Germany: Falun Gong Practitioners Invited to Participate in the Hannover Festival (Photos)
(Clearwisdom.net) The Ferryman's Festival is a popular open-air
festival that takes place close to a small river. The organizer invited us to
participate when we met at one of our Falun Gong events because he noticed that
our demonstrations of paper Lotus Flower folding and Chinese calligraphy were
extremely popular. On both days of the festival, our yellow booth was a great
attraction, especially for children of various nationalities living in Germany
with their parents. While we were folding Lotus Flowers, we had lots of discussions about Falun
Gong and the persecution in China. One Turkish boy said that he had "never
heard anything quite that horrible" and asked: "Why aren't the
newspapers reporting this?" We demonstrated the five Falun Gong exercises right next to our booth. Some
of the children were mischievous and ran among the practitioners, pulling at
their clothes; when one of the practitioners told them to stop, they started to
ask questions. The practitioner told them that the exercises were meant to
strengthen and cleanse the body, to help us enter tranquility, and to improve
concentration even at school and during study. In addition, Falun Dafa is a good
practice, which deserves to be treated with respect, just as they like to be
treated with respect, too. They accepted this explanation and stopped their
mischief. A demonstration of Chinese calligraphy stimulated everyone's curiosity. There
were always were people lined up who wanted to receive a copy of their name in
beautiful lettering and who admiringly watched the Chinese practitioner who
calmly wielded the brush. One man had received his name last year and had
attached it carefully to the case containing his reading glasses, next to a
Falun Gong bookmark. Now he was bringing his wife and daughter to ask for their
names in calligraphy as well. When our Chinese fellow practitioner was taking a
little break, strolling around the festival area, he noticed that many people
already knew him and were smiling at him. Toward the end of the day, we managed to clear up a misunderstanding. One
very upset gentleman came by and accused us of thoughtlessly using the term
"labor camp". We had exhibited a poster where a practitioner is
sitting in meditation in the lotus position captioned "Imagine you could be
sent to a labor camp for doing this." The gentleman was Jewish and thought
that only Germany under National Socialism had labor camps and felt offended. We
told him the truth about China, explaining that Falun Gong practitioners are
unjustly being sent to labor camps and brutally tortured. He had never heard of
this before. We were able to tell many people the truth about the persecution of Falun
Gong in China during those two days. Some even wanted to learn the exercises and
we asked them to come to our weekly group practice. Originally published in German at: http://www.clearharmony.de/articles/200508/25637.html
Yearly Archive
Printer Version
feedback@clearwisdom.net