26 Years of Communist Persecution; Dancers Turn Pain into Art
July 20th, 2025, marks 26 years since the Chinese Communist Party launched its brutal campaign to eradicate Falun Gong, a spiritual practice rooted in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
When you see a Shen Yun performance, you’re not just witnessing a highly disciplined art form. You are seeing the pushback against persecution and pain. Many of these dancers are using art to express that pain and communicate with audiences. That communication is an act of defiance that many Americans simply cannot relate to.
But the performers also want you to know their stories. Story after story involves “police” in China barging into the homes of citizens and arresting them for practicing Falun Gong.
As the world celebrates cultural diversity and artistic freedom, the performers of Shen Yun—the globally acclaimed classical Chinese dance company—aren’t just marking a somber anniversary. In 1992, the practice of Falun Gong began to catch fire. The faith-based, peaceful practice found receptive audiences all over China. By 1999, the CCP felt threatened by Falun Gong, because of the sheer numbers of followers, so it deployed an iron fist of repression.
Shen Yun dancers are celebrating the lives of family members who have been victims of unspeakable and horrendous persecution, torture, unjust imprisonment and even death, at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
While Shen Yun dazzles audiences with divine beauty and ancient heritage, the company’s very existence is an act of defiance against ongoing tyranny. Nearly every dancer, musician, and choreographer has been personally affected by the persecution. Many have had family members imprisoned, tortured, or killed for their beliefs. Some have escaped narrowly with their lives. All carry the weight of this suffering on stage.
A new article by Shen Yun titled “7.20: When Persecution Hits Home” gives a rare, intimate look into the real lives behind the art. It chronicles chilling stories—parents abducted in the middle of the night, siblings forced into re-education camps, and children left orphaned by a regime that fears spirituality more than war.
In a rare and strongly worded statement this week, the U.S. State Department called on the Chinese Communist Party to immediately end its persecution of Falun Gong. “We urge the PRC government to cease its campaign to eradicate Falun Gong practitioners and to release those imprisoned due to their beliefs,” the statement read. The department also recognized July 20 as the anniversary of a crackdown that has claimed countless lives and shattered families across China.
This U.S. condemnation adds renewed urgency and international weight to the voices of Shen Yun artists who have risked everything to expose the CCP’s crimes. Their stories aren’t distant history—they’re still unfolding, and their art is a direct response to repression that continues today.
Shen Yun is banned in China. Its performers are not allowed to return home. Why? Because their mission is not just to revive China’s 5,000 years of civilization—it’s to expose how the CCP has tried to destroy it.
Would you be interested in covering this powerful human story—one the Chinese regime would rather the world never hear?
Relevant Article(s)
READ THEIR STORIES
Shen Yun Performing Arts | 7.20: When Persecution Hits Home
State Department Calls on CCP to End Campaign to Eradicate Falun Gong | The Epoch Times
OPTIONAL Q&A:
- What is the significance of July 20th to Shen Yun performers and Falun Gong practitioners?
- How has the CCP’s 26-year campaign against Falun Gong personally affected Shen Yun’s artists and their families?
- Why is Shen Yun banned in China, and what does that reveal about the Chinese regime’s fear of traditional culture?
- How does Shen Yun use classical Chinese dance and music to counter the CCP’s propaganda?
- What recent statement did the U.S. State Department make regarding the persecution of Falun Gong?
- How does the U.S. condemnation impact the global conversation around religious freedom and human rights in China?
- Why should American audiences view Shen Yun as more than just a cultural performance?
- What message are Shen Yun artists hoping to deliver to the world through their art and their personal stories?
- Where can we learn more about the beautiful art of Shen Yun, and how it motivates others?
- The official website can be found here. Tickets for shows are also available there for purchase. You are not only going to see a performance like no other but you are being a champion for freedom.
ABOUT LEESHAI LEMISH…
Leeshai Lemish has been with Shen Yun for 18 years. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Chinese history and language from Pomona College, California, and his master’s in international relations from the London School of Economics. He has spent extended periods studying, working, and conducting research throughout East Asia, and has authored articles on Chinese current affairs in both English and Chinese. He joined Shen Yun Performing Arts as an MC when the company was founded in 2006 and has since emceed close to two thousand performances with the company, taking the stage with Shen Yun at prestigious theaters such as Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, the London Coliseum, Tokyo Opera City, and many others worldwide. In addition to his performance role, he has tracked and documented on his website over 100 cases of the Chinese Communist Party and its agents trying to sabotage Shen Yun internationally. He has testified on transnational repression in front of Congress, has been a featured guest on television and radio shows around the world, and is the host of the podcast Shen Yun Voices.
ABOUT NICK HALEY…
Nick Haley is an MC with Shen Yun Performing Arts. Shen Yun is the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company with the mission of reviving “China before Communism.” Before joining Shen Yun, Nick served as a researcher at the Falun Dafa Information Center, where he investigated the Chinese regime’s persecution of Falun Gong. His reporting covered cases of detention, torture, and deaths in custody, and he contributed research and analysis to the Center’s publications on both domestic persecution in China and the CCP’s transnational repression campaigns abroad. Nick also participated in government advocacy, briefing U.S. government offices and staff on the Center’s findings. His unique background gives him insight into how the CCP targets peaceful faith communities––and how its tactics are now reaching American soil.
ABOUT YING CHEN…
Ying Chen is an orchestra conductor who has been with Shen Yun from the very beginning. She can offer insights and personal stories about how Shen Yun started as an all-volunteer group of first- generation immigrants, and through hard work, faith, and a relentless dedication to a grand vision to revive a culture almost destroyed in communist China, created the fastest growing performing arts company in American history.
Ying can also tell the horrific story of her family’s detention and torture in China, an experience that helped drive her and the entire community at Shen Yun to create a production that would shed light on the tyranny of the Chinese communist regime, while also inspiring people around the world with hope and a renewed sense of our common humanity.
The story of Ying, her family, and community at Shen Yun is a quintessential tale of facing the evils of the world with resilience and faith, and never letting others, even the largest totalitarian regime on earth, take away one’s hope.
ABOUT LEVI BROWDE…
Levi Browde serves as the Executive Director with the New York-based Falun Dafa Information Center – an organization dedicated to ending the human rights abuses against people who practice Falun Gong in China.
A career software entrepreneur, Levi’s life changed dramatically in 1999 when his best friend came to the office one morning and announced the Chinese Communist Party had taken away his mother in Beijing to be tortured and “brainwashed.” This marked the beginning of his volunteer work to defend human rights in China. Two years later, Levi himself was detained in a Chinese jail outside Beijing for secretly meeting with Western reporters and protesting on Tiananmen Square.
Over the past 20 years, Browde has been interviewed and quoted by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, CNN, the Associated Press, TIME Magazine, BBC, AFP, and other media outlets. He has spoken about Falun Gong and human rights in China at briefings on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, at the United Nations human rights sessions in Geneva, Switzerland.
Browde studied East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University and is an avid supporter of traditional Chinese culture. He founded several software start-ups, and lives in New York with his wife and two sons.
Samples of Levi on camera:
https://tv.faluninfo.net/unmasking-chinas-gestapo-610-office/
https://tv.faluninfo.net/levi-browde-exposes-the-new-york-times-distorted-coverage-of-human-rights/
CONTACT: Todd Baumann at 512-966-0983 or by email Jerry McGlothlin at bookings@specialguests.com.
