Switzerland: An Overview of the Activities of Swiss Practitioners (Part 1)

In Switzerland, with a population of only 7.4 million, there are four official languages: German, French, Italian and Rhaeto-Rumantsch (Rumantsch). However, the language difference has not caused any problem for Swiss people when it comes to learning about Falun Gong. Falun Gong was first known in the French-speaking area and then the German-speaking area in Geneva. A Chinese doctor started to tell the people she had known after she had practised Falun Gong. Very soon, the number of Falun Gong practitioners in Geneva grew bigger and bigger by word of mouth, from heart to heart.

On May 13th, 2006, the Falun Gong Day celebrations were taking place, with performances by waist-drummers and recitals of music composed by practitioners echoing around the lake, the old town area and the busy financial street Bahnhofstrasse of Zurich, the largest city in Switzerland.

Talking about the spread of Falun Gong in Switzerland, there are some miraculous stories behind it. Mei comes from Europe and lived in Switzerland for 24 years up to 1997. One evening she suddenly dreamt of a Chinese man in a black Western-style suit and understood that he would protect her. Two weeks later a Chinese friend suggested that she should attend a Falun Gong class. When she was viewing the video at the first class, she found the man in her dream was Master Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong. Two months later after she began to practise, the symptoms of allergy she had suffered for 15 years disappeared without a trace.

There were a group of young people in Zurich who were keen on Chinese Kung Fu. Some of them had even gone to the Shaolin Temple in China to learn it. One day, their tutor of martial arts, a young man from Sweden, told them that he had read an advertisement about the free lectures on Falun Gong, which he would go and attend and anyone could go if one wanted to. So, this group of young people came to know Falun Gong together and started to practise from that time on. Among them there was a young man called Daniel who, having practiced Falun Gong for three months, extricated himself from his nine-year addiction to marijuana and has never touched tobacco of any kind ever since.