u/Ok_Form_368

The joy of a live orchestra! These short reviews say it all ... priceless!

"Can you hear and spot the Chinese instruments? Shen Yun’s full orchestra delivers a sound unlike anything else—a permanent East-West blend performed live with every dance. If you’ve never experienced Chinese instruments seamlessly woven into a Western symphonic foundation… you’re in for a revelation."

This Sub with the Nine Commentaries videos have been incredibly insightful and they really helped me grasp the deliberate, destructive nature of the CCP and revealed their playbook.

It actually reminded me of another series I read a few years back, The Specter of Communism, which shocked me just as deeply. I had no idea that communism was not only something happening “over there” in the East, but had quietly taken root in Western countries too. That was a real eye‑opener. What stood out most was learning how, in the West, it did not arrive through force, rather it seeped in through culture, education, and ideology, slowly coaxing people away from their traditional faiths and moral values to weaken society from within.

I already knew a bit about how it influenced media, but I was genuinely stunned to see how far it had woven itself into education, arts, politics, and everyday culture. Seeing all of that laid out so clearly changed the way I understand modern society, and it made these Commentaries feel even more relevant and revealing.

Seeing these patterns so clearly has changed how I understand the world around me, but it has also made me appreciate how many people are waking up to it. Honest conversations like these feel more important than ever, and I am glad there are still places where we can share what we have learnt without fear.

I came across the above personal transformation sharing last week on r/realfalungong and thought it deserved a wider audience.

Sterling Campbell spent the 1980s and 1990s touring as a drummer with David Bowie, Duran Duran, and Cyndi Lauper. What really struck me is that he began practising Falun Dafa back in 1998 which is long before most people outside China had even heard of it.

At the time, he was trying to turn his life around. Years of heavy smoking, drinking, and drugs had taken a toll, and he was looking for something that could genuinely help him reset. Within a short period of practising Falun Dafa, he said he was able to overcome those addictions. That alone is remarkable.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Stirling spoke about the CCP’s persecution of Falun Dafa, a human‑rights crises that began in 1999. His comparison was blunt but accurate:

>“It would be like George Bush outlawing yoga and sentencing those who use it to death.”

He also shared how the practice changed him:

>“About three weeks into the practice, it just hit me one day. I didn’t feel the cravings anymore… I was giving my seat to other people on the train and stuff. At first, I was like ‘huh?’ It’s hard to explain, but it’s deep. You have to do a lot of self‑examination.”

Stories like his remind me how many people quietly found hope, clarity, grounding, and a better version of themselves through Falun Dafa.

Shen Yun does not have a compound. What does exist is a purpose‑built headquarters known as Dragon Springs, and this short video explains the difference.

The Three Musketeers have done an outstanding job with this video, they are such a hoot! It gives a truthful and detailed look into Dragon Springs, the Shen Yun headquarters, and honestly I was not expecting half of what they showed. I figured we would see the library and the Fei Tian lecture rooms, but the bakery and supermarket were a total surprise.

They explain clearly that this is an elite dance and music school aiming for a very high level of artistry. Fei Tian College is also there, fully accredited and following the New York curriculum. It is not just a training ground, it is a full educational environment.

They interviewed a range of people on site, and what came through was their deep appreciation for the environment. Many also spoke about the genuine, supportive, and positive atmosphere they experience each day.

And this is exactly why the nasty disinformation floating around like the stuff claiming Shen Yun “mistreats dancers” falls apart the moment you look at real evidence. That narrative comes straight from CCP propaganda. Just watch this video and see for yourself. On top of that, the New York State Department of Labor completed a thorough two‑year investigation and found zero evidence of mistreatment (link). None. It simply does not happen.

This video touches briefly on the CCP’s persecution and how Dragon Springs emerged because of this:

>“It was originally intended to provide a place to settle for Falun Gong practitioners who have lost their loved ones persecuted in China, especially orphans. Unfortunately, escaping China to the United States is extremely difficult. Many Shen Yun artists have lost their families in China. Because of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, for decades the CCP has systematically destroyed traditional Chinese culture. It’s all about passing on our traditional culture to the next generation — and sharing it with the whole world.”

It is a powerful reminder of why Dragon Springs exists and why Shen Yun’s mission goes far beyond performance. It is culture preservation, community support, and a safe place for people who have endured things most of us can barely imagine.

There is something uplifting about seeing the Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra behind the scenes in this video clip. You get a glimpse of the unity that sits underneath each performance, with musicians from all around the world working together with a shared heart.

What comes across is that there is no sense of competition or ego. Instead, you see people who genuinely care about the music, about each other, and about offering something pure and uplifting to the world. Their technical skill is remarkable, but to me it is the sincerity behind it that stays with me.

Seeing that unity and purpose makes you appreciate the orchestra on a whole different level. It reminds you that beauty does not just come from talent, it comes from people choosing to work together with kindness, discipline, and a shared wish to bring something good into the world.

Is Shen Yun bad? Pamela London Franck thought so! Yet a simple screening invitation gave her a reason to look closer and her reaction says everything: “I am so moved and so grateful to actually see the truth.”

Like many people, Pamela had been influenced by the wave of negative press. Most of that press traces back to the CCP’s long-running disinformation campaigns targeting Shen Yun with their same talking points that have been repeated across different outlets.

But the documentary Unbroken cuts straight through that fog. It lays out the facts clearly, shows the human side, and gives people a chance to see the situation without the CCP’s filter. Once viewers see the evidence for themselves, the narrative shifts. The misinformation simply doesn’t hold up under direct scrutiny.

Misinformation spreads easily when people never get the chance to check the source for themselves. That is exactly why I appreciate this subreddit as it gives people space to look at the actual facts, hear real experiences, and grasp the true situation rather than the version pushed by a political regime.

It is Father’s Day tomorrow in New Zealand  and if she could have anything, Zhiwen Wang’s daughter would choose something simple: a hug from her dad.

Xiaodan (Danielle) left China in 1998 to study in the United States. A year later, her father vanished. For eight long years she had no idea whether he was alive, injured, or being held somewhere. Eventually she learned the truth: he had been imprisoned in China for 16 years. Not for a crime. Not for harming anyone. His 'offence' was simply practising a peaceful spiritual faith.  The CCP viewed the Falun Dafa spiritual movement as a threat because tens of millions began practising outside Party control, even though it is a peaceful practice that simply helps people live by higher moral standards. Falun Dafa’s values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance did not align with the ideology the state wanted people to follow.

Imagine if your family member being illegally detained for 16 years. What would you do? Danielle chose to speak out, calmly, publicly, and courageously, so the world could understand what her father endured.

When Zhiwen Wang finally completed his 16 year sentence, freedom still did not come. He was sent straight to a brainwashing centre, and today he remains under house arrest, monitored constantly by police.

Father’s Day hits differently when the person you love is still not free.

"Incredible exhiliarting - it brought tears to my eyes"

"...felt it deep in my soul"

" ...I was feeling really tired before coming but now I feel completely energised"

This review shares the praise of conductors, professors of music, and composers after attending a Shen Yun performance and hearing the symphony orchestra. People who analyse music for a living were standing there with the same bright, heartfelt reactions as everyone else, all were completely uplifted.

It shows how deeply Shen Yun’s music resonates across such a wide audience. When people who study sound for a living walk out feeling genuinely uplifted, you can tell something real is happening in a performance.

Unfortunately, yes. Practitioners of Falun Dafa are still being arrested, tortured and even killed in China, which is heartbreaking considering it is a peaceful, personal cultivation practice. But the CCP has long treated spirituality as something to be stamped out. Since 1999 they have been trying to eradicate Falun Dafa, and the tactics they used against their own citizens have been horrific.

A lot of people only hear about Falun Dafa through random comments online, and honestly most of that stuff is just recycled CCP propaganda. It is a self‑cultivation practice for personal improvement, practiced in our own homes, focused on living by Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance which are principles that encourage kindness, honesty, and embracing others.

The crackdown was not because Falun Dafa did anything wrong. It was because tens of millions of people started practicing it independently, outside Party control. The CCP has always been uncomfortable with large groups that organise themselves peacefully without political oversight.

Some people were able to escape the persecution in China and live elsewhere. But imagine carrying the knowledge that your friends and family back home who are ordinary people who just want a calmer, healthier life but are being abused for it. What do you even do with that kind of weight?

Out of that reality, Shen Yun was created. It was not just a performing arts idea; it became a way to preserve the rich Chinese culture that is being erased inside China, tell the truth, and give people a voice when they had none.

The “Three Musketeers” behind‑the‑scenes videos grew from that same spirit being light‑hearted, human, and giving people a glimpse into the lives of performers who carry a very serious mission.

This video is Sam, one of the “Three Musketeers,” sharing his personal story. It is worth watching.

Shen Yun performances are full of incredible dance skills. The men perform backflips, back handsprings and a variety of flips. These are not just stage tricks, they come from Shen Yun Chinese Dance, which draws on classical Chinese dance and its very deep technical base.

To perfect the skills, they practice them repetitively, time after time. The training is disciplined, but they keep the atmosphere light by setting friendly challenges for each other. It is always interesting seeing how much work sits behind the moments that look effortless on stage.

Kenji shared this fun clip with us, and it offers a glimpse into the training side that audiences don’t usually see.

It always amazes me how the erhu, with just two strings, can sound so rich and expressive. Linda’s ability to pull out different emotions from it is genuinely impressive.

The emotional clarity the erhu brings is one of the things that makes Shen Yun’s music feel so distinctive and moving, especially in moments where the melody carries the story as well as the way it intertwines with the Western orchestral sound makes those moments even more striking.

I was reading Freedom House’s article “Falun Gong’s Secrets for Surviving in China” and really appreciated how grounded the reporting was. One thing that stood out was their description of how practitioners, both inside China and overseas, keep calmly clarifying the truth to people who have been misled by the CCP’s propaganda and the Falun Gong persecution. The article mentioned that once people actually understand what Falun Gong is, there are plenty of cases where even police quietly choose to help practitioners instead of harming them.

Sarah Cook had an interesting line in there: “The simple fact that Falun Gong has survived the CCP’s onslaught is impressive and amounts to a genuine failure of the party’s repressive apparatus.” She goes on to argue that by banning Falun Gong, the CCP basically created the very situation they feared, that is turning tens of millions of ordinary, apolitical citizens (including some party members) "into a mass of dedicated activists at odds with the CCP".

I thought that was a pretty striking observation.

Look at the pure emotion that moved this man after he viewed the Shen Yun documentary Unbroken. There have been others genuinely moved like this as they see the courage, resilience, and passion shown by those in Shen Yun, and it hits people in a very real way.

Perhaps too, they had read some of the rotten things being spread by the CCP and assumed there must be some truth in it. However, when they learn the actual facts, they are shocked at how deep the CCP’s tactics go and how far from reality those claims really are.

That is why Unbroken lands so strongly for many people. It clears the fog, shows the human side, and lets viewers see for themselves what is real and what is manufactured.

In their teen years, twins Rumi and Makai lives were spiralling into a pretty rough direction of recklessness and drugs. Things hit a breaking point when they ended up in a situation with a gun to the head, and it forced them to seriously rethink where their lives were heading.

Together they started searching for some kind of meaning, and by chance they came across Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Gong. Something in it landed deeply for both of them. They took up the practice, and it genuinely turned their lives around.

This is the power of Falun Gong, a spritual self-cultivation practice that allowed them to easily leave those destructive patterns behind and commit to something genuinely uplifting and meaningful.

What is Shen Yun all about? This short reel gives you a little taste from an insider’s view.

It shares the story on how Oliver, a farm kid from Australia, found himself touring the world with Shen Yun. His passion for Shen Yun runs deep, and you can feel it in what he says.

So interesting that he was living in China at the time the CCP's persecution of Falun Dafa started and he witnessed it.

It is a simple clip, but it shows a bit of the heart behind the show which is always good to see.

The CCP has been pouring huge resources into shaping U.S. media coverage and social feeds, pushing disinformation through whatever channels they can get their hands on. The goal is pretty simple: make people in the West distrust or misunderstand Falun Dafa.

Why? Because Falun Dafa is a peaceful, spiritual practice built on meditation and ancient wisdom, and the CCP has never been comfortable with belief systems they cannot control. When it was introduced to the public in the 1990s, huge numbers of Chinese people took it up, we are talking tens of millions. Early on, Chinese officials even praised it because people were getting healthier and using fewer medical services. However, once the number of practitioners grew larger than the CCP’s own membership, the Party flipped and kicked off the persecution against Falun Dafa. They assumed they could stamp it out in a few years. Yet here we are, almost 30 years later, and Falun Dafa is still going strong because the practice itself is simple, pure, and based on traditional wisdom and thus it has spread worldwide.

Imagine the CCP’s frustration when Falun Dafa practitioners around the world keep holding peaceful protests to let people know what is happening with the persecution in China, including the atrocities documented by investigators, like their large‑scale forced organ harvesting.

In a leaked 2022 meeting, Xi Jinping reportedly expressed frustrations about how hard it has been for the CCP to suppress Falun Dafa’s visibility and international support.

“The methods used to suppress Falun Gong abroad were too conservative, too traditional, lacked creativity, and lacked innovation.”

Xi Jinping went on to push for new campaigns in U.S., one focused on public‑opinion warfare and another on legal warfare. It is honestly fascinating how hatred gets manufactured, and how fast it spreads once a government decides a group is an enemy.

Just know this: Don’t buy into the ugly stuff being pushed about Falun Dafa. When a regime invests this much energy into smearing something peaceful, it tells you a lot. If the CCP is working this hard to shut it down, that alone should make you look closer because chances are, the practice is good, and that is exactly why they fear it.

Is Falun a cult - nope! Does it kill people - nope! Does it have huge stacks of money that are funding certain U.S. things - nope (it is free, there is no money involved). Is it interested in ruling a country - nope, absolutely not (it is simply a self-cultivation practice with no interest in politics)! These are all purely made up lies.