• frickineh@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It’s part of the media wing of a cult. Shen Yun is another part of it that a lot of people are familiar with - they perform all over the place doing “ancient Chinese dance” (which was invented in the 1950s). Epoch Times is the “news” piece. It’s all propaganda.

      • Wahots@pawb.social
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        5 months ago

        Family went to Shen Yun once. First half was like, beautiful dancing. Then the second half, they basically locked the exit doors as some white guy got up on stage and started spouting the weirdest shit about a golden UFO and crazy political stuff. Shaved a few years off my family’s lives, wondering if they were gonna get out of the building or not, lol.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I did catch Shen Yun show once. I saw some dancing. What I have heard from everyone else is that my session was unusual and it’s usually loaded with politics.

      Also I have a friend who holds dual citizenship and she told me the PRC takes pics of Chinese ethnic people who attend the shows and refuses to let them come back to the China, so she has never gone.

      It’s such a weird situation.

      • Shyfer@ttrpg.network
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        5 months ago

        It was about 60/40 when I went, maybe 70/30. Mostly dancing, but some politics sprinkled in there, too. Mostly anti-China stuff. I get that China has done some bad stuff so it was easy easy to applaud and all, but now I know it’s just because they’re a cult that got huge and some Chinese President didn’t like that.

        Which isn’t great because freedom of speech should be a thing, but also, huge popular religions can cause great harm, so I’m not really on their side now that I’m seeing what Christian Nationalism can do and looking at what happened in South Korea. Making sure government isn’t hijacked by some crazy popular cult maybe isn’t a bad idea. Also, they’re ultra conservative, anti-medicine and evolution, anti-feminist, homophobic, and support Donald Trump and supported the lie that Biden stole the election, so ya, wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been hiding their politics more since I’ve seen them to stay generally popular and hope people don’t suspect they suck lol.