From the Qigong Boom to the Public Square

Falun Gong appeared in 1992 into an environment that had been prepared for it. Through the 1980s China had seen an extraordinary popular expansion of qigong, with masters attracting large followings, state institutions taking an interest, and parks filling with people practising slow movement and breath regulation in the early morning. Li Hongzhi taught his system publicly from within that world, and its vocabulary of movement, standing meditation and seated meditation is drawn from it.

The public exercise session was accordingly the movement's most visible feature in China before 1999. Groups gathering in parks and squares, practising together in the open at no charge, were how most people encountered it and a substantial part of how it grew.

After the ban of 1999 that visibility became the point of contention. Practising in public in China ceased to be possible and became an act of defiance where it occurred, while outside China the same open group sessions continued and took on an additional role as public witness. David Ownby and Benjamin Penny both treat the movement's treatment in China at length. The atlas records the exercises as a practice and notes that their public performance has meant very different things in different places since 1999.