Germany: People at Lunen City Festival Deeply Attracted to the Principles of “Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance”

On September 9th, 10th and 11th, 2005, in the old industrial area of the Ruhr, Germany, the annual Lunen City Festival was held. During this year’s festival, apart from greetings to French, Bulgarian and other minority groups who live in Germany, it was also the first time for them to see a Falun Gong stall and practitioners' performances.

Exercise demonstration

Display boards showed magnificent scenes of Falun Gong's journey as it spread all over the world. There were pictures of Master Li Hongzhi himself demonstrating the exercises. Also, annotations to the historical origin of the Srivatsa symbol were also prepared. (Because of World War Two, it is very easy for many Germans to misunderstand the true meaning of the Srivatsa symbol on the Falun (Law Wheel)) Furthermore, handmade paper Lotus Flowers, bookmarks, practitioners' exercise demonstrations in traditional Chinese costume were also very eye-catching as there was a continuous stream of visitors who would stop to watch us.

People are very interested in Falun Gong

Four Falun Gong practitioners performed traditional-style lotus dancing on the stage. Later, they also demonstrated the exercises with a German practitioner explaining simultaneously. The audience gave them warm applause.

In front of the stage, there was an Asian looking couple who took their young daughter to watch the performance. They were from Vietnam. The interesting thing was that the little girl who was about eight or nine years old wouldn’t go home with her parents. She followed our practitioners to our stall and carefully read all the information boards, material and watched the exercise demonstration. Some time after she left, she came back again with some friends who all wanted to learn the exercises. When they saw our practitioners were folding the paper Lotus Flowers, they all came over and learned how to do it as well.

A little Vietnamese girl learns the exercises	She brings her friends over to learn too

There were so many people who came to our stall to find out more about Falun Gong. Our practitioners were extremely busy; they hardly had any time to have a break! Many people expressed their willingness to learn the exercises. Some of them had never ever encountered qigong; however, they were deeply attracted to the words “Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance”. On the other hand, some people had learnt some other kinds of qigong, yoga or martial arts before but they still took great interest in Falun Gong.

The sky was getting darker and darker, but it did not stop people coming around to see the information boards and watch the exercise demonstration. The peaceful music reverberated in the pleasant twilight of the evening with infinite compassion.