PureInsight | August 30, 2015
[PureInsight.org] July 25th 2015, the 66th Seattle Seafair Torchlight Parade kicked off at 7:30 pm with at least a million viewers watching the televised scenes that met the expectations and cheers of onlookers. The Falun Dafa Team, on behalf of the US West Falun Dafa Association in Washington State, were invited to participate in the parade’s 11th year. Falun Gong’s entry featured an elegant and sparkling light purple Fa boat, waist drum team and banners in the procession. The Fa boat was the highlight of the parade.
Over the years, the Torchlight Parade has been one of the most popular activities in the series of Seattle Seafair celebrations. The procession started from the Seattle Center, along the busiest Fourth Avenue to the CenturyLink Field, near Chinatown. It was about 2.5 miles. Each year, there were around 300,000 enthusiastic onlookers watching along the parade route and 700,000 people watching the live TV broadcast. To get a better view, a lot of people moved chairs and sofas on both sides of the road in the morning.
This year, the procession represented different communities, including the Chinese, Arabian, Korean and Mexican communities, as well as different organizations, such as the high school marching band, fire brigade and airlines. The audience enjoyed the different cultures with applause from one end of the road to the other. All ethnic audiences in Seattle enjoyed the unique lingering charm of the Fa boat and float in the Falun Gong parade. Especially when night was coming, the Fa boat, decorated with colorful lights, looked more like coming from afar through the waves. A lot of the audience broke into spontaneous applause and words of praise with, "Very beautiful" "Awesome".
Presley came from India and worked at a Microsoft software development department. He watched the Seafair Torchlight parade for the first time. He said, "Falun Gong has such a pretty Fa boat and great waist drum team! I like it very much. It’s a great opportunity to know Chinese culture. Falun Gong is an elegant team with peaceful practitioners." He hoped to have more opportunity to get to know Falun Gong practitioners.
Another Seattle resident Christian said, “I have watched Seafair Torchlight parade ten times. Falun Gong is full of positive energy. My wife and I are deeply impressed whenever this peaceful team comes out. The Fa boat, float and fairies are very pretty; Waist drum team members are in Great Spirit with neat and punchy drums. These are all part of Falun Gong team’s charm.”
Mr. Yang from Hong Kong was a 70-year-old man. Many times, he couldn’t help shouting “Falun Dafa is good” when he saw the Falun Gong parade pass by. He said Falun Gong practitioners’ excellent performance was the pride of the overseas Chinese.
Translated from http://news.zhengjian.org/node/27368
