SEATTLE—Henry McCandless, a writer, together with his wife Kitty, came all the way from Victoria, BC, on water, to attend the Chinese Spectacular on its closing night in Seattle.
Henry McCandless found out about the Chinese Spectacular from The Epoch Times and his wife "got on Ticketmaster right away."
"I came across this paper in one of the restaurants in Victoria. I read it and I thought that the coverage was marvelous on all sorts of events all around the world, not only on the Nine Commentaries on the Chinese communist party ," said Henry with a smile. "So now I look forward to it every weekend. I found one newsstand with The Epoch Times outside, on our avenue."
He became interested in the story, which talked about one article in the New York Times that was critical about this show, Chinese Spectacular, "because it had some pieces with Falun Gong content. As I understand, China wants to repress dissent and Falun Gong is preaching their way of thinking that is counter to what the Chinese government wants."
Henry said that it looked like someone from the Chinese government had pressured the New York Times to "pan it. But the audiences have been applauding; it has been amazing, marvelous reception from the audience. I think it is worth to report on this great success, I would say, a unique success of this amazing show."
Mr. McCandless continued: "It is like with rock stars, when the audience is not always with the critics, but in this case they were hanging the production not because of its artistic manners but because of its mention of Falun Gong."
He said that he remembers like Canadians "first, when people saw 'Cirque du Soleil,' they too used to say that it was impossible for human beings do all this." As far as the Chinese Spectacular , he continued, "It is so amazing for North America that all the ladies are of the same height, which is impossible to find here. It's sort of like ballet but it is smoother, it is more spiritual than a European ballet. For most of us, who have not seen it before—we've heard about Chinese acrobats—but this show is utterly remarkable."
His wife, Kitty, exclaimed: "They move across the floor with such an ease as if their feet are on reels underneath. It was such a delight; it was marvelous!"
Kitty said that she didn't know a lot about Chinese culture. "But I am learning it rapidly," she concluded enthusiastically.
Since Henry, as he put it, "was alerted by The Epoch Times ," when the lyrics of the songs were saying about the lies, he thought: "It is about the Chinese government's lies, but the American government lied to the Americans about Vietnam too, lied to them about Iraq, so lying by a government is not new."
Following university teaching, Henry McCandless served as Principal in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada from 1978 to 1996.
"Having a fair society," Mr. McCandless said, "hinges on what an American icon George Washington said in 1796—that citizens will mean well and act well if they 'obtain a right understanding of matters.'"
"And you see, the governments do not supply the right understanding of matters to their citizens."
He continued on talking about government's accountability, which means that the government needs to explain to people what it intends to do. "Then the citizens can judge better whether they should commend it or halt it …"
In January 2002, Mr. McCandless published A Citizen's Guide to Public Accountability: Changing the Relationship between Citizens and Authorities . This book explains how citizens can shift from powerlessness to ultimate control by exacting full and fair answering from authorities at all levels.
An international expert on the issue, Henry McCandless spent several years working on the concept of accountability and assembling case examples of harm that happens when people in power are not made to publicly and validly explain their intentions and actions.
"One of the reasons we don't have this structure in place already is that we've had centuries of conditioning in citizen deference to authority," he says. "I can show you letter after letter to city councilors saying 'we would be very grateful if you would consider the following' instead of saying 'hey, we pay your salary, you better answer to us.'"
For information about upcoming Divine Performing Arts shows, please visit: www.DivinePerformingArts.org.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of the Divine Performing Arts company. For our complete coverage please visit: http://en.epochtimes.com/features/dpa2008/
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