On Sunday August the 7th 2005, over eighty teams from various places around the world came to participate in the Edinburgh International Art Festival Parade in the capital of Scotland. The parade is the main event in the annual month-long festival. This year was the fourth time Falun Gong practitioners have participated in the parade and also the fourth time that they have won the community category award for their parade performance.
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| The parade team starts | The decorated vehicle | A Falun Dafa banner |
At 2:30pm in the afternoon, the parade officially started. The Falun Gong team was led by three practitioners holding small banners of Falun Gong’s guiding principles: “Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance”. They were followed by golden and purple Falun Gong banners, a traditional Chinese Dragon Dance and Lion Dance, and a vehicle decorated with the Falun emblem and decked with Lotus Flowers. Two practitioners and two little practitioners demonstrated the five sets of Falun Gong exercises.
Three practitioners were dressed as Buddhas, Daos, and Gods that are an integral part of traditional Chinese culture. Following the vehicle was the fan dancing team and a golden “Falun Gong” banner. In the Falun Gong parade team, there were also banners reading, “The world needs Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance”, “Falun Dafa benefits millions of people spiritually and physically” and “Falun Dafa is widely spread all over the world in more than sixty countries” in English and in Chinese.
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| The fan dancing team | ||
Successive rounds of applause resounded as the Falun Gong team passed by. Plenty of on-lookers asked for flyers along the way. The handmade paper lotus flowers with attached bookmarks were very popular.
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| People were happy to receive leaflets or lotus flowers and find out more | ||
The activity was facilitated by the practitioners’ selfless devotion and efforts. Fopr weeks before, some practitioners drove all night to join the dance rehearsals every Saturday morning in Edinburgh; some spent their hard-earned money to make leaflets and lotus flowers and local practitioners spent a lot of time organizing food and lodging for all the practitioners from out of town.
One practitioner’s husband saw how Falun Gong practitioners are frugal with their money because they want to spend it on helping people learn the truth about Falun Gong and the brutal persecution against the practice by the Chinese Communist party. As a result, he drove a couple of practitioners to Edinburgh, which took sixteen hours, to save the cost of train tickets so that they can put the money to good use.
From their interaction with practitioners, the employees in the youth hostel where practitioners stayed came to understand the truth about Falun Gong. They expressed hopes that practitioners will be back next year.
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| Photos from the Edinburgh Evening News | |
BBC News 24 broadcast a demonstration of the five sets of Falun Gong exercises and the Edinburgh Evening News also published pictures of practitioners’ performance in the Parade
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