NTD International Figure Painting Competition announces 2019 winners | NTDTV
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Haiyan Kong lay awake the night of April 24, 1999, unable to get a wink of sleep. Would she go tomorrow, or stay home? She would undoubtedly be safe if she stayed home that weekend. But if she didnât speak out for what was right and true, how would she live with herself? If everyone turned a blind eye to injustice and kept their heads down to go about their day, what kind of society would that be?
I like it that art is going back to realism. It takes true talent to be a realist!!
âIf everyone indeed thought that way, there would be no April 25 to speak of. And then what? We would be a society without humanity,â Kong said.
At the time, Kong had been an adherent of the spiritual practice Falun Gong for five years. Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, was introduced to the public in China in 1992, and taught people to follow the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.
The day before, a few dozen people protested outside a college in Tianjin, a port city of Beijing, because a state-run newspaper had published blatantly false information, mischaracterizing a practitioner of Falun Gong. Riot police descended on the protesters, beating many and arresting 45 people.
One of these people was Kongâs friend, and they sometimes read together in the evenings. But when Kong visited this friend on her way home that night, the apartment was empty. She knew her friend had been arrested for merely wanting the truth to come to light. Kong decided that sleepless night that she would go to Beijing the next day, and make an appeal at the State Appeals Office asking for the arrested practitioners to be released.
Little did she know, she would be one of about 10,000 people coming out in support of Falun Gong at the State Appeals Office that day.
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