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ASIA
MAY 10, 1999 VOL. 153 NO. 18
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Since Li left China last year, his followers have only multiplied, especially outside China, thanks to the Internet. Falun Gong is apparently organized in small cells of acolytes. Sophie Xiao, a 32-year-old investment analyst in Hong Kong, is one believer. Xiao's enfeebled mother in Beijing had gotten well through Falun Gong, and she sent her daughter Master Li's books. "I was always so worried," Xiao says. "I was constantly exhausted." When she too experienced rejuvenation, she passed along the books to several friends. "I finished the books in four days," says a neighbor, a Mrs. Hui. "My husband came home and said, 'Why do you look so good?' For me, it's the philosophy. It's like finding the answers to all the problems in my life." Mrs. Hui's once-gray hair has turned black, her husband has taken up Falun Gong and their six-year-old daughter has memorized the master's first book. If that seems unlikely, consider a story widely circulating among Falun Gong practitioners: an impoverished, illiterate 80-year-old acolyte in Beijing suddenly found herself able to read--after staring at a copy of one of Li's books for a length of time.
Practitioners are reluctant to discuss Falun Gong's finances. It is said that certain believers anonymously bankroll the movement's big get-togethers in the U.S. and Switzerland. Whether Li has central control of the organization is hazy, and perhaps deliberately so. "It's a very savvy group," says Nancy Chen, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who is writing a book on qigong sects. "It has to be flexible so that it can evolve or react to political whims." It's a delicate balancing act: the group must appear powerful in order to attract members, but also unthreatening to the government in Beijing.
Whether the faithful are ready for the master's new message is an intriguing question. Li says that extraterrestrials are among us. Some look like ghosts. "One type," he says, "looks like a human but has a nose that is made of bone." The aliens have introduced machinery and computers to Earth in an attempt to corrupt mankind, get control over the human body and create an entirely cloned world. Master Li's teachings are, apparently, an antidote. It seems that a great many of the converted haven't imbibed these higher parts of the Falun Gong doctrine. But it's also clear that many are looking for more than good health.
At the 12-hour demonstration in Beijing last week, a remarkable scene occurred around sunset. A group of devotees stood up in unison, faced the setting sun and started clapping. "Do you see it? Do you see it?" they cried. "Yes I do, I do!" A vision had appeared to them above the hazy Beijing skyline. What it was, they wouldn't say. Master Li teaches that devotees, with proper study and practice, can levitate and see the future--a knack that would be useful for China's leaders facing a messianic figure with millions of followers.
Reported by William Dowell/New York, Jaime A. FlorCruz and Tim McCahill/Beijing and Lori Reese/Hong Kong
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R E L A T E D
S T O R I E S :
Interview
With Falun Gong's mysterious leader, Li Hongzhi
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