Hatering

It's been a while since I wrote! Well it's been kind of nuts, but in short, Kauai was really nice. It is also nice to be back home and getting back to routines... oh wait, I mean, I wish I can get back to routines but really, I have to start packing and what? Friends are visiting? And someone has a birthday? Yeah. I'm kind of craving some non-social downtime, some monotony sounds great right now, but alas, maybe I'll get that in a few weeks after the move is over.

So, perhaps in pursuit of some downtime, I got some last minute tickets to a Chinese "cultural" dance show that was at the SF Opera House, which boasts live orchestral music and authentic costumes and a nice poster. Sounds great right? Chinese New Year is just around the corner, and I haven't done much in terms of saying hello to my heritage in a while, so I figured, why not. I have never been to the Opera House, it will probably be a fun thing to do for a couple of hours on a Sunday.

What I got, was instead in summary, tacky Falon Dafa evangelism for 3 hours. After I got the tickets I heard that the show has some Buddhist "overtones" but I didn't make much of it coz well, whatever, Christmas has Jesus overtones and it doesn't bother me. But holy god, this is not "overtones", there are sequences about a "normal guy" being moved by a Falon Gong "art exhibit" which comes to life and hands him Falon Dafa leaflets and he dances in joy. Or, reenactments of a Falong Gong dad with a lovely family, being beaten to death by officials donning jackets with giant sickle-and-hammer symbols on their backs. I kid you not. It also showcases the most horrible breakage of what I think must be the 2nd wall (4th wall being the audience), like, the backdrop of the theatre. People jump out of the CG backdrop. Like, little CG people fly down from a Buddhist heaven, go behind some steps, and then REAL people get up from the steps and go "voila! I came from Buddhist heaven to dance you some truth". We left as soon as it was not obviously rude to leave, literally in fear of being accosted by Falon Dafa Truth Leaflets being stuffed in my face.

Not as advertised.

I think I'm actually culturally traumatized. I was actually looking forward to some exposure to some Chinese dancing, which one rarely seen performed in non-tacky ways these days, and I figured OPERA HOUSE might guarantee a level of professionalism. I was hoping to get in touch with my roots, and shit like that. Now I'm actually being slapped into cultural self-hatering. I am embarassed I took someone to this "showing" of my "culture". It is like, taking someone to what you thought was a really nice Chinese place, and then realizing Moo Goo Gai Pan in your choice of brown shitty sauce was the only thing on the menu. It is humiliating.

You know, I don't have a problem with Falon Gong practitioners, I do hope one day they could practice their particular form of religion / meditation practice / whatever you want to call it in peace in China. I don't believe in wheels turning in your belly and probably will never understand the appeal of this form of buddhism, but you know, it isn't that far off from immaculate conception and 72 virgins etc in terms of plausibility. However, I DO have a problem with such a group masquerading as nothing more than a dance troupe striving to preserve traditional cultural arts, without mention of ANYthing associated with Falon Gong on their website, and proceeds to basically present me with an obvious fundrasier and overt evanglistic event for their movement. I don't like being lied to, and thanks to this, Falon Dafa you just got yourself a lot more creepy-cult points.