איך המשטר הסיני רודף להקת מחול שמציגה את תרבות סין שלפני הקומוניזם | ריאיון

Slash tires, canceled gigs, weaponized influencers, and just recently a bomb threat at the Kennedy Center. For nearly two decades, the Chinese Communist Party's been relentlessly targeting Shen Yun performing arts. NTD's Steve Lance spoke with Shen Yun MC Lishai Lemesh on how these attacks keep coming. Yet Shen Yun's mission still powers through. Lishai Lemesh, thank you so much for joining. Hi Steve. It's great to have you with us Lishai. Shen Yun, it's become a bit of a household name whether you've actually seen the performance or seen the beautiful billboards when they come around during the touring season. You know, you guys are growing. You're back in the nation's capital right now to perform. What can we expect to see in a Shen Yun performance? So if you've never seen Shen Yun, it's a celebration of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization. And we do this through dance, classical Chinese dance with a live orchestra, animated backdrops, soloists, emcees, and just amazing costumes. It's really a journey through ancient China, really a lost world that you can't see anywhere else today. To your point, Shen Yun's tagline is China before communism. Talk to us about how this is such a significant aspect of the performance. Yeah, so that's our mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture. 5,000 years of civilization that was mostly lost and destroyed under the Communist Party in China. Talk to us about how that that culture clashes with communism. So when the Communist Party came to power and really took over China in the middle of the last century, the first thing it set out to do was wipe out traditional Chinese culture and bring in this Soviet import of Marxism and Leninism and Stalinism and later what became Maoism. And all of that import is really based on the ideas of violent atheism, materialism, and utilitarianism throughout the generations of people who chose integrity and chose right over wrong, even with great sacrifice sometimes. And that's really antithetical to the Communist Party. So when they came over and they try to basically change the culture. And so really from that perspective, the values of this civilization are very deeply rooted in communism sees And so because of this mission, you all have faced tremendous adversity. Even right now we're seeing bomb threats at the Kennedy Center. You say that this actually goes far beyond just the CCP hoax in these bomb threats designed to terrorize people. Put this into the proper context if you could. It comes as part of a big pattern of 18 years of the Chinese Communist Party trying to stop Xinyuan, really from day one. So at first they would send other companies to try to compete with us. Then they would try to pressure the theaters to cancel our contracts, pull our advertising, try to hack our website, our ticketing sites, my personal email, slashing our tires, and now trying to weaponize social influencers and mainstream media to come after Xinyuan. I think they see how big a threat it is, even though it's just a dance show. It's a cultural event, but it is bringing back this lost heritage that they're really afraid of. But why do you think you're seeing such an uptick right now? Does it maybe represent instability in China or the threat that they see in Xinyuan? Well I think they're sensing that it's a desperate kind of end game type of battle for them. And so in order to uproot Falun Gong from Taiwan they have to go after in the U.S. Xinyuan has gotten a lot of support from the United States government and governments around the world from Congress and other people. Talk to us about Falun Gong if you could and also the relationship between Falun Gong and Xinyuan. Sure. So Xinyuan Performing Arts was started by Falun Gong practitioners in New York in 2006. Performing arts was one option of how to raise awareness about what's happening in China. And so you have these elite artists from around the world coming together and saying let's revive traditional Chinese culture through performing arts and show the world what China was really like and the beauty of it. And at the same time let's take this opportunity to show people the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and not just the brutality of the persecution but the courageous resistance to it and the hope that comes from the strong faith that these people have.