[Minghui net] On January 5th , during the Chinese Lunar New Year, several hundred Chinese and Americans gathered in Seattle's Chinatown to attend the annual Chinese New Year Gala. With the friendly assistance from the sponsoring organization, local practitioners set up a Falun Dafa exhibition booth, which drew attention, understanding, and interest from the attendees.
Outside the gala hall and at the entrance, Dafa practitioners delivered New Year greetings to attendees and distributed introductory Falun Gong fliers as well as materials dealing with the illegal, brutal persecution of Falun Dafa practitioners in China. Upon seeing the Chinese or English characters of "Falun Gong", many Chinese and American attendees said: "Falun Gong! I know, I know. The suppression is so miserable. I'll read it carefully." A middle-aged Chinese lady sighed: "I know the facts of the persecution. It is so distressing. I understand and support you."
An American saw the photo of police trampling on a practitioner's head at Tiananmen Square. He pointed to the photo and said emotionally: "I saw it! I saw it! I went to Beijing recently. I saw scenes like this with my own eyes. The police even pulled a female practitioner's hair fiercely and dragged her by the hair to the police car." Another American told others that one of his friends recently visited Beijing for a sightseeing trip. At Tiananmen Square, he was unreasonably rebuffed by police, who demanded that he pack up his camera, not look around and leave the square immediately.
Some attendees showed a lot of interest in Falun Gong and wanted to learn the exercises. When they learned that there are free workshops in the libraries and that Teacher's works and the exercise tape can be downloaded for free from the Internet, they were very excited and said: "That's great!"
All the English and Chinese Falun Dafa fliers and newspapers that we prepared were quickly taken. A practitioner quickly made more copies in time to meet the needs of those kind-hearted people.
Falun Dafa Practitioners in the Pacific Northwest
