St. Louis Post Dispatch: Artist activist seeks better treatment of Falun Gong devotees

(This story was published in Everyday Magazine on Tuesday, July 2, 2002. )

Zhang Cuiying is a painter, but she is better known as a human rights activist. The Australian citizen spent eight months in a Chinese jail for practicing Falun Gong in 2000 and since her release has traveled the world raising awareness of persecution against Falun Gong followers.

The artist is making the rounds here this week. Sunday she was the guest at a Washington University reception attended by about 150 people, mostly from the local Chinese community. Monday her paintings went up for a one-day exhibit at the state Capitol in Jefferson City. Today, local residents can see them in the first-floor rotunda at St. Louis City Hall.

Cuiying said through a translator Sunday that her paintings -- traditional, vertical, Chinese watercolors, depicting familiar subjects such as lotus flowers, mountains and the figure of Buddha -- serve as her calling card. She's happy to show them but her real purpose is to ask people to "stand up and stop" the harsh treatment of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese government.

Falun Gong practitioners describe their efforts as a regimen of mediation and exercise centered around a philosophy of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance and claim more than 1 million followers. But Chinese officials have deemed it "subversive", outlawing it and punishing those who partake.

Cuiying, who was born in Shanghai and immigrated to Sydney, said she was arrested with a group of Falun Gong practitioners during a visit to Beijing. She was beaten, shackled and placed in a cell for men. She wasn't permitted to leave her dark, humid space for any reason, she said.

Her plight was followed widely in the Australian media and her government intervened, eventually winning her release.

Her current world travel is sponsored by practitioners of Falun Gong, including those in St. Louis, who view it as a chance to show the community [the goodness of Falun Gong]. "We are like everybody else," said Larry Liu, who attends Washington University. "But in our spare time we practice Falun Gong."

Cuiying said she doesn't sell her paintings on the road, though her supporters do hand out the address for a Web site where prints are available (www.zhangcuiying.org). This week, she donated a painting so it could be sold and a portion of the proceeds split between the Falun Gong cause internationally and to help victims of the Sept. 11 attack at the World Trade Center in New York City.

Zhang Cuiying's paintings will be on display from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. today at St. Louis City Hall.