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Showing Falun Gong’s flag of free choice
The New Zealand Herald, Aug. 17, 2002
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=2349841&thesection=news&thesubsection=general
By WARREN GAMBLE
Headlights in the pre-dawn dark of Auckland’s Great South Rd pick out a still figure on the footpath.
In a yellow, hooded raincoat and red trousers, Shelley Shao sits crosslegged on a thin cushion, eyes shut in meditation.
Metres away early commuters shoot by on the four-lane road, one of the city’s busiest. Behind, a chill breeze ruffles the red flag in the grounds of the Chinese consulate.
In a plastic bag in the gutter at Shelley Shao’s feet is a smaller flag. It has Chinese characters and the words Falun Dafa.
This has been the start to her day for the past year.
Shelley Shao has become a reluctant public face of Falun Dafa, known more commonly as Falun Gong, in New Zealand. Her profile has been heightened after recent brushes with the Chinese Embassy, notably Auckland Airport’s removal of a Falun Gong poster after an embassy complaint.
[...]
Supporters say it is a non-political, non-religious movement, practising the doctrine of its founder, a former Chinese grain store clerk, Li Hongzhi.
His teachings are drawn loosely from Buddhism and Taoism around three guiding principles of truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance.
For Shelley Shao, forbearance is two hours every day on the footpath outside the iron fence of the consulate. From 5.30 to 7.30 she goes through the cross-legged meditation and the four other slow motion exercises that form the physical side of Falun Gong.
[...]
“I know the Chinese Government has banned this and a lot of people, especially Kiwi people, they don’t know why. Every day I do these exercises, and I thought why not here where I can show people. It is slow, gentle, peaceful, it does not harm anyone. How will it harm the Government?” It is hard to imagine the small, calm 45-year-old as a threat. She came to New Zealand from a city in northeastern China, near the border with Korea, in 1998. Two holidaying friends had given her a good impression of the climate and the people.
She had hoped to continue working in the import-export industry, but within six months the Falun Gong ban meant she could not travel freely between here and her home.
She became a New Zealand citizen this year, has part-time translation work, and her teenage son is going to school in Auckland.
[...]
Shelley Shao estimates there are up to 200 Falun Gong practitioners in New Zealand. Anyone can join by learning the exercises in free classes or from the movement’s website – a key to its rapid spread – and by reading Li Hongzhi’s two books.
She says the attraction is simple. The exercises, resembling simplified t’ai chi moves, keep her healthy and energetic. Last year she was part of a group who walked from Auckland to Parliament, averaging 30km a day.
The element that distinguishes Falun Gong from t’ai chi and other variations of qidong, an ancient Chinese art of breathing control and exercise, is Li Hongzhi’s spiritual philosophies.
They are mainly concerned with achieving spiritual enlightenment through dedicated practice and high moral standards. However, some of his other beliefs are more extreme.
In a rare interview with Time magazine in 1999, the New York-based Li spoke of achieving supernormal powers as a spin-off from practising Falun Gong. He cited magician David Copperfield as an example of someone who could levitate. He also spoke of aliens on earth causing wars and conflict in preparation for replacing human beings.
Shelley Shao is sensitive about Western scepticism of supernormal abilities, an area she says is more readily embraced in China.
She believes they exist, not only as a potential byproduct of Falun Gong practice, but among ordinary people and clairvoyants and fortune tellers.
“I think many people have some idea about supernormal capability. Maybe they can only understand it in their own ways.”
She was not familiar with Li’s alien comments.
In essence she says Li Hongzhi’s teachings help achieve inner peace, remove negative thoughts and habits, and “make you think of others first instead of yourself”.
That, and her proficient English, explain her volunteering to lead the dispute last month over Auckland Airport’s removal of a Falun Gong poster.
During a television debate on the issue she remained composed as interviewer Paul Holmes and the Chinese Ambassador carried on an angry duel.
She cannot understand why the airport bowed to embassy pressure in a free country. She says another poster contract with a Christchurch bus company has been cancelled for no reason this month.
But she was heartened by the Speaker’s decision last week to allow a painting exhibition in the Beehive featuring the work of Falun Gong-inspired artist Zhang Cui-Ying despite an embassy complaint.
Shelley Shao says she does not understand how a peaceful movement can be regarded as a threat by the Chinese Government. It officially accuses Falun Gong as having “corrupted people’s minds, disrupted social order and sabotaged social stability”.
[...]
The repercussions have reached Shelley Shao’s own family. A letter she sent home with Falun Gong material was intercepted and her elderly parents had to go to the local police station.
“They were told they had to sign a form guaranteeing that I don’t mail Falun Gong information again.
“If they did not sign this they would be put in a detention centre for 15 days.”
Several New Zealand-based practitioners who returned to Beijing had been detained, she said, one alleging electric shocks.
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