Shen Yun has high standards entirely as a result of the artistic director, Master Li Hongzhi, who is listed as D.F. in the program booklet, setting an example for anyone who sees the show to take his or her name lightly when achieving success. When anything is a success about the show, it is on account of Master Li directing the endeavor: designing costumes, composing music, and guiding the teachers of classical Chinese dance at Shen Yun. For everything after that, the conduct of the people who work in the show and on the campus is up to them, as they have been taught moral principles in the teachings of Falun Dafa. They have to be responsible to themselves. Something they never realize or concern themselves with is that Master Li is not their boss and will not step in to stop them if they start making problems for themselves. I can do it and I am the warning to them when they go off track, but if they don’t listen to me, there’s nothing I can do about it.

The dancers who work in the show are just that. No matter how many years they have lived near Dragon Springs nor how many times they have performed on stage, it isn’t a special designation in the practice of Falun Gong. They are not participants in the overarching planning of the show for its positive impact on the world, something exclusively possible by Master Li alone. Without Master Li, they would really come to nothing in the field of classical Chinese dance in the West, as they are not capable of introducing such a foreign art form to a culture that knows nothing about it. Important to note, they vary in their ability to discern the meaning of the show’s pieces, even as their dancing techniques are refined. That is to say, they can completely miss the point of the show while dancing technically very well on stage. Apart from the job that they have, there is nothing about them that elevates their status above other practitioners because a person’s status in the practice is a result of elevating his or her xinxing, and you can do that in any environment in ordinary human society.

Shen Yun is high brow, and being high brow it cannot be mingled with the low, degenerate trend of social media clickbait, which is a form of deception. To bait is to deceive, of course. As true practitioners, we do the exact opposite of deceiving a person and we strive to tell the truth (Zhen). This is not even getting into a topic that is difficult to explain to non-practitioners, that they shouldn’t even think of seeking fame on YouTube while working at Shen Yun while making the excuse that they are helping the outside world understand it. Shen Yun doesn’t need them to do that and Master Li can handle that just fine. The dancers in the self-appointed “3 Musketeers” are not regarded highly in terms of their adherence to the cultivation requirements of Falun Gong. Unfortunately this is also true for nearly anyone who lives and works at Dragon Springs. Dragon Springs is not the headquarters for the elite of the practice. It is the place where there are fine dancers, musicians, and other practitioners who, although they are excellent in their artistic fields, most often fall short of the requirements set for practitioners. They are average practitioners. It means they practice off and on. Sometimes they read the books and lectures and other times they don’t. Sometimes they’ll improve themselves in cultivation, but usually they are shallow about it and don’t try to find fault in themselves that much. After a period of time, they’ll forget what the requirements are, slack off in cultivation practice, and end up doing things that undermine the show despite its strict standards. But they’ll show up to events and proudly call themselves Falun Gongpractitioners just the same, and this is the problem that occurs, making dealing with them almost impossible for true cultivators like me. They don’t do what they are supposed to do but they outnumber the true cultivators 100:1. They are better than the everyday society in morality, but for these matters they cause troubles that are significant in their realm. As for true cultivation practice in Falun Dafa, they amount to zero, and might cause major ordeals by indulging their attachments to fame on social media. For Shen Yun to be as good as it is, the standard has to be higher than them.

A case example is “3 Musketeers,” three dancers in the show who are worried that the outside world will misunderstand them while they work at Dragon Springs, so they set up social meida. They cater to anyone’s criticism of them and rush to make videos that subtly address any that are ever made. If you say they are too strict with their diet, they’ll say, “Hey, here I am eating a pizza, something I do sometimes,” on their YouTube channel. Their channel has to be taken offline because it is trash. It is difficult to explain to outsiders how wrong it actually is and how I am aghast by it from time to time. This is lost on them, as they aren’t truly practicing Falun Gong, and they fight me. How can I say this? You can never put yourself in front of Shen Yun as an individual or group of individuals and start trying to represent it as PR on social media. That is a shocking outrage, but I can’t write about it like that because only Master Li will understand it at Dragon Springs (there are true cultivators in the world who know *exactly* what I am saying as soon as they see these dancers’ social media).

Recently (1/26/26), a “team” of practitioners at Dragon Springs invited CBS news to tour the campus– a news outlet that won’t even discuss the persecution of Falun Gong in mainland China, and like any other will certainly avoid it to please various interests in the world, including the CCP government. These are practitioners who are capable in their artistic fields, meet a standard of morality higher than the average everyday person, but they are also very problematic. They made an even bigger mess for themselves because now they have to defend themselves against a problem they created, which is inviting outsider news media to Dragon Springs and giving them multi-day tours. As naive as they come, they thought this would dispel any misunderstandings from outsiders, ignoring lessons throughout the lectures and books that some people in this world just have ill motives and they aren’t interested in the truth. They might just want to take advantage and pretend that getting to the bottom of things is what they are looking for. But, you know what? Master Li has teachings that prevent exactly this, and it includes telling practitioners not to showcase themselves online. As soon as these dancers put themselves online, it created a cycle in which the news media saw them as an emerging power base and wrote even more damaging articles, then the dancers and staff at Shen Yun came online in even greater numbers and started trying to circle the wagons with interviews and showing people their locker rooms. It has gotten extremely pathetic, but that is what these practitioners are outside of their skill on stage.