Falun Dafa Display during the 2002 Commonwealth Games

This summer the 2002 Commonwealth Games are being hosted in Manchester, in the North West of England. The Commonwealth Games are held every four years in different nations around the world and are a sporting competition second in stature only to the Olympics. Seventy-two nations across the globe make up the Commonwealth and each has representatives in Manchester at the moment taking part in this important sporting event. One million people have travelled to Manchester for the Commonwealth Games, and Falun Gong practitioners saw this as a good opportunity to tell them about the practice of Falun Dafa.

In conjunction with the Commonwealth Games is the Spirit of Friendship Festival, which is a festival of art and culture. In order to participate in the friendly spirit of the Games, Falun Gong practitioners organized an exhibition of traditional Chinese paintings by the artist Zhang Cuiying (see the artist’s website - www.zhangcuiying.org). Falun Gong practitioners also decided that the best way to display the spirit of friendship in Manchester was to parade throughout the city and tell people about the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance.

Because Manchester’s council and police were very busy preparing for the Games they couldn’t formally arrange permission or designate a specific route for practitioners to parade through Manchester. Although initially we thought this was a problem, in the end we found that it gave us complete freedom to travel through Manchester. We visited various public spaces in the city centre. The weather was fantastic, with clear skies and bright sunshine. With all the visitors coming over to see the games Manchester was very busy. There was a festival feeling to the city and the atmosphere was very relaxed and friendly.

Most of the female practitioners and children dressed in very beautiful traditional Chinese suits in red with decorative golden stitching. They performed “fan dancing” with large decorative pink fans, accompanied by the music “Falun Dafa is Good”. Some of the men wore traditional Chinese suits in either white or gold and held large banners. The banners all carried a very friendly message such as “In the Spirit of Friendship Falun Gong Welcomes the Commonwealth Games 2002”. Other people wore bright yellow Falun Dafa T-shirts and handed out flyers and VCD’s (video on compact disc).

Since the performance was so bright, colourful and pretty many people enjoyed watching us and almost everyone wanted flyers. People smiled as we passed by. Many people agreed with the words on one of the banners, which read, “The World Needs Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance”.

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