(Clearwisdom.net) On New Year's Day at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles, Divine the Performing Arts (DPA) Chinese New Year Spectacular completed its third of seven performances in the city.

Among the diverse audience was Kai Chen, arguably the best forward on China's national basketball team in the late 1970s and now a political and human rights activist.

Chen came to see the "essence" of the performance where he found "a new renaissance. You know, it's what I call a renaissance for conscience."

"The most important thing for me today is to come here and support this. It is to see a new development in the Chinese community--trying to really reconnect the Chinese speaking population with each individual's conscience," he said.

Chen, who came to America in 1981, said that most Chinese people under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lack the ability to freely express their humanity.

Chen saw the show as "a spark" and "a beginning" for developing humanistic culture.

"From that spark, you can start developing a new, healthy, humanistic culture. That will take a long time, but that spark has to happen. This is only the beginning. So this beginning, I hope, is a beginning for everybody to start to reconnect yourself with your own humanity."

Chen said that people of all different faiths should experience this "spontaneous occurrence."
He continued, "That is, to have this type of performance in your own way to show that I am connected with my conscience, I am connected with my soul."

A year before the Olympics began, Chen initiated a Global Olympic Freedom T-shirt Movement to "express the true spirit of the Olympics--the spirit of freedom." He traveled to ten cities across four continents, including Berlin, Vancouver, Taipei, and Washington, DC.

Because the DPA show includes programs depicting the CCP persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP has repeatedly interfered with the performance over the years. It has threatened the theaters not to present the show and called up officials of other countries not to attend.

Chen hopes that the show will eventually be performed in China: "When that happens, that's when the Communist regime will collapse. The purifier will reach China, and at that time a free Olympics will happen. I'll go back and help them. With that regime there, I just don't want to go back and support them. That's it. That's my point."

http://en.epochtimes.com/n2/content/view/9637/

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Category: Shen Yun Performing Arts