Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Shen Yun

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

You’re walking through the mall or driving down the street, and there it is again: a pastel-colored poster featuring a leaping dancer. It reads: Shen Yun, China Before Communism. What even IS this lavish dance show whose advertisements haunt all our towns? Is it a religion? A political party? A theatre troupe? What is their mission? Is the dancing even good? And where does Shen Yun find the budget for all this marketing?? This week, Amanda is joined by special guests Liz and Brace of the TrueAnon podcast (@trueanonpod) to break down the culty undercurrents of Shen Yun, the ultra-mysterious, Falun Gong-backed dance company that’s less about “reviving ancient Chinese culture” and more about, oh, say, labor exploitation, emotional abuse, and apocalyptic doomsday beliefs. ALLEGEDLY. Tune in as we pirouette through the cultiest corners of this not-so-harmless night at the theater. 🎭💸✨ Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube! Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles.  Thank you to our sponsors! Embrace your ritual with extraordinary hydration from Liquid I.V. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid I.V. when you go to https://LIQUIDIV.COM and use code CULT at checkout. Head to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code CULT Find exactly what you’re booking for on https://Booking.com, Booking.YEAH! Please consider donating to those affected by the Los Angeles Fires. Some organizations that Team SLAC are donating to are:  https://mutualaidla.org/ https://give.pasadenahumane.org/give/654134/#!/donation/checkout https://shorturl.at/SGW9w Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. They are training these quote unquote dancers out of their compound in upstate New York. If you want to say Sounds Like a Cult, there's nothing more culty than the words compound in upstate New York. The group very much manipulates recruits into doing free labor. You have that many billboards for a show that not a lot of people are going to see.

There's going to be some questions. They were really early boosters of Trump. They were in with the QAnon people. They were like really tied into this like extreme right ecosystem and seemingly had limitless money. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. and seemingly had limitless money. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montell,

author of the books, Cultish and The Age of Magical Overthinking. Every week on the show, you're gonna hear an analysis and some little jokes about a different culty seeming group from the modern day Zetgeist. From Mormon mom talkers, to people who might just be a little bit too obsessed with Costco. This week, we're finally discussing the cult of Shen Yun to try and answer the big question.

This group sounds like a cult. What is it really? And if so, how bad is it? Which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out? Because the thing is, these days cultish influence can be found in all kinds of everyday places. Like say, you're driving down the street, or you're strolling through the mall, and you notice a billboard, or a nice little booth, a little table, maybe in the food court, next to a Jamba Juice, where a bunch of very pleasant, but maybe traumatized looking people seem

to really want you to accept a purple pamphlet, a little brochure with like a beautiful ballerina on it, and even perhaps buy a ticket, or five, or fifty, to one of the flouncy dance shows that they're promoting. If this description rings any bells to you, then you have likely brushed up against the international sensation that is Shen Yun, a heavily marketed Chinese dance and music group that puts on hundreds of performances every single year all over the world, including at ritzy mainstream venues like New York City's Lincoln Center. Shen Yun possesses over $265 million in assets, allegedly, and is operated by the new religious movement—cough cough—cult, Falun Gong,

which has been beefing with the Chinese government for over 30 years. which has been beefing with the Chinese government for over 30 years. This show is sponsored by Liquid IV. It turns ordinary water into extraordinary hydration with flavors like their new hydration multiplier, sugar-free raspberry lemonade. But if you like your flavors funky, they get funky. I'm talking acai berry, piña colada.

Break the mold and own your ritual. Just one stick plus 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone. Embrace your ritual with extraordinary hydration from Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code CULT at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration today using promo code CULT at liquidiv.com. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is my favorite way to build a website. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand,

Squarespace makes it super easy to set up a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell absolutely anything from products to content to your valuable time. Some of their features include design intelligence, which combines two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. There's also Squarespace Payments, which is a super easy way to manage your payments all in one place within Squarespace.

And Squarespace also has amazing SEO tools, so you show up more often to more people in global search engine results. Head to squarespace.com slash Colt to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code cult. After all these years of talking about everyday cults, I've kind of gotten the impression that when a group is really approaching that get the fuck out level, they kind of want to stay hanging out

on like the fringes of society. So as not to attract too much scrutiny from the mainstream press or attention from the authorities, a couple episodes that we've done in the past that meet that description include, say, The Cult of Twin Flames or The Troubled Teen Industry. But by contrast, Shen Yun is really out there putting on shows in our towns at venues that we recognize and frequent, marketing themselves on billboards, along streets that we drive down. The last Shen Yun booth that I saw was at a book fair that I attended just the other month. I was just trying to pick up a wee innocent little diorama that some bookish cutie pie

had made of like a bookshelf with little mini copies of Nora Ephron's books on the little mini shelves. It was so cute. And as I'm double clicking my Apple Pay, cult of Apple, I notice out of the corner of my eye, there is a Shen Yun booth. So many of us recognize Shen Yun's logo and marketing materials, which really begs a host of questions about who is running this thing and what they're trying to accomplish.

Now, on a more serious note, beyond just the sort of chilling, Scientology-esque vibes that tingle the spidey senses of most regular people who come into contact with Shenyang publicity, the group has been under serious investigation for some time, principally by a pair of reporters named Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld at the New York Times. Late last year, in 2024, in a series of New York Times exposés, Hangen Rothfeld revealed a whole pooh-pooh platter of allegations about sketchy financial practices

Shen Yan has engaged in, allegedly. But also most notably, they also revealed truly damning stories about Shen Yan's treatment of its performers, including emotional abuse, labor exploitation, fear tactics, and the installation of metaphysical beliefs, like the idea that true loyalists could self-heal their bodies if they hurt themselves while dancing,

with nothing but the power of their own mind. According to the New York Times, dancers were often, quote, discouraged from seeking medical care for injuries and often worked grueling hours for low pay while being subjected to emotional abuse and manipulation and so much more. I won't lie to you, this whole Shen Yan story is even more f**kin' bananas than I realized. Now a petite disclaimer for you, it sounds like a cult is most certainly not an investigative podcast.

So we will be leaning on a lot of the reporting that Hong and Rothfeld did throughout this episode today as we attempt to analyze Shen Yun as an everyday cult, compare it to other culty groups in society right now, and of course, ultimately determine whether, in our opinion, it is a live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out level cult. This episode, rest assured, is going to be packed with allegedlys. I actually have no idea how litigious Shen Yun is, but I do know that they are fielding their own set of lawsuits against them right now. So that's exciting. And we will get into that later.

Y'all, Shen Yun is a big topic. It is a complex story. So to help sort of frame our discussion today, we put out a call on Sounds Like a Cult's Instagram at Sounds Like a Cult Pod for listener submitted questions about Shen Yan. And I kid you not, we received hundreds and hundreds. And the most frequently asked of those inquiries will serve as our episodes sort of scaffolding today.

We're gonna talk about what Shen Yan even is, the ins and outs of their marketing strategy. We're gonna talk about what going to a Shen Yan show is actually like. And then we're going to talk about some of the serious culty horrors that Shen Yun performers have had to endure as brought to light by the New York Times investigations. And then finally, we're going to have a little bit of discussion about what we as outsiders might be able to do to help or at least not support this maybe sort of innocent seeming,

but ultimately culty ass organization. Now, as you may have noticed, I am taking this week's episode solo. My lovely two cohosts, Reese and Chelsea, each had to work today, but they will be back next week. So joining me for this episode instead are two culty podcasters who, like me and many of you, wanted to know what the fuck is going on with Shenyang.

But they took it a step further and entered the belly of the beast. Indeed, they actually attended a Shenyang show. They lived to tell the tale, and they're here today to share the whole thing with us. ["The True Enon Show"] Welcome, Liz and Brace, of the True Enon Podcast. It sounds like a cult.

Hello, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for having us. You know, I feel like it's maybe a long time coming. I feel as though we've been orbiting. Is that just me? Yeah, I think our spiritual key has been kind of orbiting each other for a long time. Yeah, it's the listeners. I think there's some overlap in listenership.

It takes a certain listener to tune in to a podcast that covers really dark topics with a cheeky tone. So we're here to talk about the cult of Shen Yun. Holy shit, long requested as you can imagine on this here show. You two have some firsthand gonzo, I wanna say, style experience with Shen Yun. Could you start with the beginning of your Shen Yun story? Where did each of you first come across Shen Yun and what was your first impression

of it before you ever like entered the belly of the beast? Both of us growing up in the Bay Area, I remember being a kid and seeing protests a lot, especially in San Francisco along the Embarcadero on the water, where there would be a bunch of people out there with big billboards, big signs that say like, stop organ harvesting, stop the Chinese Communist Party, no organ harvesting now. And I think it took me, I can't even remember when, but maybe when I was living in LA, where I finally like put that together with the billboards for Shenyang.

And I was like, wait a second, those are those people from when I was a kid. I remember walking at the Civic Center in San Francisco and seeing a guy in a dog cage, like mostly naked and being like, what the fuck is this guy doing in here? But I would see they'd have these parades all the time, kind of reenacting these scenes. And then when Shen Yun started, I'd never seen anything advertised that heavily. I mean, eventually it became like a meme, but like for years and years, they had the posters and like basically every single store you could imagine. They had big billboards up, but I had never known a single person in my life who'd ever gone and seen Shen Yun.

I had no idea how they had the budget for it. And then I realized they were the same organization. And finally I was like, you know what? The advertising works. And so we went a couple of years ago and witnessed the performance. Beautiful weekend at Lincoln Center. Divine. And that's really what they're going for, as far as I can tell. So we're going to get there.

We had so many listeners submitted questions about the show itself. But I want to give a bit of background before we like fully dive in. Shen Yun was created in 2006, okay? We're talking new religious movement. Same year that I'm rocking some Delia's low-waisted jeans and a freaking Abercrombie Kids branded sweater, Shen Yun is born.

And it is birthed by its leader Li Hongxi, who is the founder of Falun Gong. So Li for context is basically this classic cult leader ass dude, allegedly. He's in his seventies and he's convinced his followers that he's the creator of the universe and God on earth. So I sourced a gajillion listener questions from Instagram to frame this discussion today. The first one was simply what is Shen Yun's connection to Falun Gong? I'm going to try to summarize it the best that I can. So basically Shen Yun's performances fully exist to spread the message and teachings of Li and Falun Gong. So Shen Yun stated mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture whilst quote providing audiences everywhere with an experience of beauty.

That's what they purport these shows are all about. But what really seems to be going on is that Li, the leader, is essentially treating Shen Yun as a way to portray himself and his tenants as divine and transcendent in contrast with the evils of the Chinese Communist Party. So Shen Yun is supposed to help Li, quote, "'On his quest to save humanity from a coming apocalypse.'" So that is a classic cult mission. This man's actual beliefs are confusing at best.

Maybe you two can help enlighten me, but as I understand it, he does have some very troubling views about who gets access to the afterlife. And some of those notions are kind of abstractly portrayed in dance form in Shenyang. Apparently, Li does swear that even just by absorbing Shen Yan's message through

the show, an audience member can be saved. Were you getting that when you attended? Did you feel absorbed by any sort of divine spirit? Well, there's definitely people who float in it, which was cool. I did like that. Listen, I'm not going to claim to be a theologian. I don't even know how to pronounce theology in there, but I've tried to kind of figure out what Li's teachings are and I've read a lot of them. They do not seem to make a lot of sense. That does seem to be one of the main purposes he says that Shen Yun serves is to, as a way of almost proselytizing about the teachings of Falun

Dafa Falun Gong and by watching the show by absorbing these 5,000 years of Chinese history, it will sort of save you without you having to actually join Falun Gong. And you know, one of his things is that like Lee's teaching physically implants a secret invisible but still literally real Dharma wheel within the abdomen of his followers. Unfortunately, as he'll say like, yeah, it's in there. Doctors can't see it, but trust me, it's in there. And so I'm assuming that during the show at some point, probably after the intermission, that Dharma wheel was implanted in all of our abdomens and we were sort of guaranteed at least a chance to go to heaven.

The problem though with Li Hongzhi's vision of heaven, which is kind of displayed in the show in a sort of sanitized form, famously he's against race mixing because the problem he says is that every heaven gets its own race and so if you're an interracial child, your soul doesn't unfortunately know what race to get to. I'm not really sure why they couldn't just come up with like a few more heavens, but I think unfortunately anybody else, I'm not fluent enough in Lee's teachings to tell you where you end up, but hopefully you're fine after the apocalypse, which was hinted at being imminent several points during the show. Yeah, there had a bunch of angels come down from heaven.

Some of them were riding on white horses in a kind of amazing apocalyptic scenario of the world kind of going up in flames and these angels and horses coming in to ride and save all of the believers as they all ascended into heaven. I think we should like make a point about the race mixing thing. And he's also extremely homophobic. He said to his followers and especially in Shenyang, like, hey, you should downplay part of these teachings, basically being like we live in woke times.

And so you can't really like put this out there. And so a lot of people don't know about that. But it really is kind of a foundational part of the Falun Dolph of Falun Gong vision. Yeah. So I want to get into that a little bit more. Obviously, several listeners wanted to know what the religious aspect of Shen Yun is, how it can be described. And the answer is complex. Now, Falun Gong, as I'm sure both of you know, maintains that it is actually not a religion. But if Swifties and Gilmore Girls Stans and hardcore Sephora lovers are a religion, and here it sounds like a cult, we sure as shit tend to argue that they are, then Falun Gong, I think, would fit the bill.

We don't have time to get into the whole ass history of Falun Gong. Parsing out the details of its ideologies is so challenging as you mentioned. It is homophobic, it is racist, it thinks humanity's problems can be blamed on aliens and that modern technology is an extraterrestrial weapon. So cult stuff. I would love to kind of go back

to discussing this phenomenon of like the beef that exists between the Chinese government and Shen Yun. The Chinese government has for a very long time now regarded Falun Gong as a cult. And what's interesting to me is that Falun Gong kind of regards them as a cult of sorts right back. Could you explain from your research the history of this culty conflict and how it ultimately led Falun Gong to want to start a dance company in the form of Shen Yan. So it's interesting because Falun Gong wasn't the only association like Falun Gong to kind

of come out of the same time period. It was part of this wave in the late 70s to ending in the 1990s that's kind of called Qi Gong fever. And it's based around the practice of Qiong, which is like a physical kind of spiritual practice. You see people do it in the parks in Chinatown and San Francisco, at least a lot. But in the 1980s in China, a really big boom with this kind of stuff. And there were all these kind of gurus that in the very classical guru mold would claim

to have some miraculous properties that they could do. Like Lee Hong-ji's claim of being able to levitate and turn invisible isn't actually that unusual with the guys who started up these organizations. The problem was a lot of these organizations kind of ran into the same sorts of problems as like a lot of like the crazy Pentecostal stuff here or like Christian scientists where they were like, we can cure your cancer. And like people ended up dying. They also just got really kind of wrapped up in also this kind of paranormal, like where they were like, we can cure your cancer. And like people ended up dying. They also just got really kind of wrapped up in also this kind of paranormal

craze in China at the time. And people started to get really far out there and they kind of started to resemble like a lot of the cults that we had in the 1970s and 1980s. Yeah, it's really similar. And that's why the Chinese communist party of the government kind of stepped in because they're like, wait a second, we need people to actually go to the doctor when they're sick.

We need people to not be denying all of this science and running away from all of this because this is actually really harmful to society. And so they kind of stepped in and were like, okay, this is banned, this is illegal, no more, no more. And most of the Qigong cults, groups, whatever we want to call them, kind of fizzled out because they didn't have the money, the popularity. But Li was able to kind of like ride above all of that and really positioned himself against the Chinese Communist Party as a

way of kind of being like, oh, they're trying to come in and ban us, but we're going to be stronger. They don't know what they're talking about. And so he came over in 98. I think they're banned in 99 and they sort of try to ingratiate themselves with like Canadian and American conservatives by being like, we're an anti-China group. And kind of the similar way, like the Moonies, like Reverend Moon's group was like this big anti-communist group in the seventies and eighties. They sort of tried to do the same thing, but they're too crazy. And so like, again,

they were giving all these interviews in the early 2000s and they kind of became a laughing stock a little bit. They tried to integrate into this big anti-communist network in like America and Canada, but they had some rough starts until they started accusing the Chinese government of harvesting their organs. And this is actually where a lot of people kind of encountered them too, even if they don't know it. Because if you have an idea in your head without knowing much about it already about Oregon harvesting in China, there's like a 99% chance that it came from a Falun Gong organization.

Because a huge part of their mythos is allegations that they are hunted in a similar manner to the most dangerous game of all, man, throughout China by evil communist doctors and then they have their organs harvested. Now to be clear, there is not any indication that this is happening. There's no indication that there are Falun Gong practitioners in China who are sort of harvested like cattle and have their organs taken from them, but it factors heavily into a lot of their propaganda and they have all these front groups that go about spreading these things. Usually made up of like kind of crazy right wing QAnon style people, but sometimes with

like respectable style people in it as well. But they have waged this war. Unfortunately, the problem with Falun Gong is if they were like 30% less crazy, they could be like a great asset to the CIA or whatever. But they're too insane. Right. They just like didn't know when to stop like so many of the worst cults because in a way they remind me of so many protected organizations in the United States, like fucking chiropractors. Don't get me started. Literally though, like the origin story of Falun Gong and Lee, they remind me so, so much of the origin story of chiropractors, which is another episode we've done on the show.

But chiropractors are what? 50% less insane than Falun Gong. So like they've pulled the wool over almost everybody's eyes. Like it's nuts, but like you're right. What it does have in common with QAnon is that the government actually intervened to a degree anyway, which was certainly a good thing, but also similar to Falun Gong. It sounds like QAnoners think government elites are evil and in a way that helped, but it also kind of fueled the flames because QAnon hates the government. That's like the flames because QAnon hates the government. That's like the whole idea. And so if the government is going to crack down on them, that's just going to make some of them dig their heels in and fortify their existing

beliefs. And that's a bit what seems to have gone on here. But it just is a very interesting subject to discuss on this particular show because it sounds like a cult exists to critique cultishness in everyday life, less like Falun Gong or QAnon because everybody already knows those are a cult and more like momfluencers and CrossFit and mainstream government bodies that are actually quite culty upon closer inspection. But it is also important to kind of take a step back and ground ourselves and be like, there is actually a difference. Well, it's funny because I think that a lot of politicians in America have tried since Lee Hong-Zi came over in the early 2000s to sort of help them

because they thought, okay, any kind of organization that has a critique of China, especially one that is coming from China or expat can be very useful for politicians who want to spread messages that are anti-China or right-wing politicians that are like trying to make arguments against China, all these things. And time after time, they've run into that same problem that Brace is saying, which is that like, these guys are too crazy to be useful. And so over the years, they've come in and they said, okay, you got to tone down the racism.

You got to tone down the whole miscegenation thing. It's not going to fly. The whole homophobia thing, it's not going to fly. And out of that is where you get Shenyang, which still, we haven't mentioned it yet, but there is a very, I think to them, they believe moving to me quite strange scene of actual organ harvesting in Shenyang where you're watching modern day Falun Gong practitioners be kidnapped by evil CCP agents to then have their organs harvested stage right or whatever. Okay. So how did this whole history lead to Falun Gong in 2006 being like, you know what,

I think it's time to start a dance troupe. So Shen Yun started as part of the Falun Gong sort of like image crafting in the West when they came over. They were banned by the Communist Party of China in I think 99 because five of them lit themselves on fire. A 12 year old girl died and the kind of the government was like, this is getting too crazy. You can't do this anymore. Li Hongzhi had already left the country. He like not voluntarily. It wasn't like exile. He just left and moved to upstate New York. They realized that like he was given all these interviews where he's like, I can fly. And then the interviewer this happened in time would be like, you can fly. Like how can you fly?

And the guy's like, well, have you seen David Copperfield? He can also fly. So I can fly kind of like that. And I think someone at Falun Gong headquarters was like, this is getting too crazy. We're sounding like nuts. We gotta start like a dance company and like a media outlet to kind of like get ourselves back in your graces. It was like a damage control cleanup situation.

Exactly, it was. And so I think it's sort of like, they've realized that it's been pretty successful and they certainly funnel a lot of the money from their other oftentimes more very explicitly unsavory practices back into the dance company. Before we get into the rest of the episode, a quick word from our cult followed sponsors who make the show possible. This show is sponsored by Liquid IV. My New Year's resolution, which I've been sticking to,

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of a website or domain using code Colt. I wanna pause for a second and unpack the subject that we got the most questions about, which is Shen Yun's marketing. From y'all two's perspective, how would you describe it? Like if you were to pull up some Shen Yun publicity materials, a brochure for example, could you explain what it looks like?

I'd love if you could illustrate an image in listeners' heads. I'd ask if your listeners are familiar with the publication, The Epic Times, because when I think of Shenyang advertising, I think of placed peace in right-wing propaganda outlet, The Epic Times. Yeah, I would say, I mean, obviously the famous image of, I mean, it's a pretty whatever image, but the sort of, you can picture it in your head right now, if you live anywhere in America is like a prancing dancer with maybe like an orange background and

some banners there and it'll say like Shen Yun. And then sometimes it says 5,000 years of Chinese history. Sometimes it says China before communism, something like that. And then it'll give some kind of dates. And then oftentimes I feel like there are like sponsoring organizations. Now, I think one of the biggest mysteries about Shenyang that sort of the lay person has is that like, how do they afford all of this advertising? Now, the answer to that seems to be donations from followers and like they do have like street teams where they like go out and like put up the flyers and And then also right wing media, like the Epic Times, which is funneled back in. And then also crime, which it seems to be a really

big aspect of the entire organization. Cause there's really no separating Shen Yun from like Falun Gong from Epic Times or anything. It's all the same fucking thing. It's just like different kinds of branches of it. In fact, they have like hundreds of companies under their control. So I want to clarify a few things. We mentioned the Epoch Times. There were a couple of questions about that. Basically for those who don't know, the Epoch Times is a far right news publication.

It was founded by Falun Gong. It's kind of like you were saying, just another property in their portfolio, though they try to deny that or at least keep it on the DL. The Epoch Times has basically written thousands upon thousands of articles promoting Shen Yang while, quote, attacking its critics as agents of the Chinese government. That's according to The New York Times.

Another thing I learned from the reporting that I'm citing throughout this episode is that back in June, the Epic Times chief financial officer was arrested and charged for money laundering conspiracy. So they're getting the kind of attention that they deserve. If I may interject there, I think his like money laundering company was called Making Money Online LLC. It was, and it was a cryptocurrency Ponzi, as you could imagine. As you could imagine, indeed. Okay, so let's unpack a little bit further some of these shady marketing approaches and how Shenyang is able to afford all that they do to publicize these shows.

So basically, Rothfeld and Hong for the New York Times looked into their marketing budget, how they're affording all of this. And the answer to how Shenyang has such a giant marketing budget is simply that they don't. This is what they do. Shenyang's leadership convinces followers to do their marketing for them and put on their shows for free, kind of like volunteer work or donations, as you said. So all of those flyers and billboards and posters that you see in addition to expenses like venue costs and performer accommodations, a lot of that shit gets paid for by a network of mini franchise organizations like little nonprofits that the Falun Gong leader, Lee, convinced his followers to form in cities

around the world, including LA, Philly, et cetera. According to the New York Times, these mini satellite groups spend millions every year on advertising, keep just enough of the ticket sales to cover their baseline expenses, and then send the rest to Shenyang. So here's an example of how those numbers shake out. According to tax records reported by the New York Times, one of Falun Gong's

Atlanta based offshoot organizations spent around one point six million dollars in 2018 for seven Shenyang performances. They made about two point one million dollars from those Atlanta shows. And then after all the accounting, Shen Yun pocketed almost half a million bucks. Also, though, sometimes these efforts aren't profitable. And if a satellite organization is not able to earn back in ticket sales what it spends, they have to eat that cost, which is definitely something that has happened. So followers can end up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt due to Shen Yun, not to mention the shame of feeling

like you failed your leader if the shows that you produced and advertised didn't make a ton of money. So long story short, it'd basically be like if your church decided to form a propagandistic traveling circus and then manipulated parishioners to pay for it, that is basically the answer to why Shen Yan has so many billboards. Okay. Now I think we have to talk about what Shen Yan's actual show is like. We received scores of questions about the performance itself, about the show. Questions as vague as what happens and is the dancing good? Is it safe to attend?

So can you just walk us through the first moments of your Shen Yun audience member experience? Like, what did it feel like to walk in there? Who were the other attendees? Paint a picture. Our real first entree to the show was this very enthusiastic pair of people sort of introducing the show, a Chinese woman

and this Mormon style white guy. It was like Colin Jost, but uncanny valley version. AI slop Colin Jost in Lincoln Center relaying a Chinese cult message. And I was fascinated by this. So they introduced the show and honestly, I didn't really know what to expect because we'd read some reviews of it, none of which were particularly charitable. I was very curious about the audience of this because I'm like, this show is not cheap. It was like, I think a couple hundred dollars a ticket or something like that.

Yeah, it was not cheap. For a matinee. Whoa. For a matinee. For a matinee no less. You're not even having wine. I mean, maybe you are, but- It was a packed house. Packed house.

Liz, how would you describe the people there? I couldn't really get a read on- It was a mix, but do you remember, Brace? There was a couple next to us that were clearly on a date, and I really felt for them. It was funny because I think it was right before the intermission. The show is split up in two parts with an intermission in the middle. The first couple performances in it are very much like old ancient Chinese dance before the Communist Party.

This is what China was like. Then there's a performance right before the intermission that gets a lot more propagandistic towards some of the things that the Falun Gong believe. And I remember kind of out of the corner of my eye, seeing the guy who was on this date with this girl kind of like lean over and be like, wait a minute. Like people started kind of looking around at this point

to be like, wait, are you seeing what I'm seeing? Because they just said some weird shit. Yeah, remembering this now, I'm like, I feel for that couple because I'm assuming this is maybe unkind of me, but I'm assuming it was the guy trying to be like culture to be like, yeah, do you want to go see a dance performance with me on Saturday? It's like Chinese dance.

Okay. Okay. So you got the understanding that there were some people there who like had absolutely no context. Like they were truly just responding to the equivalent of an Instagram ad. Exactly. That is absolutely fascinating.

Could you sort of explain in a nutshell the scope of the performance? Liz, you did have some notes about the quality of the dancing. Just like what the fuck happened? I mean, I thought the dancing was very stiff. I'm gonna be real. You know, I don't mean to come off

as some big connoisseur of dance. No way. Not claiming. However, I was not impressed. Some of that, maybe we can chalk that up to the fact that they are training these quote unquote dancers out of their compound in upstate New York, which if you want to say sounds like a cult, there's nothing more culty than the words compound in upstate New York. which if you want to say, sounds like a cult, there's nothing more culty than the words compound in upstate New York. Like you just never want to hear that. And so everyone, including the underage child, quote unquote, volunteers up there,

to the more older performers. And I'm just gonna say, I didn't think the quality was great. The backdrops, we should say, there was a little bit of a handmade quality to some of the props, which I found quite charming, but then the backdrops were just digital, late 90s, early 2000s video game, digital backdrop, which was very odd. Would I recommend for any listeners to go to the show, leaving aside the question of how much money it is and then all that money going to this actually legitimately horrible cult. No, because the show, frankly, 5,000

years of Chinese history in your head, not so long. On stage, forever. It was infinite. Now when it got to the modern stuff, I will say again, because that's them putting their own little spin on everything. Yeah, they got the juice there. I feel like if you actually want to see Chinese dance, you'd probably go to somewhere that it's like a real dance troupe that takes their art very seriously. This was mostly pretty boring, except for some of the acrobatics. And then the four or five like Oregon harvesting style dances I found captivating. But my recommendation is if you're thinking, maybe I can take my funky little hinge date here.

No, no, take the hinge date to Kava. Do not go to Shenyang. Oh, wow. That's like really important insight. I'm disappointed to hear that frankly, but also relieved because the temptation is sort of quelled. This episode of Sounds Like a Cult is brought to you by Booking.com. Booking dot yeah.

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You mentioned the sort of cognitive dissonance of watching these performers who maybe seem at best unhappy, at worst ill and threatened. We need to talk about the cult of Shen Yun from the performer side. And this is really the focus of all these New York Times investigations that I keep referencing. We received a lot of questions from listeners asking if the performers are exploited, if they're paid, if they're forced to do the show, have they spoken out?

So I wanna get into all of that. Basically what Hong and Rothfeld found is that Shen Yan is not exactly Cultivating a genuine love of artistry in their performers The group very much manipulates recruits into doing free labor pushing them to dance through injuries and endure emotional abuse All using these really pernicious psychological tactics. Someone wanted to know how dancers were recruited. So performers are recruited from all over the world to dance with Shen Yun. The vast majority of them come from a Falun Gong family or are related to followers of the group. Apparently, Falun Gong's followers view performing with Shen Yun as a sacred honor. So performers live and train inside this 400 acre compound overseen by Lee and his militarized posse.

The compound is called Dragon Springs and is located in upstate New York. The compound has a college and a boarding school because some Shenyang trainees are very, very young. Certain performers might start touring with the group when they're just 12 years old. And again, as the Times reported, these kids are not allowed to leave the compound unless they get special permission and they might only see their parents once per year during a two week summer break. So basically the reason they know all this is because more than two dozen former

Shenyan dancers, musicians, and teachers confided in the New York Times. Some even allowed their real names and photographs to go on the record. Here is some of what they shared. So to make this more interactive, but also just to get our bearings and help us distinguish exactly the level of cultishness that we're talking about here, I'm going to read a list of these abuse allegations and ask you Liz and Brace to say whether you think that each one is Shen Yun being culty or just an asshole. This is sort of a franchise on Sounds Like a Cult sometimes because there is a difference between, you know, something being evidence of cult behavior

and just being like shitty. And I would love to hear your take. So first of all, whenever performers get sick or hurt themselves within Shen Yun, they're told allegedly that it's due to a problem with their spiritual state. According to the New York Times, ex-perform allegedly that it's due to a problem with their spiritual state. According to the New York Times, ex performers said that they had to dance through dislocated knee caps and sprained ankles, lest they have their loyalty to Lee called into question.

Additionally, the dancers had no access to doctors or physical therapy. Culty or just an asshole? Culty, for sure culty. I want to say culty, but also I've had jobs that have treated me not that different than that So without the Lee Hong-ji part kind of similar Okay Next one former performers said that female dancers were subjected to weigh-ins and name-calling when they did not maintain a stick thin Frame culty or just an asshole. I'm gonna say an asshole

I'm also gonna say an asshole because I feel like that's every fucking dance. I've never seen any of the movies that are about dancers, but they all seem to have stuff like this in them. Okay. You're just like, it's run of the mill black swan behavior. Exactly. That's what I'm thinking. Like, don't they do that? Are there always some lady yelling at you? See, with that one, I would say cultie were just used to it because Lord knows

if they made men stop eating we would notice. Alright next one, performers training rehearsal and performance schedules could entail 15 hour days and 800 show tours allegedly without pay at first and then $12,000 a year or less. Cultie or just an asshole? I don't want to say asshole because I don't want to let them off the hook but I do think that this reminds me of so many terrible labor practices that they're obviously taking advantage of to further the kind of like cult behavior

or inculcate people. But I also think that there's unfortunately like so many businesses that rely on this sort of illegal labor practice. Yeah, I'd say the same. I would say the same. I would say it's culty in the fact that like people are more willing to put up with it because of a spiritual reason or whatever, but it does sort of mirror, especially in

like entertainment business, like kind of like making somebody work all this insane amount with the promise that they'll get to some, you know, in the case of Lee Hong-ji, you'll get to your racially non-diverse heaven, I guess. But in the entertainment world, you'll be able to get, I don't know what, like a job writing on Big Mouth. A new IMDB credit. Yeah. Yeah.

It is true. I think the distinguishing factor here, to your point, is that the metaphysical threats are being held over their heads. But indeed, it is so easy to take advantage of artists' labor. And obviously Shen Yun is different from a D-list movie set, but it is curious to point out the similarities as well. Let's move on. Former performers also said that leaders threatened that if they messed up during a show,

they would, quote, doom their audience to hell. I'm gonna get Colty. I'm gonna say Colty, but I'm gonna get culty. I'm gonna say culty, I'm gonna say culty, but I'm gonna defend this because Liz and I give this same thing every single time before we do a show, we look at each other and say essentially a variation of that. Oh my God, that is absolutely hilarious.

It is true and I relate to it. Every time I do one of my live shows, I feel like I will doom myself and everyone here to hell if this is not a delight to witness. Okay, next one. Ex-performers spoke of Shen Yan's control over the media they consumed, like that they weren't allowed to watch anything mainstream. And there was even control over their love lives, including arranged relationships. Culty or just an asshole? That's textbook culty. Classic an asshole that's textbook culty Classic cult I should say so next one

Dancers were scared to leave Shen Yan because they were allegedly told they'd go to hell lose their leaders protection and have to pay back The cost of all their schooling and accommodations over the years culty or just an asshole. That's culty. We're going cult now Definitely definitely no, we're escalating here. And the last thing I'll read to you is that Shen Yun has denied all of these claims. When Shen Yun found out that former dancers were talking to the New York Times, they said that this was just quote, a relatively tiny disgruntled group who were making up bizarre and dramatic things about Shen Yun. Shen Yun gaslighting their whistleblowers. Colty are just an asshole. I'm going to say it's Colty in this scenario because of the content. I'm going to agree with that and add on that actually I've talked to several journalists who worked for college newspapers in different towns who were writing articles critical of

Shen Yun and Shen Yun targeted them specifically and tried to get them fired from their college newspapers and get the article shut down. So they are very up on media consumption habits. They don't have the resources that Scientology does, but they are just as dogged about following people and some pretty serious attempts to get people fired, deplatformed, all sorts of things. Yeah. Before we kind of get into where Shen Yan is legally right now, and then a little game, and then our verdict,

I did want to ask a personal question just from me. What do you think Shen Yan's visibility right now and all of these recent exposés say about the state of cultishness in our society at large at present? Like Shen Yan's been around for a while. These exposés weren't coming out five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. They're coming out right now.

Why do you think that is? Like what's going on in the ether? Well, I think one thing to remember is that Shen Yan had a kind of weird surge during COVID for a couple reasons. I think people might think like, oh, when I first found out about Shenyang, it's like when I was getting like direct mail, it was like 2019, 2020,

and then they went really hard on marketing in 2020 and 2021. And we talked about all these organizations and NGOs in their portfolio. They were able to kind of basically find a bunch of loopholes in a lot of the pandemic relief fund programs in order to collect about 48 million, I think close to $50 million of government funds,

which they've been using to fund a lot of operations. And so I think that having all that money in these like recent years helped bring them to a new prominence, which then sparked a lot of new investigations into what they were doing. And we mentioned the Epic Times being this sort of like wing of their program. And again, during COVID, the Epic Times grew exponentially, mostly through Facebook and YouTube, where more and more people were being exposed during that time. They were pushing a lot of anti-China COVID policy stuff, a bunch of anti-vax stuff, a

bunch of like, pandemic kind of stuff. And so I think that kind of sparked a renewed interest into what was going on here from places like the New York Times and all of that. And you know, those kinds of investigations take years. Yeah, I think that they kind of overplayed their hand with some stuff. First of all, you have that many billboards for a show that not a lot of people are going to see. There's going to be some questions, but also, like Liz said, the Epic Times stuff, they made a lot of enemies with that because they got really

big in 2015 and then Facebook changed the algorithm and they kind of receded and then came roaring back with the pandemic. They were really early boosters of Trump. They were in with the QAnon people. They made a movie about a Chinese cell phone company, Huawei, with Steve Bannon. They were like really tied into this like extreme right ecosystem and seemingly had limitless money. And so I think a lot of the Shen Yun coverage that we're seeing from a lot of mainstream outlets today, particularly New York Times, kind of stems from earlier investigations into the Epic Times and their crazy sphere that they created. And there's also a lot of labor trafficking and like pretty gross and clear violations of employees. I put quotes around that, right? With Epic Times as well.

Yeah. I have such unbelievable respect for the journalists who are doing this investigative reporting into cults like Shenyang because they are the ones that are taking note of these abuses and gathering the testimonies of ex-performers and those who've endured all these culty horrors. And they're looking at all of the ways in which Shenyang is thriving and getting away with this. And they're actually doing something about it by publishing these investigations. And there has been serious legal fallout from them. It is famously difficult to sue a cult

or to hold a cult accountable in a court of law. But Shen Yun is facing legal trouble these days. For example, the Labor Department is looking into Shen Yun child labor and failure to pay people minimum wage. And then separately, a former dancer sued the group this past December for forced labor and human trafficking. This dancer was recruited from Taiwan

when they were 13 years old, stayed with Shen Yan for over a decade, and said that as soon as they arrived, they entered quote, a system of coercion and control that extended to nearly every aspect of the dancer's lives. Shen Yan is not thrilled with this suit, as you might imagine, and is kind of making all these arguments that the world's against them, et cetera, but that is the story of Shen Yun in a nutshell. The only other question that I wanted to pose

from listeners was simply just, is it bad to pay for tickets to Shen Yun? And how can we kind of like not support this cult as outsiders? I would say if you don't want to support the cult, don't go see Shania. Yeah, I'm just saying you should legitimately, even if this was completely disconnected from a cult, these tickets are way too expensive. The show stinks. And this is so easy. It's not like if like Safeway or whatever was run by like a crazy religious organization. You can avoid this one very easily,

simply by not going to a $200 boring bad show by like horribly exploited cult victims. You heard it here. Now we're going to transition into playing a game. As if there weren't enough juxtaposition of laughing and wincing throughout this episode We're gonna play a game and it's just a classic would you rather? Alright, so I'm gonna read three would you rather scenarios involving Shen Yun as well as some other culty situations and there are no wrong

Answers, but you're gonna simply say which one you'd rather do the first one Would you rather have to change your podcast logo, so the True and On logo, to the Shen Yun logo, that leaping dancer, forever, or have to go through one week of Shen Yun dancer training on the compound in upstate New York? Logo, easy. Yeah, I think we got to do the logo. It's already instantly recognizable. We can kind of piggyback off of the sum of their success.

And if a DOJ investigation really heats up, then frankly, we could probably take complete ownership of it. Oh my God, genius. And that is on reputation repair. Okay, next one. Would you rather have to attend a Shenyang performance anywhere in the world, so you know, you can be in Paris, wherever,

every Friday night for the rest of your life, or only listen to Taylor Swift music for the rest of your life? Meaning, whenever you wanna listen to music, it has to be Taylor Swift. I guess I'm going to say Taylor Swift. I really don't want to have to see Shenya in every week. Every Friday is tough. I'm going to say Taylor easy.

Yeah. She's got a huge catalog. Yeah. The catalog's big enough. I think she's got different kinds of music, right? She's played the acoustic guitar and then that other one, she's like bisexual. I gotta just stop listening to music or something.

You know what I mean? Like I could just. Yeah, or just like get into podcasts. Yeah. Okay, last one. Would you rather get Shen Yun in Chinese characters tattooed on your lower back 90s tramp stamp style or have the Tesla logo branded with fire onto your hip. I'm going to do tramp stamp style.

100%. Nothing Elon Musk related is going anywhere near my body. Tramp stamp is so easy because I could do a classic reversums on someone getting Chinese that they don't understand tattooed on them. And I could tell people it means whatever. You know what I'm saying? Totally. I mean, Ariana Grande just did this.

So you well, you look just alike. I've been thinking about this the whole time. I was like, oh, God, he looks familiar. Ariana Grande, wicked holding space for you. All right. Now it is time to ask the ultimate sounds like a cult question. Brace and Liz, out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out.

Which one do you think Shen Yun falls into? How is there a pause? Well, I want to say get the fuck out, you know, but it could be as easy as just no longer picking up your phone unless you live on the compound. You can kind of just be like, I'm out of here. They're like fairly disorganized on some level. And so like, I don't think they can really like black baggy and bring you back to like Scientology style.

So I would say just get out. Yeah, you got to get out. Right. You know, if you need a dance cult to join, I was really into line dancing for a little while, and that was just great. It was positive. Yeah, people love that.

That sounds nice. Also pro-social. I have a recommendation too, but if you still want a little bit of an insular, freaky little element, why not become a Blue Man? Oh, Blue Man Group? Yeah, and I recommend, I just saw this the other night, Blue Man Groupie, which is a self-made documentary

about a woman who was sexually obsessed and indeed successful at sleeping with several blue men. What? Several? Not just one? I think I don't know. How could she tell them apart? That's such a good question. Oh, my God. How do you tell? Such a good shout, though. Thank you for that.

Blue Man Group. I feel like that should go on the list of Sounds Like a Cult topics to cover in the future. So culty and weird. Actually went once in Vegas against my will. It's a long story. Point is, I did go and the first thing I thought was this is such a cult because they open up

the whole entire performance with this chant and they're really like trying to get people indoctrinated and whipped up, So great point. Thank you both so much for joining this episode of Sounds Like a Cult. Very juicy. If folks want to keep up with you and your podcast, where can they do that?

You can listen to True and On wherever you listen to podcasts. I think it's available. Yeah, True and On, one word. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Well, that is our show. Thanks for listening.

Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. Sounds Like a Cult was created by Amanda Montell and edited by Jordan Moore of The Pod Cabin. This episode was hosted by Amanda Montell. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it five stars on Spotify

or Apple podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and Wordslet,

A Feminist's Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network studio, 71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a Cult Pod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. Calling all magical overthinkers in the Vancouver area, big announcement for you, you are invited to come spiral with me in person for a one night only live show at the Just for Laughs Festival in Vancouver, Canada on Friday, February 21st at 7pm. This live show is called the Big Magical Cult Show, and it is so much fun. Not only does the show involve a deep dive analysis of parasocial relationships and celebrity worship, kind of like a magical overthinkers episode on steroids,

but there are also magical elements like drag and burlesque performances, brilliant special guests, custom overthinker merch and drinks. I mean, who wouldn't want to sip on a cocktail called the French 75 reasons I can't sleep at night? Am I right? There will also be a book signing, a meet and greet, and some truly over-the-top surprises that honestly can't be explained. They just have to be experienced. Tickets are available now at amandamontel.com slash events, and make sure to snag one before they're sold out because this is gonna be an intimate little gathering

just for us over-thinkers. The big magical cult show is coming to the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver for one night only on February 21st, and I hope to see you there. This episode of Sounds Like a Cult is brought to you by Booking.com. Booking.yeah. Listen, if you know me, you know I love to skip town. I love to fly the coop. I'm out of town right now recording this advertisement. And I swear to the high heavens, every time

I use Booking.com to find a place to stay in the US, I always find exactly what I'm looking for. For example, right now I'm in the mountains. I wanted like a cabiny, chalet-ish kind of vibe. And the very cool thing about Booking.com is their variety of options. So whether you want to stay in like a four-star hotel, five-star hotel, or more of like an intimate, kind of quirky vacation rental with like lots of character, they've got you. I remember once using Booking.com to get a very cute hotel in New York City.

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