A Las Vegas business owner’s fourth visit to the show reflects a growing hunger for what Beijing erased
What Was There Before the Party Arrived
There was a China before the Chinese Communist Party. There were centuries of art, philosophy, poetry, architecture, spiritual practice, and cultural refinement that the party systematically attempted to destroy during the Cultural Revolution and has continued to suppress in subtler but persistent ways ever since. Shen Yun Performing Arts, founded in New York in 2006, exists to recover and celebrate what the CCP tried to erase. Its performers, dancers, musicians, and storytellers are heirs to a tradition that predates the People’s Republic by thousands of years, and their work carries a message that audiences across the free world are finding increasingly urgent: the China that Beijing presents to the world is not the only China. It is not even the real one.
A Business Owner Returns for the Fourth Time
Dani Kear, who runs a construction company, attended Shen Yun’s performance at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas on March 7, 2026. It was her fourth time seeing the company since it debuted. She described the experience as beautiful and culturally enlightening, and offered an observation that cuts to the heart of why this annual touring production draws sell-out crowds around the world and the ferocious opposition of the Chinese government. She said that Shen Yun presents something society is missing, a connection to values that are good and kind and gentle and pure, and that in a world increasingly dominated by self-interest and material accumulation, these values feel revolutionary. She also said directly that she appreciates the political honesty of the performance: she likes the truth of what is happening in China and the right of people to express their views.
What Shen Yun Actually Shows
The company’s productions move through thousands of years of Chinese civilization: the Tang dynasty’s golden age, the stories of heroic figures who embodied moral courage, the traditions of diverse ethnic groups whose cultures survive despite CCP pressure for homogenization, and the present-day persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners who are imprisoned, tortured, and killed for practicing a meditation discipline rooted in truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Falun Dafa, also called Falun Gong, had an estimated 70 million practitioners in China by the late 1990s, making it one of the country’s largest civil organizations. In 1999, the CCP launched a campaign of persecution against practitioners that continues to this day. The Amnesty International annual China report has documented the ongoing detention, torture, and forced organ harvesting targeting Falun Gong practitioners.
Why Beijing Fears a Dance Company
The Chinese government’s response to Shen Yun has been extraordinary in its intensity. Chinese consulates around the world have pressured theater venues to cancel performances, sent threatening letters to artistic directors, and attempted to intimidate presenters and audience members. This is the behavior of a government that regards a classical dance company performing in New York, London, and Sydney as a genuine threat. And the reason is not hard to understand. Shen Yun tells a story about China that the CCP cannot control: that there is a civilization deeper and more ancient than the party, that there is a spiritual and cultural tradition the party tried to destroy but could not eliminate, and that the millions of Chinese people who practice Falun Gong, who maintain religious faith, who value traditional culture, are not enemies of China but are among its most authentic representatives.
Culture as Resistance
The history of the 20th century shows that authoritarian regimes invest enormous energy in controlling culture because they understand that culture carries values, and values shape politics. The CCP’s Cultural Revolution was not merely a political purge. It was a deliberate attempt to destroy the cultural foundations from which independent thought might grow. Shen Yun’s existence is a form of cultural resistance, and the audiences who fill theaters to see it in cities across the democratic world are participating in something more than entertainment. They are keeping alive a memory and a vision of what China was and what it might again become. For Hong Kong, which has its own rich cultural traditions now under pressure from Beijing’s push for cultural homogenization, the Shen Yun model offers a reminder that culture can survive political suppression if people in the free world actively choose to support and preserve it. The Shen Yun Performing Arts story explains the company’s mission to revive five thousand years of divinely inspired Chinese culture. The Human Rights Watch Falun Gong documentation provides the human rights context for why this cultural mission carries political urgency. Art survives what armies cannot. And the story Shen Yun tells, of a civilization that is older and deeper than any party, is one the world needs to hear.
Sarah Lau
Culture, Media & Society Journalist, Apple Daily UK
Contact: sarah.lau@appledaily.uk
Sarah Lau is a culture, media, and society journalist whose reporting examines freedom of expression, media ecosystems, and cultural change within Chinese-speaking communities. She completed her journalism education at a prestigious Chinese-language journalism school, where she focused on media studies, reporting ethics, and cultural criticism.
Sarah has contributed to Apple Daily and other liberal Chinese magazines and newspapers, producing work on press freedom, artistic expression, digital culture, and social trends. Her reporting blends qualitative interviews with careful contextual research, ensuring her work is grounded in both lived experience and verifiable information.
She has extensive newsroom experience covering cultural issues during periods of political transition, giving her reporting experiential depth and historical awareness. Sarah is recognized for her careful language use, accurate representation of sources, and commitment to editorial integrity.
Her authority comes from sustained professional practice within reputable media organizations and consistent editorial oversight. She follows established correction and transparency standards, reinforcing reader trust.
At Apple Daily UK, Sarah Lau delivers culturally informed, fact-based journalism that upholds professional standards while documenting the evolving realities of Chinese and diaspora societies.
