paperbackwriter
10-03-2022, 09:28 AM
I would be interested to know if anyone remembers this, or better yet if anyone actually has links to video of this or similar events posted online.
Sometime after the mid-eighties -- probably between 1986 and 1989 -- there was an event at the Taipei airport that was recorded on video and shown at our meeting hall. (On Betamax of course!) I was in the Boston area, but I’m sure this recording must have been shown in multiple LCs across the globe.
This event consisted of highly-choreographed, almost military-style, exercises, involving hundreds of church members in Taipei, and took place in the airport terminal itself. The occasion was that church members from hundreds of localities from all over the world were arriving at the Taipei airport for a large conference. The exercises were Taipei church members' "surprise greeting" for the arriving conference attendees. The duration of the exercises was particularly long -- something like 15-20 minutes in my memory.
One particular “drill” -- and I use this word because that is what these exercises resembled -- involved a line of men at least a hundred in number. They all stood still for a moment; then, the first man fell purposefully forward onto his palms in a “push-up” position; as he fell forward, the second man next to him fell in the same fashion, followed by the third doing the same, and the fourth, and so on. And so it continued, this row of men falling like dominoes, in unison. Once they were all on the ground, they did another similar exercise, in which they changed the position of their bodies -- perhaps to a sitting position? Perhaps back to standing up? I don’t quite remember. But again it was all completely choreographed, and all done in front of the bemused or intrigued eyes of the human beings in the airport who had no idea what was going on.
There were LSM banners everywhere, many of them held aloft in the air by flag bearers.
My memory of this recording is rather surreal. I was a “young person” at the time, and I remember this being shown to us rather excitedly by the brothers who kept commenting on how “neat” it all was.
Sometime after the mid-eighties -- probably between 1986 and 1989 -- there was an event at the Taipei airport that was recorded on video and shown at our meeting hall. (On Betamax of course!) I was in the Boston area, but I’m sure this recording must have been shown in multiple LCs across the globe.
This event consisted of highly-choreographed, almost military-style, exercises, involving hundreds of church members in Taipei, and took place in the airport terminal itself. The occasion was that church members from hundreds of localities from all over the world were arriving at the Taipei airport for a large conference. The exercises were Taipei church members' "surprise greeting" for the arriving conference attendees. The duration of the exercises was particularly long -- something like 15-20 minutes in my memory.
One particular “drill” -- and I use this word because that is what these exercises resembled -- involved a line of men at least a hundred in number. They all stood still for a moment; then, the first man fell purposefully forward onto his palms in a “push-up” position; as he fell forward, the second man next to him fell in the same fashion, followed by the third doing the same, and the fourth, and so on. And so it continued, this row of men falling like dominoes, in unison. Once they were all on the ground, they did another similar exercise, in which they changed the position of their bodies -- perhaps to a sitting position? Perhaps back to standing up? I don’t quite remember. But again it was all completely choreographed, and all done in front of the bemused or intrigued eyes of the human beings in the airport who had no idea what was going on.
There were LSM banners everywhere, many of them held aloft in the air by flag bearers.
My memory of this recording is rather surreal. I was a “young person” at the time, and I remember this being shown to us rather excitedly by the brothers who kept commenting on how “neat” it all was.