“Virtually every theater that we go to all around the world since Shen Yun’s inception has either gotten a phone call or a letter from the Chinese embassy or the Chinese consulate putting pressure on them to not have us perform,” says Shen Yun Master of Ceremonies, Jared Madsen.
From blackmailing theaters and governments to slashing company bus tires, the Chinese communist regime has gone to extreme ends to subvert Shen Yun, a New York-based performing arts company.
Watch the clip:
As Shen Yun launches its 2024 world tour, I caught up with Mr. Madsen and Shen Yun conductor Ying Chen to learn a little more about their story, their mission, and how they’re defying the Chinese communist regime’s global censorship campaign.
🔴 WATCH the full episode (25 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0109shenyunJMYC
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Jared Madsen, Ying Chen, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Ying Chen: Thank you. It’s a great pleasure to be here.
Jared Madsen: Thanks for having us.
Mr. Jekielek: It’s amazing to be sitting with both of you again, because it was 2008 when you came with Shen Yun to Poland. I was involved in bringing you over for the first time. I remember the sold out shows and they had to create a standing-room-only area. I’ve wanted to invite you to talk about Shen Yun and some of the challenges and some of the amazing things that you’ve accomplished over the years. Jared, you’re the presenter. You come out as MC and explain the different pieces during the show. For those who might not be familiar with Shen Yun, let’s roll a quick video clip and then you can tell us about it.
Speaker 4: Before communism, China had a glorious past. What if you could bring it back? Since 2006, Shen Yun has been reviving the essence of Chinese civilization, deeply rooted in ancient values like compassion, honesty, and faith.
Mr. Jekielek: What did we just see there?
Mr. Madsen: This is classical Chinese dance. Shen Yun is considered the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company. We have eight troupes that tour the world simultaneously, going to over 150 cities a year. You can really see the essence of traditional Chinese culture within these dances. It brings to life on stage the history, beliefs, and spirituality that’s imbued in 5,000 years of Chinese culture.
Mr. Jekielek: Ying, you’re the conductor of the orchestra, and it’s a very unique sound. Please tell us about that.
Ms. Chen: You always have live music at our performances. We’re very proud of the orchestra that we have created. It’s a unique blend of traditional Chinese instruments and classical Western instruments like the typical strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. The result is a wonderful collection of colors that are surprising for a lot of our audience, but at the same time, very familiar because of the Western orchestration.
You can also hear these traditional Eastern melodies being played by the erhu and the pipa. The music is original and specifically created for each of the dances that are shown on stage. This orchestra is one of a kind, and I believe it’s the first one in the world to permanently incorporate traditional Chinese and Western instruments.
Mr. Jekielek: How does one become a conductor for this new approach?
Ms. Chen: My parents were both members of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra for about 30 years, so they are top level artists in China. They came to America and all of us joined Shen Yun at its inception in 2006. My father was actually the first conductor for the first orchestra that we formed for Shen Yun. As you know, we now have eight companies and each has its own orchestra. When the second orchestra was formed, I became the conductor of that orchestra, so I feel very honored to have joined this journey early on.
Mr. Jekielek: The art form of traditional Chinese dance almost went extinct, and Shen Yun has been revitalizing that. There are other companies that have tried to do the same, but what makes Shen Yun different?
Mr. Madsen: One really unique thing, especially from the inception of Shen Yun, is that we are not in China. We are not under the Chinese government’s thumb. A lot of artists who are in that environment realize very quickly that they just become a propaganda tool used by the communists in China. Here in the U.S., we don’t have that. Not only that, our whole goal is to revitalize traditional Chinese culture. Many artists from China came to understand, “This is great. This is perfect. I can actually express my art form. I can convey these 5,000 years of history without some sort of political agenda.”
Mr. Jekielek: Viewers of this show will understand that with communist regimes, absolutely everything falls into the service of the communist agenda. But why would this be a problem? It’s just a dance performance, so why would that interfere with the regime?
Mr. Madsen: In China, many of the companies there, if not all, are used in these various propaganda programs that praise the Communist Party. Whereas, the true art form is going to be praising the divine that is imbued in traditional Chinese culture. There are various philosophies and spiritual practices which permeate traditional Chinese culture. That runs exactly counter to communist theory which is also an atheist theory.
Basically, they are trying to remove the essence of the dance and make it a propaganda tool. Whereas, our goal is to show the real thing. We show that dance with all the spirituality that is in the 5,000 years of Chinese culture.”
Mr. Jekielek: Jared, you have been a student of China, Chinese history, and traditional Chinese medicine. Please tell us about your background.
Mr. Madsen: Ever since I was a kid, I was very interested in Chinese culture. After reading the Tao Te Ching, reading Lao Tzu, and then reading some Buddhist things, I became fascinated with traditional Chinese culture. I had the good fortune of right when I entered high school, a Chinese teacher came. I started learning Chinese in my high school in Iowa, which was unheard of. We were the only high school in Iowa that had a Chinese teacher.
After that, when I was 17-years-old, the School Year Abroad program started a China program. This was the very first time when high school students outside of China could go and study at a high school in China. After I graduated from high school, I just stayed there. In 1996, as I was studying Chinese medicine, and as I was looking into various types of practices, I came across Falun Gong.
At that time, it was not outlawed in China. In fact, just the opposite, it was praised. I remember being in university in China and watching the TV and seeing the news reports praising Falun Gong and praising its health benefits. I always had this very deep wish to take the essence of traditional Chinese culture and bring it to the West, because there is so much wisdom that can be found in Chinese culture.
In 1999, after I finished my university studies in China, I came back to the United States. Very soon after that, the persecution of Falun Gong began. I always had this dream of having Westerners experience traditional Chinese culture—and then came Shen Yun.
In 2007, I was fortunate enough to become an MC for Shen Yun. Honestly, it really was my dream come true. I get to go on stage every night in front of thousands of people and help the world understand that there are 5,000 years of this amazing culture. There is so much wisdom and so much to learn that no matter who you are, and no matter what culture you are from, you will definitely find many benefits from it.”
Mr. Jekielek: People familiar with Shen Yun might understand there is a deep connection between Shen Yun and Falun Gong. But for those that might not, Ying, please tell us about the connection.
Ms. Chen: In 2006, Shen Yun was created by artists who follow the spiritual practice of Falun Gong. For thousands of years, Chinese culture has been very spiritual and strongly influenced by Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. However, when the Communist Party took power in 1949, they started to eradicate all of these belief systems, so that they could instill Marxism into people’s minds. It really comes down to mind control.
For the last 70 years, they have changed textbooks. They basically try to brainwash people and reeducate our new generation without these traditional beliefs. Personally, I believe that is one reason why Falun Gong became so popular and was embraced by so many people in China in the 1990s. Aside from the health benefits, it really connects people back to their roots, because the spiritual element in Falun Gong is about self-improvement, and about believing that there is a higher power.
Human beings are not the only ones in control, so it really resonates with people’s hearts in China. The people who practice Falun Gong started to search for that route more and study it in order to reclaim this lost cultural heritage. That’s part of what Shen Yun is doing. We try to sift through things and get back what is our authentic, traditional heritage and share it with the world. We remind people of what our beliefs are, and that traditionally, people saw the harmony between heaven, earth, and humanity.
Mr. Madsen: Going to China and learning about traditional Chinese culture and being fascinated with it, when I came upon Falun Gong, it felt to me like it was the essence of traditional Chinese culture. It brought 5,000 years together into one practice. When Shen Yun was started by Falun Gong practitioners, it made perfect sense, because it is a practice that is trying to revitalize traditional culture. Of course, we’re going to have a show that brings the 5,000 years of culture to life on stage.
Mr. Jekielek: Shen Yun has been interfered with by the Chinese communist regime quite a bit over the years, and most recently in South Korea. Recently, we had a series of reports on that. Please tell us about how that happened and why.
Mr. Madsen: Virtually every theater that we go to all around the world since Shen Yun’s inception has either gotten a phone call or a letter from the Chinese embassy or the Chinese consulate putting pressure on them to not have us perform, sometimes dangling some economic benefits in front of them. Fortunately for us, virtually no theater has bowed to that. Right now, we’re experiencing some challenges in South Korea, and a couple other countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
One time during my tour I remember that we got up in the morning and somebody had slashed the bus tires and we noticed it. But they were slashed just deep enough so there was still air in the tires, but they would burst while we were driving.
Ms. Chen: That was one of the dancers’ buses, correct?
Mr. Madsen: It actually happened to multiple buses all around the same time, both the dancers’ buses and the trucks. From that point on, we had no other option but to have 24-hour security for our vehicles.
Mr. Jekielek: It’s a show. Why are they so threatened?
Ms. Chen: The arts in China have been heavily censored by the government. Basically, all the media in China is controlled by the government, so only the government gets to decide what you can say out in public. But here we have Shen Yun, made in the USA, which is outside the reach of the Communist Party, and we have refused to be subjugated to their rules and preferences. What we perform on stage reflects our divine culture, the very culture that they have worked so hard to eradicate over the last 70 some years.
Also, we expose human rights crimes still being perpetrated in China today as we speak, including forced organ harvesting, which is taking organs from live people in order to benefit from it economically. It’s something you cannot even imagine, but it has been happening in China. In fact, my brother was once incarcerated in a labor camp for 18 months in China. He went through some brutal torture there, and at the time we thought he would never make it out of there.
Thankfully, he did. But some of his friends were injected with drugs and went crazy as a result. Then the government said, “Look, this is what happens to people who practice Falun Gong. They’ve gone crazy by themselves.” Of course, people didn’t know that they were injected with drugs.
There are unspeakable crimes that you and I in this country just cannot possibly imagine that are happening over there. Think about it—how can people get an organ transplant just like that without getting on a waiting list? In China you can get an organ that matches your blood type right away.
Mr. Jekielek: The Epoch Times has reported on this horrific practice of forced organ harvesting. I call it the murder-for-organs industry in China.
Mr. Madsen: It’s hard to believe that it’s just these one or two pieces that the Chinese Communist Party is threatened by. I think they’re threatened by our whole program. We’re showing 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture and you see divine beings on stage. We have a digital backdrop where they seem to come out of the heavens and then come to life on stage. That runs exactly counter to communist principles and their atheist ideas. That is what threatens them the most.
Mr. Jekielek: We at The Epoch Times have been sponsors of Shen Yun for a very long time. We’ve been doing interviews with audience members and it’s astonishing what people say.
Speaker 5: Breathtaking. It is absolutely stunning.
Speaker 6: The ability of the show to transcend culture and bring light and love and happiness is just astounding.
Speaker 7: I think it’s magnificent. It’s magnificent to see another part of Chinese culture that a lot of people don’t get to see. And the stories are amazing. The execution and the dance is amazing.
Speaker 8: This experience for me is transcendent.
Speaker 9: I feel better about the world. I feel uplifted.
Speaker 10: You just cannot see this show and remain unchanged.
Speaker 11: I can say this as a priest, it’s a real spiritual experience.
Speaker 12: People nowadays go to the doctor and the psychiatrist for pills and antidepressants. This is the antidepressant. The best.
Speaker 13: Absolutely. Perfection.
Mr. Jekielek: One of the themes that has come out over the years is the unity of the dancers. People will say that they seem to move as one and there’s a flow that’s ineffable.
Ms. Chen: You probably don’t see that anywhere else, correct?
Mr. Jekielek: It’s incredibly unique. How do you achieve that?
Ms. Chen: Many of Shen Yun’s accomplishments are credited to the spiritual practice that we engage in. When I talk about our spiritual practice, it means trying to live by the principles of Zhen Shan Ren. Zhen is usually translated as being true or being genuine. Shan is being kind and compassionate. Ren is something quite profound and you need a collection of words to describe it. It is translated as tolerance or forbearance, but it also means self-discipline. It means being resilient in all kinds of different situations. It means having patience and being able to endure difficult challenges.
When we live by those principles, it really helps us stay composed and positive in all circumstances, and think about the benefits of teamwork. All of these principles play a big role in what we have accomplished.
Let me give you one example. At the end of every single performance, and this is the case with all eight companies of Shen Yun, at the end of every performance, we actually gather together and do a recap of the show, asking, “What went right? What went wrong? What could have been done better?” I’m talking about at both an individual level and at the group level.
People actually talk about, “I didn’t do so well here,” because self-reflection is part of the culture of how we do things at Shen Yun. We are always looking for ways to improve and do even better. Even when our audience thinks everything is perfect, we are still looking for ways to do things even better. When we strive for perfection in that way, it’s definitely a powerful thing that has helped us thrive and grow throughout the years.
Mr. Jekielek: How are these dancers trained?
Mr. Madsen: In the Hudson River Valley, we have this beautiful campus with the training facilities for Shen Yun. These are top-notch facilities and amazing dance studios.
Ms. Chen: We have a beautiful concert hall and we have two theaters.
Mr. Madsen: It’s an amazing concert hall. We have theaters where we can do rehearsals. We’re constantly learning from each other. One company will perform a rehearsal, and then all the other seven companies will watch and say, “Okay, I see what they did there.” We all bring it together.
Ms. Chen: We learn from each other.
Mr. Madsen: We learn from each other. Our campus also has a temple created in Tang Dynasty style and this whole area is called Dragon Springs. It gives you this feeling like you’ve gone back in time. For me anyway, it’s an amazing thing to have. It’s like a walk back in time.
Mr. Jekielek: Two things are coming through here. One of them is the incredible sense of serenity that the dancers and the musicians get to experience; one, when they’re starting to learn their craft, and two; when they’re actually professionals doing it and preparing for the season. How long does the season last?
Mr. Madsen: The tour season starts in mid-December, and then it will last until mid-May. We put on an all new performance every year. In the summer, the choreographers are working at creating new dances. The musicians and composers are working at creating new music. We have our costume department making beautiful costumes. We have a new backdrop, with the designers doing all of that. Fall is when we really start to seriously do our rehearsals and really get the show perfected for the tour.
Mr. Jekielek: The scale of this is absolutely astonishing—eight orchestras and eight dance companies.
Ms. Chen: All eight companies have a pretty full performance schedule.
Mr. Madsen: I wouldn’t be surprised if we grow past eight companies soon, because sometimes we can’t even keep up with the demand. There are certain theaters that will request a show and we have to say, “Sorry, we’re booked. All eight companies are booked this year.”
Mr. Jekielek: What are some of the challenges involved in making all this work?
Ms. Chen: The performance standards at Shen Yun are very, very high. You have to have a passion for excellence and strive for that all the time. Our spiritual practice definitely helps us stay on the right track, but everything is still challenging. It’s not just magical. You have to do the hard work. There has to be the heart to do it, and there has to be the dedication.
I believe we are creating something that’s truly special and unique and amazing. I feel so proud of what we have done in creating a performance that is world-class. It comes from heart, willpower, stamina, and dedication, all of that. It means continuous engagement and self-sacrifice, but it’s all worth it. That’s what it takes to create something amazing.
Mr. Jekielek: Jared, a final thought as we finish?
Mr. Madsen: One thing that really touches me is seeing the audience reaction after the show. Our bass player is in the orchestra pit, but he’s standing when he plays. He’s one of the only people who is playing that can see the audience, and he will see them when the curtain goes up. I don’t want to reveal what happens at the very beginning, but when the curtain goes up, he sees the look on people’s faces. He sometimes even sees tears in people’s eyes right when the curtain goes up. It’s an amazing, magical experience.
Seeing those looks on people’s faces really encourages me. It means that this show is going above and beyond a typical show, and that it is almost an otherworldly experience. We really are transporting people to these different times, up into heaven and down into history. That is what moves me and motivates me the most, seeing the look on people’s faces and seeing the interviews afterwards.
Mr. Jekielek: You are going to be at Lincoln Center in New York City, and at Kennedy Center in Washington DC. I tell people that when I attend the show, it gives me energy for a month, because it is so nourishing to the heart and soul.
Ms. Chen: That means our efforts are worth it.
Mr. Jekielek: Where else are you heading this year?
Mr. Madsen: All over the world. We’re going to Asia, Japan, Taiwan, and down to Australia. We‘ll definitely be in the U.S. We’ll be in Canada, South America, and all over Europe.
Mr. Jekielek: Jared Madsen, Chen Ying, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Ms. Chen: Thank you for having us.
Mr. Madsen: Thanks, Jan.
Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Ying Chen, Jared Madsen, and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.
🔴 WATCH the full episode (25 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S0109shenyunJMYC
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