China, they were trained in U.S. because U.S. is the leading country of the organ transplant. So my point I want to make is the persecution is not remotely happened only in China. In fact, it's related to everyone. Minghui, you had mentioned earlier you visited Congress. What would you say to your representative? I would say to my representative that there are many ordinary Americans like myself who have friends and families that are still in China that are going through this persecution. Like people who are undergoing this, they are not just like a distant figure. They are not just numbers or statistics. They are actually people within your district and you can do something about it. Yeah, I think it's important to note that this persecution isn't over. It's still very, very much active and there are real world consequences. People are being killed. With that said, Ellie, what would your message be? I feel like on a personal level, I hope the persecution would stop as soon as possible. And in the future, there wouldn't be anyone anywhere on earth essentially to use their dad at such a young age because they've practiced truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. I hope this persecution can end and future generation would not have to go through so much hardship. Very well said. I have to say I know that a lot of the issues that we talked about today weren't easy to talk about. And I just want to thank everybody for all that you've been through and to be able to share that with me and everybody else that's watching. It's really important, especially as we approach year 25 of persecution. With some light at the end of the tunnel with the Falun Gong Protection Act halfway there to the finish line. With that said, thank you all very much.