Shen Yun Dancer Reacts to CBS Sunday Morning Coverage on Shen Yun

Yo, what's up guys? So, uh, CBS Sunday Morning released this video called Behind the Scenes of Shen Yun, and I'm gonna give you my truthful reaction as a current Shen Yun dancer currently in Paris, France. Now, let's dive deep down to it. A little background. When we were at our headquarters, CBS came up, so we knew about them. We're really thankful that they're willing to listen to our side of the story. I'm actually pretty excited to see this. The traveling stage show, Shen Yun, China before communism. I've seen the ads. Oh, really? You know what goes on behind the curtains? Hard work and dedication. That's what goes on. The armed guards are there to protect us, okay? They're very nice people. Our spiritual group is under persecution by the CCP. We've been threatened. We have death threats. Bus tires get slashed. Bomb threats. When it's the government doing that, it's not something to joke around, and we still need to protect ourselves. 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. That's right, epic. Legends and politics. We are putting on stage the tyranny of the CCP. When the CCP took over during the Cultural Revolution, one of the main slogans was to struggle with heaven, to struggle with earth, to struggle with man, and then you will find ultimate bliss. That goes completely contrary to the basic tenets of any traditional Chinese cultural thinking. Traditional Chinese culture talk about heaven, earth, and man in harmony. I feel like a lot of this media in general and companies in general, they refuse to stand up to a lot of the atrocities of the CCP because there is so much material incentive, so much business in China. Our values do not get swayed by money. Falun Gong spread quickly throughout China, and Beijing responded. China today banned a popular religious group that's been challenging communist rule. The government now considers Falun Gong its public enemy number one. About that report, it's saying that Falun Gong challenges communist rule. Falun Gong as a spiritual group has no vetted interest in politics. Who's in charge? We want to practice our faith. But the thing is, in communism, Karl Marx said that to achieve communism in this world, you need to not just destroy private property, but you also need to destroy all religious faiths. In communist China today, you have state-sanctioned Christian churches, Muslim mosques, or Jewish synagogues. In order to practice religion lawfully in China, you need to recognize that Xi Jinping is above Jesus, or Xi Jinping is above Allah, or Xi Jinping is above Buddha. Any religious institution that does not follow those party bootlicking tenets will be deemed underground. That's why you have underground churches that try to practice Christianity how it's supposed to be, and then it is not like the spiritual group wants to take away communism. It's quite the opposite. Their parents sent them in the late 2000s to a boarding school at Dragon Springs, where young performers train for Shen Yun. The entire community I grew up in was very proud of me. They thought it was a great honor to live with Li Hongzhi in that compound. As if, like, I made it to Harvard. That compound, please, just like that, is a very misrepresentation of the place we live in, which is a beautiful, serene campus in a Buddhist temple, which I find peace, solitude, and just, like, happiness. What were you told about having any contact with the world outside of Dragon Springs? If our parents asked any questions, we had to tell them that we were happy. That master, which is Li Hongzhi, was taking great care of us. I've never, ever, ever been instructed on what to say to my parents, or not to say to my parents. The only thing I've been instructed about is just not to reveal what the next year's program is before we go on tour, because it's supposed to be a surprise. We pull off a new show every year, you know, so we just try to keep it within. I've never been instructed to tell my parents that I'm extremely happy here, or that Li Hongzhi is taking care of me. That's like, no one has ever, ever instructed me to do that. I don't know where she's coming from. Maybe her experience was horrible, but then some of it I feel like is full-on, just, like, made up. The body, they say, would bear its own. I mean, we're part of a prestigious elite dance institution. We're part of Xun Performing Arts, the number one currently touring dance company that does Chinese classical dance, like, top-notch in this world, okay? So we have extremely high standards with how together we are in our dance. Of course, body shape. You ask any professional dancer, and you tell me that body shape does not matter. We don't body-shame people, but to be able to be in this prestigious group, you need to keep under a certain weight. But then it's just, to complain about that, it's like, you signed up for this, like, what do you expect? It doesn't matter if you're in the arts, you're in the athletics, you're in business, there are high standards for what you do if you want to be top of the line. If you don't, if it's... I'm sorry, but then if you're not on par, there's standards, okay? And to complain about that is just... I did this for my Instagram reel. Once again, that awkward position with two people pushing his legs to the side, I mean, that's just... For dancers, that's... I'm very sorry if that was the most amount of pain you ever experienced, but that is just a very basic, basic stretch that dancers do. It's just... You need side-split flexibility. It is... What he's saying, like, he got internal bleeding, he got bruising. If the instructor was doing that, then that defeats the whole purpose of stretching, which is to make you flexible. Is it painful? Of course it's painful. Ask any professional dancer, ask them if stretching is painful or not. They're definitely going to say it's going to be painful. It's just part of dance. You want to be a marathon runner. Is running going to be tiring? Of course running is going to be tiring. But you chose to be a marathon runner, you're a dancer, then you got to stretch and it's going to be painful, okay? The instructor always makes sure that it's in a range of motion where it's beneficial to your flexibility, where you don't get injured, because if you get injured, you get more stiff. Your muscles stiffen up, your muscles and tendons stiffen up, which completely defeats the entire purpose of stretching. I could explain my elementary school PE class in this way and make it sound like it's torturous, like it's abusive, but to do this is very unethical. It's untruthful and pure baloney. Did you ever tell your instructors about your injuries? Yeah, I did. And I was faced with the eye roll. Maybe that was her experience. Let me tell you my experience. My experience, whenever I feel like I'm not, maybe if I injured somewhere or I'm not feeling too well somewhere, maybe I pulled a muscle or something, I tell the dance instructor and then the dance instructor puts me on the bench, tells me to go take a rest. Before last year's touring season, I pulled my groin muscle. I wanted, it's like, maybe I could just tough it out, you know, just keep going. But then I was specifically instructed by my dance instructor, by my company manager to chill out and take a rest. And then back in 2018, I was warming up on stage in Sydney, Australia. I was doing roundoffs and I ruptured my Achilles tendon. Afterwards, they got me on a plane. I went back to the United States and I did Achilles reconstruction surgery. And if you want proof, here, here's my scarf. Okay, you see? So all that about like not getting no like medical help is just, I don't know what their motives are. Sad, sickening, untruthful. Any injury that you have, if you mention that you want to go to the hospital, or if you wanted help, it will be denied and it will be quickly very... It got denied, eh? So if she says her medical, she asked for medical help, it got denied. Well, let me go back to my Achilles rupture story, okay? After I ruptured my Achilles in Sydney, Australia, the company found not just one, the company found two doctors without me asking for it, okay? The company found it themselves. Like within 20 minutes of my injury, the doctors were there. And then the general advice I got was just to get Achilles reconstruction surgery. So I told my company manager and then she got me on a plane and then I went back to the United States and I got surgery. And I was never discouraged at all. Like no one told me not to get surgery, not to just follow the medical procedure. That's what she experienced, but not what I experienced. Well, that's bull. I've never heard anyone say that you got injured because you disobeyed Li Hongzhi. Like I've never, ever, ever heard that before, okay? That is...yeah. And just this month, the Chinese embassy called Shen Yun a cult's propaganda, using culture as a cover to deliver indoctrination. The CCP has been... Yeah, okay, I don't... Personally, I do not know too much of the details, minute details, but I can tell you my general feeling is this. I've been with Shen Yun since 2017 and all these years, it's been a pretty smooth ride, you know? And then ever since like the two years back, when like this entire... Like it just felt so... All the attacks against us just felt so coordinated. Like it became like firepower after firepower against us. Like how come... And then like Jeff Sun, that accuser of us, he has been gone from Shen Yun for over like 10 years, over 10 years. And then he didn't say anything for 10 years and all of a sudden now he's speaking out. And then it's just like it's in coordination with like the New York Times articles, you know, all the different media attacks. And it's just like... It just, for me, it felt really coordinated and very like backed up by the Chinese Communist Party, you know? Like they realized whichever method before they were... It wasn't really working for them. So change of tactics. 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're using to persecute Falun Gong. Shen Yun company members, Regina Dong, Cindy Kai and Peter Huang were also sent as teenagers to Dragon Springs. Do you feel like your parents pressured you in any way to come here? Not at all. Now, if they came and tried to drag me away, I wouldn't go. Do you feel like you have... Yeah, my parents did not pressure me in any way whatsoever. Like my free will, okay? I'm American. I do what I want to do. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No pressure from my parents. Do they pressure me to do well? Maybe a little bit, but that's about it. Yes, for sure. When I was having pain in my Achilles a few years back, my company manager, she gave me the contact to our doctor. Had an MRI done. He said, okay, you have this, this, this, this. You should do ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Cindy, you said to me earlier that you never get sick. Do you think that your faith has helped you to not get sick? 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 Ashley Chang. I gotta say, I get the colds all the time. They returned to New Zealand and no longer practice Falun Gong. The Falun Gong describe you as disgruntled performers. How do you respond to that? I have a response for this. 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. Why do you call it a shame? You are in a prestigious, top-notch dance academy. What shame is that? If there's shame in you not making the cut? Okay, maybe that's a little shameful, but not everyone makes the cut, okay? This top-notch dance academy, you have top-notch standards. Clear and simple. You can't have 250-pound people in the United States military. You need top-notch standards to make sure the U.S. military is strong, so that America is safe. Same principle. 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. In conclusion, I think that they were not so one-sided, and then they listened to what we had to say. But I do hope that people can see through these most-time baseless accusations or extreme exaggerations of the truth. My final message after seeing this is just, this is for the CCP or for whoever wants to take us down, you know? You can throw whatever slander, libel at us, do what you want, but you guys are not going to be stopping me, at least, from doing what I believe is the right thing to do, okay? The CCP has been persecuting Falun Gong for over 20-plus years, almost 30 years, and Falun Gong is stronger than ever. So, none of this is going to stop people with truth-faith from doing what they believe is the right thing to do, because faith is the single most strongest thing that exists on this earth. Nothing can crush faith, yeah. So, thank you for watching, and see you next time. Peace out!