Practitioners Hold Photo Exhibition at UMIST in the UK

Practitioners in Manchester in the UK held a four day photo exhibition introducing Falun Gong and clarifying the truth at UMIST university. Beforehand emails were sent to local Chinese students and scholars and posters were placed around the campus. Many people stopped to take a look while walking passed to attend lectures or go to the Cafe for lunch. Below are a few interesting stories.

Early on the first day the university chaplain saw the exhibition and gruffly asked one of the assistants whether Falun Dafa was the same as Falun Gong. He then left abruptly after hearing the answer. Later in the day he came back and very carefully read all of the posters and looked at some Dafa materials on a table nearby. Apparently satisfied he signed the petition and left.

There are a lot of Chinese students at UMIST and many passed by, pausing to take a look. They usually seemed surprised at first, laughing and talking loudly but then many went on to read most of the posters and look at the pictures of the persecution. Maybe in this way their misconceptions will have changed.

The staff from the Cafe in the same building as the exhibition walked passed when we were packing up at the end of each day. While they didn't get to see the exhibition they did see practitioners wearing yellow fleeces with Falun Dafa and Zhen-Shan-Ren written in Chinese and English.

The Communications Officer for the Student Association at UMIST saw the exhibition by chance and offered to put details on the Association website so that more students would know about it.

There were also some tests. A group of Chinese women talked to one of the western assistants, trying to convince him that Falun Dafa is bad. They made lots of accusations and made many points based on the propaganda from China but it was all opinion without any substance. One sentence stood out "You should talk to more people like us" meaning Chinese people who don't practice Falun Gong. This hinted that more activities for clarifying the truth need to be aimed at Chinese people in Manchester. Eventually they ran out of words and left, one of them saying repeatedly words of hatred. Hopefully these people will change their minds and have a chance to position themselves better in the future.

Not only was this exhibition a valuable opportunity to clarify the truth and promote Dafa, it also was an opportunity for some new practitioners to talk to veteran practitioners and do their part to clarify the truth.