The year before that, the Shen Yun poster featured two women dancing, wearing birthday-cake-frosting colors, and for months I sat in the subway reading but in no way processing the phrase “ Absolutely the No. Last year, the ads were goldenrod yellow, like dehydrated urine, and they said “ Reviving 5,000 Years of Civilization.” The year before that, the ads (“ Experience a Divine Culture”) were green. Shen Yun has lived in the pink fluffy insulation of my mind for a while now. And, for many Americans who live in or around the ninety-six cities where the Shen Yun Performing Arts troupe is set to perform this year, the words “Shen Yun” conjure an indelible yet incomprehensible image: a flat, bright shade of lilac, a woman leaping in the sky with a fan-shaped white skirt and billowing pink sleeves, and the enigmatic phrase “ 5,000 Years of Civilization Reborn.”
New Yorkers know the Cellino & Barnes hotline better than they know their Social Security numbers. When Texans hear the name Jim Adler, their souls reply with “ Texas Hammer.” Michiganders know that God filled the sky around the Detroit airport with clouds and with billboards for Joumana Kayrouz. The most pervasive forms of local advertising often feel like this-like nursery rhymes or urban legends, or something implanted in your most tender consciousness by a social version of natural law. Just as it is impossible for me to articulate with any certainty the moment I entered adulthood or began to believe that human life on Earth would not last past the twenty-second century, I cannot tell you when I first became aware of Shen Yun.