A team of reporters from The Epoch Times attended four sold-out shows of the Chinese Spectacular —a show sponsored by this newspaper—at the Royal Festival Hall at the weekend.
I am sure each of us could have written a glowing review if we'd chosen to. But we didn't. Instead, we asked the audience what they thought and featured their reactions in our stories. You can find those stories, based on interviews with more than 200 audience members, on our website .
Sarah Crompton, of the Daily Telegraph, took a different approach. She reviewed the show. Ms. Crompton also incorporated a few of her perspectives on how the audience responded.
Which leaves us now scratching our heads, wondering if Ms. Crompton went to a different show from the one we—or the vast majority of those we interviewed—attended.
Nearly everyone we spoke with described what he or she found to be a "wonderful" or "fantastic" display of traditional Chinese culture. The response was the same regardless of whether the person was of Chinese ancestry, British, or otherwise. In fact, many were falling over themselves to describe the beauty and calibre of the acts.
Mr. Fern, a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dance who has twice been to China, called it "a top-class quality show." He continued: "Now we can get to see authentic stuff, authentic techniques in dancing. I am so impressed. It's out of this world."
Such reaction was widespread. Professional dancers and performers who saw the show commented on the high standard of the dancing and choreography. Musicians praised the compositions. And Chinese people were delighted by what they saw as a revival of their traditions.
This has been the response of audience members around the world, chronicled by our reporters as they have covered the Chinese Spectacular on its global tour. With quotes and photographs over 1,000 audience members published by The Epoch Times, many of these republished on the show's own website, the audience's overwhelming embrace for the Chinese Spectacular seems hard to ignore.
But Ms. Crompton tried her best. Unable, or unwilling, to see the beauty experienced by others, Ms. Crompton was preoccupied by something else—the spiritual discipline of Falun Gong.
You see, a portion of the programme contains content about this spiritual practice, which is being persecuted in China. Apparently, a spiritual discipline that follows the Chinese tradition of developing virtue, and follows the thousands-of-years-old tradition of self-cultivation does not belong in a show billed as a revival of 5,000 years of Chinese culture.
As many as one in twelve people in China were estimated to be practising Falun Gong in 1999. It was virtually the only large-scale spiritual discipline that wasn't run by the Communist regime, before the regime launched its ruthless repression. So it seems perfectly reasonable that it should be part of a show that seeks to explore and revive China's lost cultural heritage.
Ms. Crompton didn't seem to think so. She labelled the references to Falun Gong "propaganda", and professed—though without providing any evidence of it—that she was not alone in being offended by it.
That's true. She wasn't. Others were also irked by the mention of Falun Gong and its plight—but perhaps only one person in a hundred. And given the Chinese regime's elaborate efforts to demonize the group over the last nine years, this is not entirely surprising.
What is surprising, though, is that Ms. Crompton not only expressed her distaste for Falun Gong, she also challenged the authenticity of the entire show, branding it a "horribly Disneyfied version of the traditional Chinese culture it seeks to celebrate".
Unfortunately, Ms. Crompton does not explain what constitutes authentic Chinese culture.
Yet perhaps the organizers of the Chinese Spectacular should take heed. Maybe those who painstakingly research the costumes of China's dynasties past to ensure authentic reproduction in this show have got it all wrong. Maybe those who meticulously review the ancient architecture for replication in the show's digital backdrops have gone awry. And the choreographers whose skills in classical Chinese dance have been honed for decades might be off the mark.
But were that true, then there wouldn't be reactions from Chinese expats like the following from Mandy, a Chinese interpreter who took in the Spectacular in the Netherlands shortly before its arrival in London:
"I'm really touched. I'm so proud to be a Chinese", she said. "It shows real Chinese culture and tradition, and that's what I'm trying to show my husband, to learn the real China—not [the one] contaminated by Chinese communism."
Responses like Mandy's are common, if not typical.
One can only wonder what inspired Ms. Crompton's views on Chinese culture. No doubt, though, that staff at overseas Chinese missions who've worked so hard to persuade the Western press and public of such views, enjoyed reading them.
Oddly, two other papers followed suit with reviews of the Spectacular, following a similar formula, on Tuesday. How strange it is that several newspapers can be so consistent in their vilifications and yet so consistently at odds with the general public who saw the same show. But perhaps that's another story.
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