Name: From Refugee to a Principal Dancer: Ellie Rao Shares Her Message
Uploaded: 2024-08-30T20:17:13.000Z
Description: A powerful message from a principal dancer: The world needs truth, compassion, and tolerance.

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A powerful message from a principal dancer: The world needs truth, compassion, and tolerance.

Ellie Rao, a dancer with Shen Yun Performing Arts, says this is what her father courageously stood up for 20 years ago.

Now she's sharing her story and her efforts to raise awareness about the persecution of faith inside China through her dance.

She witnessed her father being taken away by Chinese authorities multiple times until he was persecuted to death when she was just 4 years old.

Born in China and raised in America, Rao dedicates herself to studying classical Chinese dance and traditional Chinese culture, even while living in the West.

Rao is an award-winning dancer with the New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts. She started taking dance lessons in high school.

“When I'm performing on stage, I usually just stay calm and focused. There’s a mission behind what we do. Basically, we want to tell the audience that truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance are good,” Rao told NTD host Yuxin.

Rao’s whole family believes in a spiritual discipline called Falun Gong. The system teaches the three principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

It grew into great popularity in China, with many reporting better health and a calmer state of mind.

But fearing its growth, the Chinese communist regime's then-top leader outlawed the practice in 1999.

Rao's parents went to Beijing to appeal against the ban at the time, but little did they know the ban would become a brutal nationwide suppression campaign.

Rao's father was detained in forced labor camps and mental hospitals several times. He was tortured to death in August 2004 at just 34 years old, leaving his 4-year-old daughter and wife alone.

Chinese authorities continued to pursue Rao's mother. So the mother and daughter had no choice but to flee to Thailand, where they became refugees. Later on, the U.S. government accepted them. Rao was 9 at the time.

Rao said her father showed that the regime could take away someone's job, family, or even their life, but it could not take away their faith.

Now in the safety of the free world, she says she's found another way to carry on her father’s legacy.

"My dad, all he wanted to do was basically to tell the Chinese government that Falun Gong was good. All I want to do is continue his wish of telling people that truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance are good.”

“Every year, Shen Yun dedicates a special contemporary piece that showcases what's going on in China right now. We show how Falun Dafa practitioners are being subjected to organ harvesting and facing a lot of brutality. We just want to tell the audience that this is real and it's still happening in China right now, and we want to stop it.”

Through her journey with Shen Yun, Rao said she has learned more about her own culture and how to be a moral person.

“I have been dancing for 11 years, and the more I learn about classical Chinese dance, the more I realize that it's very, very profound.

“Because classical Chinese dance is part of ancient Chinese culture, I realized that it's basically intertwined with one's morality. And in order to be good at classical Chinese dance, you have to be a very good person yourself. You have to learn to be a more moral person.

“There’s a very special trait in classical Chinese dance called 'shen yun,' which is like a showcase of your inner spiritual realm. So you have to cultivate your inner self if you want to dance well in classical Chinese dance.”

“[My mom] supports me so much. I'm very proud of my mom because when I first started dancing, I always called back home saying, ‘Mom, it’s too hard,’ and my mom always said, ‘You have to continue to do it, persevere.’”

Rao has traveled with Shen Yun for years, performing on the world stage. Shen Yun aims to revive traditional Chinese culture from before communism.

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