The Daily - Shen Yun: The Dark Side of a Dance Troupe

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

A few days ago, one of the most ubiquitous live shows in the country, Shen Yun, began its latest run at Lincoln Center, drawing thousands of people to a performance that is colorful, acrobatic and — according to many of its performers — shockingly abusive.Nicole Hong, one of the reporters behind a New York Times investigation of Shen Yun, discusses what that reporting has revealed about the secretive enterprise.Guest: Nicole Hong, an investigative reporter for The New York Times focusing on New York and its surrounding regions.Background reading: An ex-dancer accused Shen Yun of forced labor and trafficking in a lawsuit.Here are five takeaways from The Times’s coverage of Shen Yun.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams. This is The Daily. A few days ago, one of the most ubiquitous live shows in the country, Shen Yun, began its latest run at arguably its most prestigious venue, Lincoln Center. It's drawn thousands of people to a performance that is colorful, acrobatic, and according to many of its performers, shockingly abusive. Today, my colleague Nicole Hong on what a Times investigation has found about this secretive and sprawling enterprise.

It's Wednesday, April 2nd. Nicole, I have seen billboards for Shen Yun literally all over New York City. They are pastel colored, they show people dancing, they're wearing this sort of long, flowy, diaphanous clothing. But I will admit this, I don't think I've ever actually bothered to look into what these billboards were actually advertising. And now you've done this big investigation into Shen Yun, which I'm really excited to talk about.

We're gonna get to in a minute. But first, can you just tell us what exactly is Shen Yun? So on the surface, Shen Yun is this performing arts group. They tour around the world, they perform traditional Chinese dance accompanied with a full orchestra, and most people know them because of their advertising. Every once in a while, something comes along so masterful, it leaves you in awe. Their billboards are everywhere. So inspiring. It changes your life.

We've seen TV ads, flyers on storefronts, direct mailers into our mailboxes. This season, take an incredible journey through 5,000 years of culture with Shen Yun. And they're often advertising these vague slogans. It's the beautiful culture and wisdom of China before communism. Like China before communism

or 5,000 years of civilization reborn. See it at least once in your lifetime. Shen Yun, an all-new production every year. Like many people, I have seen these for years and never thought twice about what this group was. They were just part of the landscape. Yes. But in late 2023, my reporting partner, Michael Rothfeld, got a tip from someone who was familiar with the inner workings of Shen Yun and said we should take a closer look at their operations. So we started making phone calls and of course we also decided to go to one of their shows

in Boston. And what was that like? So the tickets were actually quite expensive. Our tickets were over $200. Wow, okay. It's like going to Broadway. Yeah. And the show is basically a series of short, very choreographed dance and music pieces.

And a lot of the scenes are retelling traditional Chinese folk tales and mythology. And the level of dancing is very high level. As I was watching it, it reminded me of Olympic gymnastics or ballet. It's a lot of flips and splits in the air, that kind of thing. But as you get deeper into the show, you start to realize there's also something else going on, which is that there's a sort of spiritual and political element to some of these pieces. So for example, there's this one dance number we saw where a performer is dressed as a police officer for the Chinese Communist Party, and he is beating up this innocent man with a baton in a violent way.

And it turns out this man is getting beaten for practicing a religion called Falun Gong. And it becomes clear to you as an audience member as the show progresses that the show is presenting this religion, Falun Gong, as a force for good, fighting against the evil of the Chinese government. So that is not at all what I was expecting. I mean, I expected that you were going to tell me that it was a show with dancing and colorful costumes and being transported to faraway places, but I did not expect that there would be this whole underlying religious and political message. Right. This is not just a dance group. Shen Yun is about spreading the message of this religious movement, Falun Gong, to a

mainstream audience. And I got to witness this firsthand because when I went to the Boston show, the man sitting next to me I saw at intermission was Googling on his phone, what is Falun Gong? So that indicated to me that the message was penetrating. It was coming through to this audience member. Which is what they want. Exactly.

But at the time, we didn't fully understand the bigger picture. We didn't yet know what was really happening behind the scenes. And when we dug more into Shen Yun, what we uncovered through many, many months of reporting was this massive operation built on exploitation and coercion, all in service of Falun Gong's religious leader, who has turned Shen Yun into a major source of wealth and influence for his movement. So, tell me about this man and this religious movement. So this religious movement, Falun Gong, began in China in the early 1990s. And it was started by this man whose Chinese name is Li Hongzhi.

He was actually a grain clerk. But somewhere along the way, he starts traveling across China to introduce this new movement he's created. It combines elements of Buddhism with these ancient Chinese energy-based exercises that are known as qigong. These are basically slow movements where you move your hands and arms around the body to circulate energy. And Li is teaching his followers his version of these exercises along with spiritual texts

that he's written. And he's promoting this religion not only as a way to improve your health physically, but he's also saying that this can help you reach enlightenment, that this is the roadmap to becoming a better and more moral person. Okay, so far, all of this sounds pretty on par with what you would expect a lot of religions to be. Yes, but once you get deeper into the teachings, there are more mystical elements that come up. For example, he has said that advanced practitioners can develop supernatural powers,

like the ability to levitate or the ability to see through walls. Okay, so that seems kind of out there. Are people buying into it? Yeah, so it's important to understand the context of what was going on in China at the time. This is the 1990s. It was a period of economic and political turmoil. Mao Zedong, the Communist Party leader, had died not that long ago. And Mao had tried to stamp out traditional culture and traditional religions during his rule. So when he died, it left a spiritual vacuum in the country. And his death led to this revival of spiritual life in China, including ancient practices

like qigong. So as a result, by the mid-1990s, Falun Gong has followers all over China. Many of them said their health did improve through the meditation exercises. And so the practice becomes extremely popular. So very quickly, it sounds like it becomes a national movement. Yeah, and not just a national movement, but an international one. Li actually started taking his lectures and his teachings to the Chinese diaspora overseas. And it catches on in many countries like Australia, Canada, and the US as well.

The Chinese government has been concerned at how Falun Gong has gained adherence within the political establishment. But this is where it gets the attention of the Chinese Communist Party. The group claims its practitioners include as many as 100 million people in China, a figure disputed by the Chinese government. Obviously this is an authoritarian regime. They are suspicious of any group they cannot control, especially one that can mobilize large groups of people very quickly. And all of this comes to a head

in April 1999. Ten thousand people gathered in Beijing at the government leaders compound known as Jingnanhai. More than 10,000 Falun Gong followers had this rally in Beijing. It was the largest public assembly in the Chinese capital since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations a decade ago. And after the rally, this is where the persecution really starts. Today in Beijing, arrests of Falun Gong practitioners continued. Police and paramilitaries have been drafted into railway stations and bus depots to prevent members of the sect traveling to Beijing to protest. Falun Gong is banned in China. China puts out an arrest warrant for Li.

Meanwhile, Chinese state television is running an almost constant video campaign against the group. Newscasts have run pictures showing the group's literature and audio cassettes being crushed by a steamroller. The leadership is now trying to discredit Falun Gong with a barrage of propaganda aimed at showing that devotion can lead to insanity, suicide or murder. They start calling this group a, quote, evil cult, which the group has vehemently denied. The group has vehemently denied. The group has followers in the communist party and the military, and many of them have now been sent for so-called re-education in Marxist ideology. And thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are imprisoned. They are sent to labor camps.

They are tortured. They are beaten. And some of them never make it out. They died in custody during long prison terms. It was an incredibly brutal response that led many people abroad, including lawmakers in the United States, to consider Falun Gong a persecuted group and a victim of human rights abuses. Last week, as the Chinese government stepped up its crackdown against the group, State Department spokesman James Rubin expressed concern.

We are disturbed by reports of some heavy-handed tactics being used to prevent Chinese citizens from exercising internationally protected fundamental rights and freedoms. And I think it's also important to note that this suppression continues to this day. This is starting to explain the scenes in the play that you described of the man who's practicing Falun Gong being beaten. This is starting to make sense now. Exactly. You mentioned Lee earlier, the founder of Falun Gong. So where is he in the middle of all this?

So by the late 1990s, in the middle of the persecution, Lee and his family have settled in the United States, in New York. This is now his new home base where he directs this global movement. And the persecution becomes this huge galvanizing and organizing force. And at this point, Lee's teachings actually take on an apocalyptic tone. He starts to portray the situation as this existential battle between the Chinese government and Falun Gong. It becomes a fight for survival. So in part to draw global attention to the persecution and to continue to spread the religion, Lee and

his followers have this idea to put on a traveling show. And that's how in 2006, Shen Yun was born. Got it. So everything you just said really helps to explain the show and the framing around, as you described it, good versus evil and Falun Gong versus the Chinese Communist Party. But given that this show is essentially propaganda, it does sort of surprise me that it's gotten so ubiquitous that it has billboards literally all over the world. So how successful could the show actually be?

So this show has ended up becoming this huge moneymaker for Falun Gong. We are able to look at their tax records because it's registered as a nonprofit. And by the end of 2023, they have $266 million in assets. They're making tens of millions of dollars a year in ticket sales. And they're stockpiling assets at a rate that would be extraordinary for any type of performing arts company, let alone this nonprofit dance group. So how is this possible? How are they making so much money with this show?

It's possible because Lee has these legions of followers in countries all over the world who are devoted to him, devoted to this fight against the Chinese Communist Party, and are willing to make all of these sacrifices for him. But what our reporting uncovered was the extent of that sacrifice. Because the success of Shen Yun has also come at this extraordinary cost, and much of it has been at the expense of Li's most loyal followers who have sometimes dedicated their entire lives and livelihoods to carry out his vision. We'll be right back. So Nicole, your investigation pulls back the curtain on the inner workings of this show.

And what you found is a system that's far more complex and sounds like it exploits people in a way that might not be apparent at first blush. So walk us through how all of this works. So there are three main ways that Shen Yun is essentially built on the backs of its followers. One has to do with the performers in Shen Yun, the dancers and musicians. The second has to do with the Falun Gong followers who help to finance the shows. And the third way involves the Falun Gong practitioners who run and operate this sophisticated

media network to promote the show and also attack its critics. So let's start with the first piece that you outlined, the people who are actually performing in these shows. How do they fit in? So we interviewed dozens of dancers, musicians, and instructors who used to perform for Shen Yun or work for Shen Yun. And what we learned was that many of the performers in Shen Yun are brought to New York when they are as young as 11 years old. They come from all over the world, and they've typically grown up in Falun Gong households.

This is the religion that they practiced with their parents, and their parents were very eager to send them to Shen Yun because this dance group is seen as a holy honor for any practitioner to participate in. And the way they join this group is that they're brought to this enormous 400 acre compound called Dragon Springs, where Lee himself is based. And just to illustrate how they view him there, at Dragon Springs there is this giant golden Buddha statue. The face of this Buddha looks a lot like Lee.

Oh, wow. So it sounds like he's basically made himself into a god-like figure. Yeah, many Falun Gong practitioners see him as a living god. They want their kids to be close to Lee. And so these young performers end up living and training at Dragon Springs, sometimes well into their 20s. So what is daily life actually like for these young students who end up living at the compound? What we found in our interviews is that it was a very grueling environment, both physically and mentally. Many of them described often working or

training 15 hours a day, six days a week. They're essentially working a professional workload as students, but they're getting little to no pay. We spoke to a lot of people who said they weren't paid at all during their first year on tour. Their access to outside information is heavily controlled. Some students told us they got in trouble if they were caught watching unapproved movies or listening to music that was created after the year 1900.

Wow, okay. You're encouraged to inform on your classmates if you see them breaking the rules. And the rule breakers can actually face these public critique sessions in front of all of their peers. And one of the things we heard repeatedly from people is that they were discouraged from seeking medical help if they got injured, and this is tied to Lee's teachings. He says that negative karma causes illness, and that if you're a true believer, you can expel that from your body. So for example, we spoke to one dancer who said that right before a performance, she was practicing a flip and then dislocated her kneecap. One

of her classmates popped it back into place and she just performed through it for two hours in completely excruciating pain. But she was terrified to ask for medical treatment and she also didn't get any because if you do, you get shamed as someone who is not a devout Falun Gong practitioner. There was also this former violinist in Shen Yun's orchestra who told us that he started feeling these sharp pains in his shoulder. So he was brought to see Li, who touched his shoulder

and then told him he was healed. When the pain kept going, the violinist's classmates told him, that's because your faith is not strong enough. It wasn't until years later that he discovered the cause of the pain was actually a bulging disc in his spine. And this was a consistent theme that we heard from a lot of people. The conditions sound so extreme. Some of the injuries that you just described, having to dance through a busted knee cap. Why do people put up with this or why do their parents let them stay?

It has a lot to do with what Li was telling the performers about their duty to Shen Yun. We learned that Li was telling them the purpose of a Shen Yun show is not only to educate audiences, but to actually save them from the end times, this end times that is coming. The idea is that if audience members believe in Falun Gong's message, they'll be saved when the universe is destroyed. And some of the performers said they were told that any mistakes they made on stage could actually doom their audiences to hell.

So these young people aren't just performing, they actually believe they are responsible for people's salvation. Yes. One of the dancers we talked to said he had this attitude that if he did not do well as a Shen Yun performer, then the universe wouldn't be saved and it would be his fault. So this is the kind of pressure that a lot of these performers, many of whom are teenagers, are hearing. Another reason that many of them are terrified to leave is financial.

They get free tuition, free housing, free food. It's a full scholarship to a boarding school, essentially. And when they try to quit, many of them are told, if you leave, you're going to have to pay all of that back. Now, we did not actually hear from anyone that they tried to seek repayment, but the threat of it was enough to keep many of them there. So basically, all of these different incentives, all of these different pressures are allowing Lee to get cheap or free labor from these young people. Yes. And that's not the only way his followers are propping up the mission. They're also giving large amounts of their money to Lee's movement. So the way these Shen Yun shows work, they put on hundreds of shows a year during

their world tour. And there are a lot of costs to putting on a show, for example. The ads, the billboards, someone has to go out and print the flyers and put them up in storefronts. Someone has to pay for hotel rooms and meals for the performers. Someone has to book the venue. In each location, most of the costs for putting on that show are taken on by local followers of Falun Gong.

LWIPEC So the followers are actually putting up the money for the production costs of the show. STACEY Yes. And these are essentially unpaid volunteers who organized to put on Shen Yun shows. And if the shows do well, they get their money back, but any profit has to go back to Shen Yun. If the shows lose money, the followers are the ones responsible for making up that shortfall. So they're in a very vulnerable position. Right. We've also obtained internal messages to Falun Gong followers that say a show in this particular

city is not selling well, so you guys either need to work harder to sell tickets or you need to buy up some of them yourself. And Li has publicly said that ticket sales are a sign of your spiritual devotion. So many followers feel this urgent pressure to sell as many tickets as they can. And this helps explain why in your local city you might see so many ads for Shen Yun. And all of this helps explain why they could be so incredibly profitable. Right. But where is the money going? Like how is it being used? So we don't exactly know.

A lot of their financial records are opaque and we can't see where the money is going. But we did uncover the story of one Falun Gong follower that could offer us a clue. So there was this woman who was Shen Yun's bookkeeper. She was a very, very devoted practitioner. Both of her kids performed with Shen Yun. She spent most of her time at Dragon Springs working for Shen Yun and for the Li family. And around 2018, 2019, she was getting very sick. Because she was a diligent Falun Gong believer, she resisted seeing a doctor for a long time.

When she finally did, she found out that she had kidney cancer. But she told her kids that she wouldn't be able to pay for medical treatment because she had donated all of her money to Dragon Springs. And this was a huge shock to them. But after the bookkeeper died of cancer, a Shen Yun employee accidentally mailed the bookkeeper's credit card statement to her family. What they eventually saw in the statements

were tens of thousands of dollars in purchases of luxury goods from brand names like Hermes, Van Cleef, and Ferragamo. We've heard from many former performers that Lee's wife liked to dress well, she liked to wear luxury brands. The bookkeeper had also spent money on custom billiard cues, and we know that Lee loves to play pool.

So basically the assessment was that these purchases were likely for the Li family. What we found was that she was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for purchases that her family believed were for the Li family and for Shenyang. I see. Yes. We also found that she was paying for the monthly cell phone bills of Lee and his wife. And our reporting showed that some of the money was repaid to her family.

But because it was all part of this confidentiality agreement, we don't know a lot of the details. So the purchases, the fact that she didn't seek medical treatment, the fact that she didn't have money when she did seek medical treatment, it seems like this bookkeeper is emblematic of how much these followers are giving to Falun Gong, whether it's their money or their labor. And it also shows the extent to which this institution and maybe even the lifestyle of the Lee family is made possible by these sacrifices. I also want to come back to something you said earlier,

because you mentioned that even beyond all of that, there's actually a third piece of this puzzle. Right. That is their media arm, primarily a newspaper run by Falun Gong practitioners called the Epoch Times. I've heard of it, but tell us a little bit more about it. So this newspaper has been around since the persecution, it was initially started by Falun Gong followers in the year 2000 as a way to raise awareness about human rights abuses in China, including the persecution of Falun Gong.

And it specifically rose to prominence in the US after the 2016 presidential election by promoting right-wing conspiracy theories and also by embracing President Donald J. Trump as someone who supports the paper's opposition to the Chinese Communist Party. And in fact, Cash Patel, who was recently confirmed as Trump's FBI director, actually had a show with the Epoch Times in recent years, where he got a sit-down interview with Trump. But beyond their political coverage, what our investigation found was that they have also

published more than 17,000 articles about Shen Yun. Oh, wow. They're typically glowing audience testimonials after each show. We found that they have this special team of reporters that go to the shows who are almost always Falun Gong followers. They're often working all night, getting very little sleep, to get

these reviews published as quickly as possible. Do we know how influential they've actually been though? We don't exactly know how much influence this coverage has had. Like for example, we don't know how many ticket sales can be attributed to Epoch Times coverage. But this is some pretty unusual editorial treatment for a newspaper to give to a dance show. Right.

We actually obtained internal editing guides that said anything negative about Shen Yun could not be published. And Li himself has way more influence over the newspaper's operations than we realized. So for example, we found out about this meeting in 2023 where he gave direct editorial guidance to top Epoch Times editors. So it seems clear that even if we can't pinpoint exactly how influential the Epoch Times is in this larger ecosystem,

it is part of this huge network that you've helped to reveal in your reporting. And that network seems like at the center of it are these followers who in many cases have been quite mistreated. I'm curious about the response to that part of your reporting about that mistreatment. So since we've published our reporting, New York state regulators have been looking into Shen Yun for their labor practices. We also found out that there's a federal criminal investigation into Shen Yun, including into their finances.

And a former dancer has sued them and accused them of forced labor. And how has Li and Falun Gong responded to all of this? They've denied wrongdoing. They say that everything they're doing is legal. A major part of their response to our reporting is to say that our sources are Chinese spies, they're agents of the Chinese government. Their followers have relentlessly attacked the Times,

they've attacked me personally. Wow, during the course of your reporting. Yeah, they've even published false information about my family all over the internet, calling all of us agents of the Chinese government. So this is their playbook for responding to scrutiny or criticism. And you can often see a lot of these responses published in the Epoch Times as news articles. You know, I can't help but notice that there's a certain kind of irony here that this group that flees China because of persecution comes to the United States and kind of starts acting like a persecutor just in terms of what they're doing to crack down on dissent

and keep their followers in line. So that has been one of the themes that has really stuck with me throughout this reporting. It's something that's come up over and over again in our interviews with people who either personally survived the persecution in China or had family members go through it. They've come to the United States as refugees. They're seeking asylum. They want to be able to practice their religion freely and chase the American dream here. And many of them were so happy when they got into Shen Yun. And when they got to Dragon Springs, they just felt this overwhelming sense of relief.

So it was especially devastating once they actually saw how the group operated, that this thing that they had devoted their entire lives to turned out to be something completely different. Nicole, thank you so much. Thank you, Rachel. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. In the closely watched race for control of Wisconsin's state Supreme Court, the liberal

candidate has soundly defeated the conservative. It was a major victory for Democrats in an election that had become a referendum on President Trump and Elon Musk, who spent $25 million supporting the Republican-aligned candidate. Musk's interest in the race was so intense that he offered $100 to any registered voter who signed a petition related to the race, and then entered those voters into a lottery to win a check for $1 million. And tonight I rise with the intention of getting in some good trouble. I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate

for as long as I am physically able. I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis. And I believe that. On Tuesday night, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker broke the record for speaking on the Senate floor more than 25 hours without a break, during which he criticized the Trump administration for violating the Constitution

and disregarding the needs of everyday Americans. And so I've tried over the last 25 hours in one minute to center the conversation back on what will we do of good conscience. The marathon speech beat the record set in 1957 by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond when he tried to block passage of a civil rights bill. This is a moral moment. It's not left or right. It's right or wrong. It's getting good trouble.

My friend, Madam President, I yield the floor. Yeah! Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan with help from Diana Nguyen. It was edited by Liz O'Balin with help from Patricia Willans. Contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, Pat McCusker, Leah Shaw Demeron, and Alicia Beatoop, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Michael Rothfeld. That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.