Shen Yun - I think I gave my money to a cult

For those of you who have seen the billboards for this show year after year, you are probably wondering why I’m posting this in Political Talk.

For those unfamiliar with Shen Yun, it is advertised as a live show with music, dance, and imagery that tells the story of 5,000 years of Chinese history and culture.



My wife digs performing arts, so I bought us tickets to Shen Yun as a Christmas present. We’d seen the flyers and billboards for years and it sounds like it’d be an ok time. These guys are masters at marketing, let me put it that way. Once the show was over, both of our reactions to it were “what the hell was that?”

I’m not going to go into a review of the performances themselves. Wrong board for that. It was some weird stuff that lacked on so many levels, but after doing some reflection and then reading some reviews, I think we attended a fundraiser for the Chinese equivalent of Scientology.

Throughout the show, they kept intertwining messages about Falun Dafa, which they don’t really explain what it is. But they say Falun Dafa is good and that the Communist Chinese government has banned it and persecuted it’s followers. Ok. I don’t like Communism, so sounds good to me. But then it gets heavier and heavier throughout the show.

There are 2 Chinese opera songs sung during the show. There’s no doubt why that craft hasn’t taken off. But I digress. They had a video board displayed that translated all of the lyrics and it was some strange stuff. Stuff about going back to the past. Evolution is bad. The Creator is coming and will punish the wicked.

Before I get into TLDR territory, the final scene was The Creator arriving in Shangai, and creating a meteor shower and tidal wave to destroy the city and take all Falun Dafa followers to heaven. Like I said, it was some very strange stuff and the show was in no way advertised as anything having to do with their religion. We got anything but a showcase of 5,000 years of Chinese Culture.

Shen Yun Yelp Reviews

Like I said, I checked out some reviews, which are VERY hard to find on Shen Yun. I also did some further research on Falun Dafa. Apparently in the early 90’s, someone took the teachings of it and made it an organized religion called Falun Gong. China said “nuh uh” and banned it completely. Judging by the many comments, the misdirect, heavy propaganda, and many other things I read, I think they might be a cult.