July 10, 2025 • 25 mins
Since 2006, the mission of Shen Yun’s artists is to return the glory and beauty of China’s 5,000 years of divinely inspired culture to the world stage. Mission accomplished! It is now in its 18th year of a global tour. ·
Stunning· Uplifting· Amazingly divine· Therapy for the soul· An unforgettable night filled with great music and memories These are typical audience reactions after seeing the remarkable, annually changing theater production of Shen Yun. No one knows this better than Mark Alyn’s Late Night Health host’s guest, Leeshai Lemish, as he’s served as an emcee for this spectacular show since its inception, 18 years ago.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/late-night-health-radio--2804369/support.
Stunning· Uplifting· Amazingly divine· Therapy for the soul· An unforgettable night filled with great music and memories These are typical audience reactions after seeing the remarkable, annually changing theater production of Shen Yun. No one knows this better than Mark Alyn’s Late Night Health host’s guest, Leeshai Lemish, as he’s served as an emcee for this spectacular show since its inception, 18 years ago.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/late-night-health-radio--2804369/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
This is Late Night Health. This is the radio show
that cares about the most important part of your life,
your health. During the next hour, the Insane Derel Wayne
and I are going to talk about a couple of
things that I think are very important for us to
know about. During the second part of our show, we're
going to talk about lactose intolerance. I know that that's
(00:30):
an interesting kind of a thing. About sixty five percent
of the world's population cannot drink milk. We'll find out
more about that in about thirty minutes from now. Right now,
we're going to talk about an interesting thing. We're going
to talk about dance and human rights. We're going to
(00:54):
be talking about the Shen Young Performing Arts. You've seen
the posters, you've seen the commercials, and we're going to
be speaking with the MC who has been with the
company since the beginning. His name is Lee Chai. Lee.
Welcome to Late Night Health.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thank you great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
There's an interesting thing about the Shen Young performance and
what I get when I see the commercials is that
this was the performing Chinese performance prior to the Communists
(01:40):
taking over China, and it's been part of the Chinese
history for how long.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, we talked about Chinese history being five thousand years old,
and it's really the last century.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Or so then much of it has been destroyed.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
And so Shenyan's mission and the tagline, like you mentioned,
it's on billboards everywhere these days, is China before Communism,
to show what China was like for the vast majority
of its history. And because we're doing that, you can
only do this in the United States. You cannot do
this in China. You cannot bring back the traditions and
(02:19):
the culture that the current regime there tried to destroy
and continues to try to destroy for over seventy five years.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
So Senuna is based in New York.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
It was established in two thousand and six a couple
hours outside the city in the Hudson Valley there with
this explicit mission of bringing back the lost heritage of
the Chinese civilization.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And to do this through performing arts through.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Dance through classical Chinese dance specifically, is the main art
form through music with a live orchestra that combines classical
Western end Chinese instruments through authentic costumes that are true
to the traditions of the different dynasties different regions.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Different ethnic groups, legends, mythology.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And ethnic and folk dances, and instrumental solos and animated
back up.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
It's a whole big experience.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
So basically, as soon as you come into the theater
and the curtain comes up, you're instantly transported to another world,
another time, another place, And this is a world that
does not exist really anywhere else right now.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And you're the MCA. You guide the audience through.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, so when audience members come see the show, they
get a program that tells them what to expect and
what each dance is about.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But it's not one narrative.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I mean, there's definitely a theme that runs through it,
but it's not like one story like you might expect
in an.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Opera, let's say, or a Broadway musical.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It's about twenty different short vignettes, each with its own theme,
its own legend, its own story. So, for example, the
first piece is a creation legend about how Chinese civilization
came to be, starting high up in the heaven and
coming down to earth. And then we travel through different
dynasties and different ethnic groups, legends like the Monkey King,
and even have some pieces about what's happening in China.
(04:00):
And so as an MC, I just come on stage,
introduce an next piece, give a bit of background, and
then the dancers take over and they're really some of
the best in the world of what they do. So
it's a whole other dance system. Some people call it
Chinese ballet, but it's really something very very different. It's
got a history of thousands of years, it's very systematic,
very comprehensive in its training, and it's more kin perhaps
(04:21):
to kung fu the Chinese martial arts in a way.
It developed somewhat alongside there, like twins that went on
different career paths martial arts. If you use a specific
technique to dodge a spear, let's say, that same move
can become.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
A backflip in classical Chinese dance.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, you mentioned the monkey King, and we have a
monkey king here on Late Night Hell, and that's Darryl.
He is our monkey King.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I was wondering where you went.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Okay, yes, eating peachas I'm sure he's swinging.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
The The fact is that this all came about because
of the lack of human rights in China. Would that
be accurate?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, you could say that for sure.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
So to go back to our origin story of how
Shinyin came about, you really need to go back to
the nineties in China.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
So this is a time at the end of what
people call now.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
The Chigong boom, which took place in the late seventies
and eighties after a cultural evolution.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
There's not a lot of health care.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
There is definitely a vacuum of any kind of faith
or ideology after communism clearly failed.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Sixty to eighty million people died, and they didn't know
what to believe in, and.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
They didn't have any way to stay healthy or our
money to take care of themselves.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
And it is at this time that this.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Phenomena of chigong practice is the most popular one in
the West. Is tai Chi of course, really taking over
the parks at early morning across China, and so you
have millions of people estimates about one hundred million people
going to parks all over China practicing all kinds of
slow movement exercises. Some were Taoist in nature, some were
Buddhist in nature, different traditions. Some were ones that were
(06:09):
secretly passed on for many, many years. Others were kind
of concocted by people who wanted to make money off
of this. And at the end of this in the
early nineties, a man by name of the Hondur comes
over and says, let me actually tell you what chigo
is about. It is not just for healing and fitness.
It's really about a spiritual practice. It's a mind body
practice for moral elevation. And he introduces his practice called Followngong,
(06:33):
which then becomes very very popular. Follongong also known as
fallen Data, and it literally means the law wheel exercise,
and he teaches it for free, and he says, always
going to be free, and it's got three principles truthfulness, compassion,
and forbearance and five exercises.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And so very quickly a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Who are doing other chigong and others who maybe not
we're interested in this start practicing follow goong, and by
the late nineties, the Chinese government itself estimates there're seventy
to one hundred million people practicing following in China, and
many of them are government bureaucrats, Communist party members. It's like,
you know, you could be a Democrat do yoga and
the Republican du pilates, you know, they did not see
(07:14):
it as a conflict in terms of their life, and
they saw a lot of benefit health wise, family wise,
and so it was very popular. But then the Communist
Party leader at the time, Johnsmen, said, this is too
many people practicing this. It was more than the sixty
six million members of the Chinese Communist Party, and in
nineteen ninety nine said we have to ban this. And
in fact a lot of leaders in the Communist Party said, no,
(07:34):
this is what's the point. This is harmless, this is
actually helpful. We've even given it awards for being helpful.
He said, no, you have to ban it or it's
going to be the biggest embarrassment for Marxism and for
the Communist Party. This is what he said, and we'll
crush it in three months. And so they launched this
massive persecution campaign, a propagand the blitz, you know, just
or willion style thought control, re education camps, hundreds of
(07:58):
thousands of people sent to labor camps, prisons, tortured, killed
family members, then would go to petition where's our relatives?
They would then get arrested, and just kids taking out
of schools, people far from their jobs, people being forced
to divorce, just a whole the whole thing, and then
later on we start learning the actually people volown practitioners
as prisoners of conscience and attention.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
As you talk about being arrested, you're executive director's best
friends mom was arrested.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah, well we all know if you're in the following
bunge practice or community, which is part of my own
origin story of how I came to shiny In was
through this practice. You know many people who've been persecuted,
you know, people who've lost family members.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
In our company.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
We actually did a survey recently. We found that there
are ninety five members of our company. We're about seven
hundred performers. Let's say ninety five people had experienced persecution
or had a family member experienced persecution in China.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And these are people who actually made it out and
are in the United States.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
You can imagine in China, when you have one hundred
million people who are practicing something and you decide to
make them enemies of the state, You're going to alienate
hundreds of millions of people. Everybody's got family and friends
and colleagues and supporters, and that is really This campaign
took over the whole country and people were saying We
did not see anything like this since Maus cultural evolution
in the sixties, and it got to the point that
(09:21):
they started killing people for their organs, and this was
became big news in yeah, around two thousand and six,
two thousand and seven, and then.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
We had congressional.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Hearings about it and international tribunals, and later it spread
to they started doing this practice with the organ harvesting,
with wigers.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And shin jong as well. So it's a very big
human rights issue.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Lee, I think we're going to be taking a break.
Is that coming up now?
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Darryl in twenty eight seconds?
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Twenty seconds? Got it? So when we come back, let's
talk about the dance and how you got involved with this.
I'm Mark Gallon along with the Insane General Wayne. Be
sure to join us at Latenighthealth dot com. We will
have a link to the Shen Young Performing website there.
(10:14):
We'll be back as Late Night Help continues. Don't go
away more coming up. Late Night Help is proud of
our partnership with the EBC, the Evolutionary Business Council. Check
them out at Ebcouoncil dot com.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
You're listening to Late Night Health with Mark Allen, The
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Speaker 1 (14:12):
Late Night Health continues. I'm Mark Allen along with the
insane Daryl Wayne. We're talking about Chinese culture before the
communist era. Our guest is the MC of the Shows
and his name is Lee Shai. Lee. How did you
(14:33):
get involved? You've been involved since two thousand and six.
That's a long time.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
So if we go back to the origin story of
how Hinan performing arts came about, you really end up
looking at okay. Though in China in the early two thousands,
there was this massive persecution of following long practitioner and
I still practition is still happening today, and people outside
of China like myself who are practicing follow Gong said,
(15:00):
what can.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
We do about it? What can we do to help
these people who are.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Like us, normal citizens who just were on the wrong
side of the Chinese Communist Party one day and now
they're riding in a labor camp.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
What can we do? So we would do flyers, and
we would do parades.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
And rallies and you know, sit outside the Chinese consulate
in La and other places. And at some point there
were some people because people who practice following go and
came from all walks of life, and some of them
were top performers, dancers, choreographers, musician They said, how can
we use our skills to tell the story of what's
happening in China. And so in around two thousand and four,
(15:33):
actually cal State, La was the first time I performed.
They had a little production. They said, let's have a
dragon Boat Festival show and this will be something that
represents Chinese people better than the stuff that a Chinese
consult's always putting on. And that was very successful, and
the athe TEMC and imcid that show because I was
studying at Pomona College at the time, not too far away.
(15:54):
And then the next year, when I was studying for
my master's degree in London, they had a bigger production,
which was a New Year gala at Radio City Music
Hall in New York and they said, can you come
back and m see this show?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
And this was you know, seven thousand people in the audience, and.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
I said sure, and I mced three shows there and
it was a Chinese New Year celebration. It was a
lot of different performing arts styles. And so after that
that success that some of the same people who were
involved in those earlier productions said, let's do this for real.
Let's put together a company and start a tour and
really show the world a couple of different things. Show
them what traditional Chinese culture was really like before the
(16:32):
Communist Party and what the values were, what the stories are,
and let's show also what's happening to the people in
China who have no voice right now into the CCP
and give them a voice on stage.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And so they started chinying and then I tried out
and I got the gig in late two thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
And that first year we had just one company that
tour around the world.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
We went to a couple cities.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
In Europe, all over North America, and then Asia and Australia.
The next year we had a second group. More and
more young people wanted to dance, and we're established a
good foundation. They were able to train, and we start
a second group, and in the third group the next year, and.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now we have eight. We've been doing this for eighteen
nineteen years.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
And we should mention that the term company is a theatrical.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Term, right you would use troops perhaps, Yeah, eight troops,
eight troops.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Rather than a company like Walmart.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
So right, it's yeah, there's not separate LLC's for these. Yeah,
there's different.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Eight performance troops that do the same show but are
different performing members, and they tour around the world at
the same time. So I'm in Louisville right now. We
have another group that's in Taiwan, another one in Paris,
we got one in Argentina.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
You know, we're all over right now.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
And seven other mcs.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Seven other people who can ramble like I do. Yes, yes, all.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Right, gotcha? What led you to this? I mean, you're
I'm assuming you're not Chinese.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I'm not Chinese now the drop of Chinese blood. Actually baseball,
And so I was. I was playing baseball in southern California.
I played for a wooden bat league on a team
called the San Diego Barona Stars out there, and I
played a few different teams, and I was really interested
(18:22):
in the mental side of pitching. And this was in
the nineties where mental performance skills were not as big
a deal as they are now.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
There were just a.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Couple of books out there about it, and that led
me down this path because you know, like, what was
that Yogi Bear said, baseball is ninety.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Percent mental, the other half is physical, and.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
You know it doesn't matter, right who Michael Jordan, your
Tiger was your Greg Maddox? That was the guy was
swallowing a lot. Back in the day, they always talk
about the mental side of the game and how you
could even control the ball after it leaves your hand.
You can, you know, your your one thought of whether
you're going to succeed.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Or not can determine the outcome.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
And I really started seeing that in my own performance
on the on the field, and that got me into
the world of meditation, visualization, and eventually over to Eastern
philosophy and over to Taichi and then follow bone which
gave up.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
You gave up wanting to play for the Padres.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
It was more that the Padres and and the rest
of the baseball world gave up on me, being that
I was getting old and injured and it wasn't all
that good. I mean I was good enough to have
a dream about it.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, So when you're on stage, do you dance as well?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I do not dance.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Nobody wants to see me dance. I just introduced the
pieces A couple of jokes and get out of the way.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And the dancers I mean is saying the commercials. These
dancers are incredible with the acrobatic and gymnastic talents that
they have. Where do they come from?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
So yeah, classical Chinese dance is very very athletic, and
so I first asked your question where they come from,
and they want to say something about the whole acrobatics
and gymnastics element.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
That's an important point.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
So they are trained at two schools. One is a
high school called the Faetian Academy of the Arts. The
other one is a college called Faetian College, and these
are both on the same campus where Shinian Performing Arts
is in New York in the Rolling Hills of the.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Hudson Valley there.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And they are registered schools with the New York Coort
of Education and with the college case with the same
New England accreditation system that credits Harvard and Yale. And
they are independent schools and private schools. And the people
they have academics and they have the dance and music training.
They also have a music and that's where they do
their training. So people send their kids, I mean, there
(20:43):
are the kids I guess come over, you know, from
all over the world, and if they want to do this,
they they test. Some kids I know when they were young,
tried testing in several times and until they finally got
in it was a dream come true. And then they
spend their education years training at these schools and when
they're ready, they join the company and some of them
actually The one cool thing the schools have is called
(21:04):
the practicum program, which allows the performers to travel with
the company while they're still in school, kind of like
maybe an NCAA athlete would on their team. They're not
paid those performers, but they're fully scholarsshipped, if that's a verb.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
They have full scholarships worth about fifty.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Thousand dollars, including all their travel expenses, all their stipe,
and all their gear. All this stuff is covered and
they get experience with a world class performing arts company
and to see the world. They see more of the
world than most people have a lifetime over a couple
of years of tour. And when they graduate, they have
zero suon in debt and an inside track to join
(21:42):
the company and be fully salaries a degree they can
go in all the way to a master's degree. They
offer the college offers a master's degree and music and dance.
You know, they have to write a thesis, the whole thing,
all fully accredited, and that's not the majority of the performers,
but that's a path that they have. So there's been
some misunderstanding a bit about you know, how the old
(22:04):
the performers are, where they're coming from.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So that's the.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Story where some of the younger performers, the ones who
are still minors or in college, that's the path that
they take is through this practical program.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
So that's really really cool.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
I'm going to interrupt you because we're running out of
times lately, and why should Americans go and see this,
see the the the Shen Yung shows. We have all
this problem right now with China terror, all this political mumboo,
(22:37):
why should we go see and support it.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, so this is a contrast to what you see
in the news about China, and we are very much
on the same side and of being concerned.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Of the role that the Chinese comace parties playing in.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
The world in America through transnational repression, through the issue
we have with fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Through spies, through all these various issues that are that
go back really.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
To the Chinese Communist Party, not to mention the pandemic
we all experience, and so we U and Shanu and
our performers have experienced persecution firsthand in China, and what
we're showing on stage is an alternative is what China
was like before communism, what Chinese people really were like,
what their value systems were, and then we discover the
(23:21):
stories and legends, the ideas behind them. The virtues are couraged,
their loyalty, their integrity, faith, compassion, tolerance. These are things
that are not obviously just Chinese. They're universal, and we
realize we have so much more in common, and we
really see through that by seeing a China before communism,
we can envision the China without communism, and we really
(23:42):
see that the issue that we're facing in the US
as Americans and for the Chinese people really is the
Chinese Communist Party. It's latched onto this heritage, but beyond.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
All that, we are running out of time. If somebody
wants information about this, we encourage you to go to
Shen Yung dot com. That's Sachi hyu Win dot com,
s h e n hyu Win dot com. Lee look
forward to maybe seeing a performance when you come back.
I guess next year.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
We tour from December to May. It's great entertainment. I
look forward to seeing you out there.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Got it, look forward to it. Thank you very much.
I'm Mark Callon along with the Insane Daryl Wayne Don't
Go Away. More coming up.
This is Late Night Health. This is the radio show
that cares about the most important part of your life,
your health. During the next hour, the Insane Derel Wayne
and I are going to talk about a couple of
things that I think are very important for us to
know about. During the second part of our show, we're
going to talk about lactose intolerance. I know that that's
(00:30):
an interesting kind of a thing. About sixty five percent
of the world's population cannot drink milk. We'll find out
more about that in about thirty minutes from now. Right now,
we're going to talk about an interesting thing. We're going
to talk about dance and human rights. We're going to
(00:54):
be talking about the Shen Young Performing Arts. You've seen
the posters, you've seen the commercials, and we're going to
be speaking with the MC who has been with the
company since the beginning. His name is Lee Chai. Lee.
Welcome to Late Night Health.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thank you great to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
There's an interesting thing about the Shen Young performance and
what I get when I see the commercials is that
this was the performing Chinese performance prior to the Communists
(01:40):
taking over China, and it's been part of the Chinese
history for how long.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, we talked about Chinese history being five thousand years old,
and it's really the last century.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Or so then much of it has been destroyed.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
And so Shenyan's mission and the tagline, like you mentioned,
it's on billboards everywhere these days, is China before Communism,
to show what China was like for the vast majority
of its history. And because we're doing that, you can
only do this in the United States. You cannot do
this in China. You cannot bring back the traditions and
(02:19):
the culture that the current regime there tried to destroy
and continues to try to destroy for over seventy five years.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
So Senuna is based in New York.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
It was established in two thousand and six a couple
hours outside the city in the Hudson Valley there with
this explicit mission of bringing back the lost heritage of
the Chinese civilization.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
And to do this through performing arts through.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Dance through classical Chinese dance specifically, is the main art
form through music with a live orchestra that combines classical
Western end Chinese instruments through authentic costumes that are true
to the traditions of the different dynasties different regions.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Different ethnic groups, legends, mythology.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
And ethnic and folk dances, and instrumental solos and animated
back up.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
It's a whole big experience.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
So basically, as soon as you come into the theater
and the curtain comes up, you're instantly transported to another world,
another time, another place, And this is a world that
does not exist really anywhere else right now.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And you're the MCA. You guide the audience through.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah, so when audience members come see the show, they
get a program that tells them what to expect and
what each dance is about.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But it's not one narrative.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I mean, there's definitely a theme that runs through it,
but it's not like one story like you might expect
in an.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Opera, let's say, or a Broadway musical.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It's about twenty different short vignettes, each with its own theme,
its own legend, its own story. So, for example, the
first piece is a creation legend about how Chinese civilization
came to be, starting high up in the heaven and
coming down to earth. And then we travel through different
dynasties and different ethnic groups, legends like the Monkey King,
and even have some pieces about what's happening in China.
(04:00):
And so as an MC, I just come on stage,
introduce an next piece, give a bit of background, and
then the dancers take over and they're really some of
the best in the world of what they do. So
it's a whole other dance system. Some people call it
Chinese ballet, but it's really something very very different. It's
got a history of thousands of years, it's very systematic,
very comprehensive in its training, and it's more kin perhaps
(04:21):
to kung fu the Chinese martial arts in a way.
It developed somewhat alongside there, like twins that went on
different career paths martial arts. If you use a specific
technique to dodge a spear, let's say, that same move
can become.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
A backflip in classical Chinese dance.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah, you mentioned the monkey King, and we have a
monkey king here on Late Night Hell, and that's Darryl.
He is our monkey King.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I was wondering where you went.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Okay, yes, eating peachas I'm sure he's swinging.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
The The fact is that this all came about because
of the lack of human rights in China. Would that
be accurate?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, you could say that for sure.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
So to go back to our origin story of how
Shinyin came about, you really need to go back to
the nineties in China.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
So this is a time at the end of what
people call now.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
The Chigong boom, which took place in the late seventies
and eighties after a cultural evolution.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
There's not a lot of health care.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
There is definitely a vacuum of any kind of faith
or ideology after communism clearly failed.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Sixty to eighty million people died, and they didn't know
what to believe in, and.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
They didn't have any way to stay healthy or our
money to take care of themselves.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
And it is at this time that this.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Phenomena of chigong practice is the most popular one in
the West. Is tai Chi of course, really taking over
the parks at early morning across China, and so you
have millions of people estimates about one hundred million people
going to parks all over China practicing all kinds of
slow movement exercises. Some were Taoist in nature, some were
Buddhist in nature, different traditions. Some were ones that were
(06:09):
secretly passed on for many, many years. Others were kind
of concocted by people who wanted to make money off
of this. And at the end of this in the
early nineties, a man by name of the Hondur comes
over and says, let me actually tell you what chigo
is about. It is not just for healing and fitness.
It's really about a spiritual practice. It's a mind body
practice for moral elevation. And he introduces his practice called Followngong,
(06:33):
which then becomes very very popular. Follongong also known as
fallen Data, and it literally means the law wheel exercise,
and he teaches it for free, and he says, always
going to be free, and it's got three principles truthfulness, compassion,
and forbearance and five exercises.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
And so very quickly a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Who are doing other chigong and others who maybe not
we're interested in this start practicing follow goong, and by
the late nineties, the Chinese government itself estimates there're seventy
to one hundred million people practicing following in China, and
many of them are government bureaucrats, Communist party members. It's like,
you know, you could be a Democrat do yoga and
the Republican du pilates, you know, they did not see
(07:14):
it as a conflict in terms of their life, and
they saw a lot of benefit health wise, family wise,
and so it was very popular. But then the Communist
Party leader at the time, Johnsmen, said, this is too
many people practicing this. It was more than the sixty
six million members of the Chinese Communist Party, and in
nineteen ninety nine said we have to ban this. And
in fact a lot of leaders in the Communist Party said, no,
(07:34):
this is what's the point. This is harmless, this is
actually helpful. We've even given it awards for being helpful.
He said, no, you have to ban it or it's
going to be the biggest embarrassment for Marxism and for
the Communist Party. This is what he said, and we'll
crush it in three months. And so they launched this
massive persecution campaign, a propagand the blitz, you know, just
or willion style thought control, re education camps, hundreds of
(07:58):
thousands of people sent to labor camps, prisons, tortured, killed
family members, then would go to petition where's our relatives?
They would then get arrested, and just kids taking out
of schools, people far from their jobs, people being forced
to divorce, just a whole the whole thing, and then
later on we start learning the actually people volown practitioners
as prisoners of conscience and attention.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
As you talk about being arrested, you're executive director's best
friends mom was arrested.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah, well we all know if you're in the following
bunge practice or community, which is part of my own
origin story of how I came to shiny In was
through this practice. You know many people who've been persecuted,
you know, people who've lost family members.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
In our company.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
We actually did a survey recently. We found that there
are ninety five members of our company. We're about seven
hundred performers. Let's say ninety five people had experienced persecution
or had a family member experienced persecution in China.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
And these are people who actually made it out and
are in the United States.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
You can imagine in China, when you have one hundred
million people who are practicing something and you decide to
make them enemies of the state, You're going to alienate
hundreds of millions of people. Everybody's got family and friends
and colleagues and supporters, and that is really This campaign
took over the whole country and people were saying We
did not see anything like this since Maus cultural evolution
in the sixties, and it got to the point that
(09:21):
they started killing people for their organs, and this was
became big news in yeah, around two thousand and six,
two thousand and seven, and then.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
We had congressional.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Hearings about it and international tribunals, and later it spread
to they started doing this practice with the organ harvesting,
with wigers.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And shin jong as well. So it's a very big
human rights issue.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Lee, I think we're going to be taking a break.
Is that coming up now?
Speaker 4 (09:44):
Darryl in twenty eight seconds?
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Twenty seconds? Got it? So when we come back, let's
talk about the dance and how you got involved with this.
I'm Mark Gallon along with the Insane General Wayne. Be
sure to join us at Latenighthealth dot com. We will
have a link to the Shen Young Performing website there.
(10:14):
We'll be back as Late Night Help continues. Don't go
away more coming up. Late Night Help is proud of
our partnership with the EBC, the Evolutionary Business Council. Check
them out at Ebcouoncil dot com.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
You're listening to Late Night Health with Mark Allen, The
show continues in a moment.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
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Speaker 1 (14:12):
Late Night Health continues. I'm Mark Allen along with the
insane Daryl Wayne. We're talking about Chinese culture before the
communist era. Our guest is the MC of the Shows
and his name is Lee Shai. Lee. How did you
(14:33):
get involved? You've been involved since two thousand and six.
That's a long time.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
So if we go back to the origin story of
how Hinan performing arts came about, you really end up
looking at okay. Though in China in the early two thousands,
there was this massive persecution of following long practitioner and
I still practition is still happening today, and people outside
of China like myself who are practicing follow Gong said,
(15:00):
what can.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
We do about it? What can we do to help
these people who are.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Like us, normal citizens who just were on the wrong
side of the Chinese Communist Party one day and now
they're riding in a labor camp.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
What can we do? So we would do flyers, and
we would do parades.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
And rallies and you know, sit outside the Chinese consulate
in La and other places. And at some point there
were some people because people who practice following go and
came from all walks of life, and some of them
were top performers, dancers, choreographers, musician They said, how can
we use our skills to tell the story of what's
happening in China. And so in around two thousand and four,
(15:33):
actually cal State, La was the first time I performed.
They had a little production. They said, let's have a
dragon Boat Festival show and this will be something that
represents Chinese people better than the stuff that a Chinese
consult's always putting on. And that was very successful, and
the athe TEMC and imcid that show because I was
studying at Pomona College at the time, not too far away.
(15:54):
And then the next year, when I was studying for
my master's degree in London, they had a bigger production,
which was a New Year gala at Radio City Music
Hall in New York and they said, can you come
back and m see this show?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
And this was you know, seven thousand people in the audience, and.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
I said sure, and I mced three shows there and
it was a Chinese New Year celebration. It was a
lot of different performing arts styles. And so after that
that success that some of the same people who were
involved in those earlier productions said, let's do this for real.
Let's put together a company and start a tour and
really show the world a couple of different things. Show
them what traditional Chinese culture was really like before the
(16:32):
Communist Party and what the values were, what the stories are,
and let's show also what's happening to the people in
China who have no voice right now into the CCP
and give them a voice on stage.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
And so they started chinying and then I tried out
and I got the gig in late two thousand and six.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
And that first year we had just one company that
tour around the world.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
We went to a couple cities.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
In Europe, all over North America, and then Asia and Australia.
The next year we had a second group. More and
more young people wanted to dance, and we're established a
good foundation. They were able to train, and we start
a second group, and in the third group the next year, and.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now we have eight. We've been doing this for eighteen
nineteen years.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
And we should mention that the term company is a theatrical.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Term, right you would use troops perhaps, Yeah, eight troops,
eight troops.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Rather than a company like Walmart.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
So right, it's yeah, there's not separate LLC's for these. Yeah,
there's different.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Eight performance troops that do the same show but are
different performing members, and they tour around the world at
the same time. So I'm in Louisville right now. We
have another group that's in Taiwan, another one in Paris,
we got one in Argentina.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
You know, we're all over right now.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
And seven other mcs.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Seven other people who can ramble like I do. Yes, yes, all.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Right, gotcha? What led you to this? I mean, you're
I'm assuming you're not Chinese.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
I'm not Chinese now the drop of Chinese blood. Actually baseball,
And so I was. I was playing baseball in southern California.
I played for a wooden bat league on a team
called the San Diego Barona Stars out there, and I
played a few different teams, and I was really interested
(18:22):
in the mental side of pitching. And this was in
the nineties where mental performance skills were not as big
a deal as they are now.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
There were just a.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Couple of books out there about it, and that led
me down this path because you know, like, what was
that Yogi Bear said, baseball is ninety.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Percent mental, the other half is physical, and.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
You know it doesn't matter, right who Michael Jordan, your
Tiger was your Greg Maddox? That was the guy was
swallowing a lot. Back in the day, they always talk
about the mental side of the game and how you
could even control the ball after it leaves your hand.
You can, you know, your your one thought of whether
you're going to succeed.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Or not can determine the outcome.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
And I really started seeing that in my own performance
on the on the field, and that got me into
the world of meditation, visualization, and eventually over to Eastern
philosophy and over to Taichi and then follow bone which
gave up.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
You gave up wanting to play for the Padres.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
It was more that the Padres and and the rest
of the baseball world gave up on me, being that
I was getting old and injured and it wasn't all
that good. I mean I was good enough to have
a dream about it.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, So when you're on stage, do you dance as well?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I do not dance.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Nobody wants to see me dance. I just introduced the
pieces A couple of jokes and get out of the way.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And the dancers I mean is saying the commercials. These
dancers are incredible with the acrobatic and gymnastic talents that
they have. Where do they come from?
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
So yeah, classical Chinese dance is very very athletic, and
so I first asked your question where they come from,
and they want to say something about the whole acrobatics
and gymnastics element.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
That's an important point.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
So they are trained at two schools. One is a
high school called the Faetian Academy of the Arts. The
other one is a college called Faetian College, and these
are both on the same campus where Shinian Performing Arts
is in New York in the Rolling Hills of the.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Hudson Valley there.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
And they are registered schools with the New York Coort
of Education and with the college case with the same
New England accreditation system that credits Harvard and Yale. And
they are independent schools and private schools. And the people
they have academics and they have the dance and music training.
They also have a music and that's where they do
their training. So people send their kids, I mean, there
(20:43):
are the kids I guess come over, you know, from
all over the world, and if they want to do this,
they they test. Some kids I know when they were young,
tried testing in several times and until they finally got
in it was a dream come true. And then they
spend their education years training at these schools and when
they're ready, they join the company and some of them
actually The one cool thing the schools have is called
(21:04):
the practicum program, which allows the performers to travel with
the company while they're still in school, kind of like
maybe an NCAA athlete would on their team. They're not
paid those performers, but they're fully scholarsshipped, if that's a verb.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
They have full scholarships worth about fifty.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Thousand dollars, including all their travel expenses, all their stipe,
and all their gear. All this stuff is covered and
they get experience with a world class performing arts company
and to see the world. They see more of the
world than most people have a lifetime over a couple
of years of tour. And when they graduate, they have
zero suon in debt and an inside track to join
(21:42):
the company and be fully salaries a degree they can
go in all the way to a master's degree. They
offer the college offers a master's degree and music and dance.
You know, they have to write a thesis, the whole thing,
all fully accredited, and that's not the majority of the performers,
but that's a path that they have. So there's been
some misunderstanding a bit about you know, how the old
(22:04):
the performers are, where they're coming from.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So that's the.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Story where some of the younger performers, the ones who
are still minors or in college, that's the path that
they take is through this practical program.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
So that's really really cool.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
I'm going to interrupt you because we're running out of
times lately, and why should Americans go and see this,
see the the the Shen Yung shows. We have all
this problem right now with China terror, all this political mumboo,
(22:37):
why should we go see and support it.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, so this is a contrast to what you see
in the news about China, and we are very much
on the same side and of being concerned.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Of the role that the Chinese comace parties playing in.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
The world in America through transnational repression, through the issue
we have with fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Through spies, through all these various issues that are that
go back really.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
To the Chinese Communist Party, not to mention the pandemic
we all experience, and so we U and Shanu and
our performers have experienced persecution firsthand in China, and what
we're showing on stage is an alternative is what China
was like before communism, what Chinese people really were like,
what their value systems were, and then we discover the
(23:21):
stories and legends, the ideas behind them. The virtues are couraged,
their loyalty, their integrity, faith, compassion, tolerance. These are things
that are not obviously just Chinese. They're universal, and we
realize we have so much more in common, and we
really see through that by seeing a China before communism,
we can envision the China without communism, and we really
(23:42):
see that the issue that we're facing in the US
as Americans and for the Chinese people really is the
Chinese Communist Party. It's latched onto this heritage, but beyond.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
All that, we are running out of time. If somebody
wants information about this, we encourage you to go to
Shen Yung dot com. That's Sachi hyu Win dot com,
s h e n hyu Win dot com. Lee look
forward to maybe seeing a performance when you come back.
I guess next year.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
We tour from December to May. It's great entertainment. I
look forward to seeing you out there.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Got it, look forward to it. Thank you very much.
I'm Mark Callon along with the Insane Daryl Wayne Don't
Go Away. More coming up.
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