UK: Chinese New Year in the North of England

On the evening of the Chinese New Year on February 1 2003, York University’s Chinese students held a New Year party on the campus. Since there were some 300 Chinese attending the gathering, Dafa practitioners regarded it as a precious opportunity to reveal the facts behind the persecution. They thus decided to distribute truth-clarifying Video-CDs after the party was over. The overwhelming majority of the Chinese students accepted the VCD on their way out. We finished distributing over one hundred VCDs in a short period of time. Some of them queried the content of the VCD. Practitioners replied that they were about Falun Gong and the VCDs were happily accepted.

On February 2 2003, there was a celebration in the Chinatown district of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a big city in northern England. To help more kind-hearted people realise the truth about the persecution of Falun Gong, some practitioners from northern England and Scotland went to Newcastle to talk with local people together with local practitioners.

Since our practitioners did not apply for a booth in time, they unfurled a banner reading “Falun Dafa is Good” on one of the main streets in Chinatown. Several practitioners demonstrated the exercises around the banner, while some others stood on the bustling streets, distributing Falun Gong leaflets and VCDs. When they started practising the exercises along with the music, the strong righteous field attracted the attention of many ethnic Chinese and westerners immediately. They stood in front of the practitioners who were practising the exercises; in the meantime, they asked the practitioners who were distributing the materials for further information about Falun Dafa. Furthermore, some westerners were very interested in Falun Gong, and asked for information about the location of exercise sites. At one point, several Chinese children were competing for the materials until every one of them had got one. The atmosphere was really harmonious. Because there were quite a few westerners visiting Chinatown, we ran out of English flyers before the activity was over. Through this activity, practitioners realised that most people, Chinese and westerners alike, are happy to accept materials that reveal the facts about the persecution. With smiling faces practitioners handed out materials to kind-hearted people along with their best wishes: “Thank you” and “Happy New Year.”

Chinese version available at
http://www.yuanming.net/articles/200302/17005.html