Belgium: Raising Awareness about Falun Gong at an International Folklore Festival

On August 9th and 10th, Falun Gong practitioners from Belgium held an activity at the International Folklore Festival in Edegem. The aim of this festival was to bring people from all over the world together for expressing their culture through music and dance. Countries that joined this festival included India, Mexico, Uzbekistan, Spain, Turkey, Senegal, Serbia, Zimbabwe and Brazil.

At the Falun Gong booth, people could receive information about Falun Gong and the persecution. People could also learn to make paper Lotus Flowers of Peace and listen to the story about Jane Dai and Fadu. Younger people very gladly wanted to make paper lotus flowers. Practitioners gave demonstrations of the Falun Gong exercises. Because visitors of this festival were very interested in music, dance and culture, this was a very good opportunity to promote Chinese Culture together with Falun Gong. Some people said that they went to the NTDTV Gala Spectacular last year and liked it very much. These people surely wanted to see the show this year again. There was also a man who told a practitioner that he missed the previous Gala and that he will try his best to come to the new show because he very much wants to see it.

The older man in the picture above (on the right) is an artist. He practises yoga because he has a need to find some rest. Falun Gong attracted him so he took diverse materials about Falun Gong with him. Because he is an artist, he said he would definitely visit the Falun Gong Art website.

The agent for the patients aid association ‘Red Cross’ organises activities in Antwerp every year. He was very interested in Falun Gong and asked us if we would be interested giving workshops to some groups of 12 persons.

Two women receive information about Falun Gong. The books of Falun Gong attracted one woman. She told us she surely was going to read the book on the website

A man and a woman from India who visited our booth were travelling around the world to sing. The thing that attracted them to our booth was the Swastika symbol which makes up Falun Dafa's 'Falun (Law Wheel)' symbol. They told a practitioner that in India, they saw the Swastika symbol as a source of strength and the representation of Lord Buddha. The Indian man was a Hindu. In India, these two people had five schools, named ‘Swastika’. They hadn’t heard about Falun Gong before, but were very interested and took a lot of material with them. They were astonished to see the Swastika symbol here.