United States: Falun Gong Invited to Pennsylvania's "Community Appreciation Day"

To improve the understanding, unite different races, and solve current issues, Pennsylvania state Representative Ronald Waters has organised "Community Appreciation Day" consecutively for five years. On August 9 of this year, the "Community Appreciation Day" for the first time had an Asian team participate that brought many bright colours to the event.

Accompanied by drums and songs, the parade, composed of cultures from East and West walked on the woodland parkway of west Philadelphia. The residents came out from their houses to watch along the streets. After the parade, there were performances and games at Penn's Landing Square.

Fan dance	Waist Drum

Young practitioner meditating

Representative Waters said that the purpose of the event was to make the community more peaceful and raise the quality of life for everyone.

Falun Gong practitioners were the first group to perform on the stage. They presented an exercise demonstrations, fan dance and waist drum dance. The audience gave them warm applause and cheers.

One teenager said, "It is great. Very beautiful! I like new things. The Falun Gong performance was my favourite. I especially liked the fan dance and the meditation."

One lady watched the demonstration of all five sets of exercises and followed the movements of the practitioners. She was excited and said, "I am thinking of learning these exercises so I can practise at home."

One elderly gentleman said, "I want to see them again next year. They are great!"

Representative Waters said, "It is my honor to have Falun Gong in this parade. At Philadelphia's mutual culture parade in June, I saw their beautiful costumes and performances. I was the Ceremony Official that time. We never have had an Asian group in our parade before. I would like to see them in our other activities.

"I heard about Falun Gong a long time ago. The newspapers reported that many people were arrested and jailed." He continued, "We must look at the facts and not the one-sided story from the Chinese government. We should spend some time to explore the truth and not let ourselves be interfered with by wrong and misleading information. Falun Gong practitioners did nothing wrong.

"Recently, Representative Mike Hose initiated a resolution condemning the Chinese government's persecution of Falun Gong. I proudly joined other representatives to support the resolution. In Philadelphia, there are many residents from Asia. I am willing to do something to solve the problems for them."