{"id":265,"date":"2016-05-26T18:47:09","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T18:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/?p=265"},"modified":"2017-02-15T20:42:17","modified_gmt":"2017-02-15T20:42:17","slug":"capitol-hill-panel-discussion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/2016\/05\/26\/capitol-hill-panel-discussion\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol Hill Panel Discussion"},"content":{"rendered":"
Two weeks after the conclusion of Shen Yun’s 2016 world tour, principal dancers Tony Xue and Rocky Liao, as well as myself, were invited to Washington, DC to speak at a panel marking 50 years since the start of the Cultural Revolution in China.<\/div>\n
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The panel, held on Capitol Hill, discussed how\u00c2\u00a0traditional Chinese culture has been destroyed, most notably during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), how this culture is now being revived by Shen Yun Performing Arts, and how this renaissance could only be started\u00c2\u00a0outside of mainland China.<\/div>\n
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\n<\/a>TV anchor Xiang Dong (right) moderated the panel.<\/div>\n
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Tony Xue (above) told of his journey to becoming a Shen Yun principal dancer and the fulfillment he has found reconnecting with his own heritage.<\/div>\n
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And Principal Dancer Rocky Liao (below) gave a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes trials and hardships of a professional dancer, what it takes to overcome them, and why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all worth it.<\/div>\n
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I gave a brief introduction to Shen Yun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history, the incident in South Korea last month, why the Chinese Communist Party fears Shen Yun, and how it hasn’t slowed down the company.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
My bottom line was that Shen Yun, and the revival of traditional culture, is\u00c2\u00a0not just Chinese issues. We are\u00c2\u00a0a U.S., New York-based company facing\u00c2\u00a0interference, harassment, intimidation, and direct sabotage from a foreign government and its secret operatives. It is happening in\u00c2\u00a0America, from big cities to small-town USA, and it is happening to us when we travel internationally as an American company overseas.<\/div>\n
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Shen Yun, as an ethnic-Chinese company based in New York, represents all that is wonderful and complex about the United States, and needs our protection and support.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks after the conclusion of Shen Yun’s 2016 world tour, principal dancers Tony Xue and Rocky Liao, as well as myself, were invited to Washington, DC to speak at a panel marking 50 years since the start of the Cultural Revolution in China. The panel, held on Capitol Hill, discussed how\u00c2\u00a0traditional Chinese culture has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leeshailemish.com\/on-shen-yun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}