UK: Falun Dafa At the Birmingham Arts Festival

Falun Dafa came to Birmingham ArtsFest 2002, the country's largest free arts festival, held on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th September. Local practitioners applied for permission to take part only a couple of days before the event. However when the organiser was told that Falun Dafa had won first prize in the Community section of the Edinburgh Cavalcade in the Edinburgh Festival only a few weeks before, she looked at reports of the Cavalcade in Scottish newspapers on the Internet and was impressed and so immediately gave permission. Her comment on photographs of Falun Dafa in the Cavalcade were that it "was stunning". She made a special effort to make a stall available for practitioners at the last moment.

Practitioners from all over UK set up a very attractive stall in a busy thoroughfare, playing a video of Teacher Li demonstrating the Falun Gong exercises. On the Saturday, the stall was so popular that practitioners distributed 4000 leaflets in a few short hours. Many English people wanted Falun Dafa newspapers keen to find out more about the practice and information about the local class.

On Sunday, the female practitioners were dressed in beautiful traditional Chinese costumes in red with gold embroidery, hair adorned with silk flowers, each holding two pink fans. The practitioners performed a Fan dance to the song of 'Falun Dafa Hao' music followed by a short demonstration and explanation commentary of the exercises, including young practitioners sitting in meditation at the front. The performances attracted a large audience at the main stage. The presenter said to the audience after the first performance that it was, "so peaceful. Falun Gong is superb!" Cameras were flashing throughout the performances; photographers from the Birmingham Evening Mail and a cameraman from the BBC asked the group to pose for them.

Before one of the performances, a young English man asked a practitioner if this was the same Falun Gong that was banned in China, and he could not believe that it could be banned. Another lady had seen Falun Dafa perform in the Edinburgh Cavalcade. A father and daughter from China had also seen us in the Cavalcade. They were in the UK for a month and were keen to buy the Falun Dafa music and wanted to come to the local Falun Gong class. The said they knew neighbours at work in China who had been persecuted and thefather had been to the police and told them that these practitioners were good people. Many Chinese people took photographs of practitioners performing the Fan Dance and exercises. One Chinese lady was very interested in the performance and asked about it.

At the stall many Chinese were willing to take VCD's clarifying the truth about Falun Dafa and the facts of the persecution and were even asking for them! This is in stark contrast to previous times when most Chinese people have been afraid to take Falun Dafa materials due to the intense negative propaganda they have been subjected to from the Chinese government's media. Even English people were asking for Chinese VCD's to take away. Many had already heard of the persecution in China.

This was a perfect event to show the beauty and serenity of Falun Dafa to the people of Birmingham.