Word: gongs
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...sense, Falun Gong followers in the U.S. are typical of their time and place. Like other Americans, they catch their religion, their health regime, their holistic exercise, their personal fulfillment--whatever Falun Gong may be--on the run. And Falun Gong is typical of modern America in another way: as soon as a new path to self-fulfillment opens up, it is crowded with a rainbow assortment of followers. In inner-city Washington, popular sessions with new practitioners are held each week in a house that stands in the shadow of the I-395 expressway. Out in genteel Manassas...
...short, it's not easy to generalize about Falun Gong's devotees in the U.S. Just when you think that they are all overeducated and prone to quirky intellectualizing (and many are), a practitioner with seriously calloused hands tells you he earns a living pressure-washing decks. Before discovering the texts of Falun Gong, he assures you, reading books was not his thing...
...practitioners all seem to share similar stories about the joy that Falun Gong has brought to their lives. Sure, some took up the exercises because they were convinced of Falun Gong's healing power, while others came to it as a natural progression from Tai Chi and yoga. Many, however, seem to agree with Gary Feuerberg, a statistician in the Federal Government, who says with a note of wonderment in his voice that Falun Gong "is very powerful and makes you a better person. It's about truth...
What about politics? This is Washington, after all. Each day Falun Gong followers--mostly ethnic Chinese--can be found protesting across from the Beijing government's embassy. "Before the crackdown [on Falun Gong in China]," says Feuerberg, "no one spoke about politics. There was no agenda. Yet those suffering in China are like 1st century Christian martyrs. We must stand by them while showing compassion to their oppressors." That's a very American approach. It wouldn't get you far in Beijing...
Chinese police call people like Liu Shujuan "die-hard elements." After the government banned Falun Gong, her spiritual practice, Liu traveled three times to the political heart of China to protest in Tiananmen Square. The last time, in November, she brought her four-year-old daughter and unfurled a yellow banner reading, "The Falun Law Is the Universal Law!" Police jailed Liu and threatened to dispatch her to one of China's labor camps. Her terrified parents begged her to disavow her beliefs. Her husband smacked her. At work, her boss threatened to fire her. Then someone brought her weeping...