Feedback from the Activities Held in New York

It was rather warm on the 22nd of December, but the weather quickly took a turn for the worse. It became windy and a light rain began to fall. Yesterday several fellow Falun Gong practitioners told me, “Many white-collared workers in Manhattan were more willing to accept our materials about Falun Gong from us during their lunch break today. The same is true with the Chinese people that we ran into.” So today I hurried to the torture exhibit on the Wall Street during my lunch break, hoping to capture some precious Kodak moments with my camera. But I was met with a drizzle that turned into a heavy rain that came and went. It was also very windy. The following photographs are what I have captured with my camera. From a distance, I saw an orderly line of Falun Gong practitioners in yellow rain-gear, braving the rain and strong wind.

While sending forth righteous thoughts with his eyes closed, a Falun Gong practitioner heard a well-dressed man say to his colleague, “They are persevering in their cause.”

People were more reluctant to take our flyers or newspapers in the rain, but the torture exhibit in the rain motivated people to notice and discuss Falun Gong’s cause.

A well-dressed man in his 50’s smiled and took out a copy of Falun Gong flyer from his pocket, indicating that he had already received a flyer.

A tall African-American gentleman gave me a sign of victory with his fingers.

A Falun Gong practitioner told me, “A Caucasian woman cried when she saw the torture exhibit. She sat with the practitioner acting as a victim suffering from the ‘Tiger Bench’ torture, and asked her husband to take a photograph for her.”

Yesterday a student from an art academy came to our torture exhibit and sketched the Falun Gong practitioners doing the torture enactments. He said that he would publish the finished work online at multiple websites.

I left the Wall Street display for another location of the torture exhibition on the 42nd Street. The afternoon rush hour had just begun when I arrived at the location. I stood at a spot where many people passed by on their way home. That spot was also a natural conductor of sound because its shape resembles that of the stage at an opera house. The shape of an excellent opera house usually resembles the shape of a mouth. For the best effect you want to find a place with a wall behind you that slopes slightly downwards. When you stand in front of the wall, your voice will be naturally amplified and will travel a long distance. Even people walking briskly by can hear you very clearly. I talked about Falun Gong while trying to pass out flyers. Many people heard what I was saying.

About an hour later, I saw one of the passersby walking towards my direction with a copy of a newspaper containing factual information about Falun Gong in his hand. Looking in his direction, I found a Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioner distributing the newspapers on the street. The Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioner said, “This Monday was unusually cold. We hosted the torture exhibition as usual on that day. Today it is raining, but we continued to hold the torture exhibition despite of the rain. On both days many people stopped to sign our petition that calls for an end to the persecution. On a slow day, we usually get 150 to 180 signatures on the petition. On a good day, we get more than 300 signatures on the petition.” I was astonished to hear that. The foot traffic on 42nd Street is a lot less than that on Wall Street. I was surprised to learn that we are getting almost just as many signatures on 42nd Street as we do on Wall Street.

The Taiwanese Falun Gong practitioner told me that she is a schoolteacher in her sixties, but when I looked at her she looked like a young woman in her thirties. In Manhattan, she has run into many young people from Mainland China, several Chinese journalists from the Xinhua News Agency, and journalists from various western media outlets. Through her truth-clarifying efforts, she has changed many people’s misunderstanding and hostility toward Falun Gong into approval and even admiration. She even met several secret agents from Mainland China who were rude and sarcastic when they first met. But after she spoke to them about Falun Gong, when they ran into each other a week later, they told her that Falun Gong is good after all. She said, “An increasing number of Caucasian people are requesting our English Falun Gong DVD's. Some of them who took the DVD's came back the next day to tell us, ‘Falun Dafa is good.’ A Chinese manager in his sixties told me, ‘My friends and I have tried very hard to collect all nine articles from the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party, but so far we’ve only found five of them.’ He said it was wonderfully written. A week later he got all the nine articles from the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party as he had wished.”

When I returned to my temporary residence in New York City around 8 PM., four European Falun Gong practitioners were studying the Falun Gong teachings together there. Because of the winter vacation, three Swedish Falun Gong practitioners were able to make a trip to New York before Christmas. There are a lot of college students from around the world at each torture exhibition location in Manhattan. Before their arrival, people had problems communicating with elderly Falun Gong practitioners who spoke no or little English when they approached elderly practitioners for questions about Falun Gong. Now that many college students have come to Manhattan for the holidays, they become a strong addition to our activities taking place in Manhattan.

Last Thursday, on the 24th of December, someone broke into the car of a Falun Gong practitioner from DC. The perpetrator left everything else inside the car and stole the costumes for the torture exhibit (policemen’s uniforms and victims’ outfits with imitation blood stains), the makeup box, the stereo amplifier and the portable batteries for playing the factual videos about Falun Gong on a computer monitor. Yet Falun Gong practitioners from Washington, DC have continued with their torture exhibition every day, completely impervious to the thuggish attack. Just two months ago, a man who is probably one of Jiang Zemin’s henchmen paid a Caucasian homeless man to physically hit and spit on Falun Gong practitioners in Manhattan. Why did they decide to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in the first place if they are so afraid of overseas Falun Gong practitioners revealing their crimes in Manhattan via the torture exhibitions?