Australia: Practitioners from Queensland Celebrated the Chinese New Year on the Gold Coast

One day in early February, Falun Gong practitioners from southeast Queensland, Australia held a one-day event with festive song and dance at the Oasis Mall at Broad Beach to publicly celebrate the Chinese New Year. The Oasis Mall is a local tourist attraction. There were many tourists from other parts of Australia as well as from different countries, including China, in the crowds. In fact, tourists from China often dine in the Chinese restaurants across the street.

Demonstrating the Falun Gong exercises	Fan Dance

Radiant Tang Dynasty costumes.

To attract as much attention as possible, we built a replica of a boat on the stage as our centrepiece. To the sides and front were photo exhibits and information tables. All of the performances had the boat as their background, which was very effective.

During the day, from 11:00am to 4:00pm, we gave many performances. We demonstrated the exercises, performed a fan dance and held a Tang Dynasty style fashion show. The performances attracted a lot of attention and a quite number of people sat down to watch and ask questions. Many others, including some of the Chinese tourists having lunch across the street, visited the information booths and left with truth-clarification information. They took many photos and videotaped the scene so that they could share what they heard and saw back home with others when they go back to China.

Practitioners felt that this was an effective way to showcase the goodness of Dafa to the public and to explain facts about the Jiang regime's persecution of Falun Gong.