HONG KONG -- As a meeting with China's public enemy No. 1, the evening with 40 Falun Gong followers clearly fell short.
There were no security checks or secret passwords at the door, no careful scrutiny or subtle glances. The fluorescent glare in Mrs. Chan's tiny second-floor apartment instead bounced off an array of receptive middle-class faces with the diversity of a supermarket checkout line -- and about as much revolutionary zeal.
The majority were middle-aged women, but the group included men and women, young and old.
Although the spiritual movement has been the focus of mainland China's biggest crackdown since the Tiananmen Square student uprising was crushed more than a decade ago, the gathering of Hong Kong Falun Gong practitioners for a routine meeting late last month appeared to be conspicuously light on political content.
There was also little to evoke Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa's recent description of Falun Gong as "more or less bearing some characteristics of an evil cult," a comment made in the context of a major debate in Hong Kong about whether to bend to pressure from Beijing and ban the movement there too.
While the number of Falun Gong followers on the mainland is measured in the millions, there are only about 500 in Hong Kong, and they meet in groups such as the one that gathered in Mrs. Chan's apartment. Although Falun Gong has been banned on the mainland since July 1999 and its members frequently are subjected to harassment and torture, followers in Hong Kong still can practice freely -- at least for now.
Most of the 2½-hour session at Mrs. Chan's was consumed by a rapid-fire group recitation of texts dealing with personal self-improvement written by Falun Gong's founder, a onetime Chinese government worker named Li Hongzhi. About the most threatening things visible during the session were the thumbtacks holding two family photos to Mrs. Chan's living room wall.
The hostess, a round-faced little woman in her mid-40s, explained how Falun Gong had cured her and her two young sons of chronic health problems, infused her with a new optimism and given her hope for the future.
"The whole family is better," she beamed. It was a familiar theme.
Hui Kwok-hung, a suit-and-tie civil servant who heads a team of 12 to 16 civil engineers in the Hong Kong government's Buildings Department, told how he picked up the practice from his wife. She had turned to it in desperation after spending several years and more than $12,000 on medications that had done little to improve her poor health.
"When I came home at night, I noticed a change in her," Hui said. "She was more positive, she wasn't depressed, so I started reading [the movement's main texts] too."
In addition to spending each Tuesday and Thursday evening reciting and discussing "Master Li's" texts in Mrs. Chan's cramped apartment, he now joins about 20 others each morning at 7 in a local park to carry out Falun Gong's physical program: a set of slow-motion exercises he does to a soothing kind of Chinese Muzak. He breaks off early because of demands at work but finishes the routine during his lunch break.
Like others, especially among the group's younger practitioners, Hui measures the benefits more in spiritual than physical gains.
"It gave me something I was looking for," he said. "It elevated me to a higher level."
No consensus
Only briefly during the meeting did followers address the attacks on their movement. Why, one asked, had a newspaper dubbed Falun Gong a dangerous religion? After a short exchange, the discussion broke off with little resolved.
At an earlier meeting, an exchange about whether followers should sit outside Beijing's government liaison office in Hong Kong to appeal for an end to the persecution on the mainland also ended without consensus.
Just why the Chinese government is so afraid of a spiritual movement with no apparent political agenda beyond the desire to practice freely is unclear. People who have followed the crackdown say a Beijing protest nearly two years ago carried out by 10,000 followers without any warning from intelligence services unnerved the Communist hierarchy.
But other factors are also at play, including the group's continued popularity and its celebration of beliefs deeply rooted in Chinese culture and religion at a time when the Communists are pursuing socially disorienting economic reforms. Authorities fear that those left behind by the changes -- estimates of unemployed run at more than 100 million people -- might take their discontent into such a group.
Like those who gathered in Mrs. Chan's apartment, a strong element of Falun Gong's following in China is made up of people seeking to overcome either physical or spiritual weaknesses. Its appeal is especially strong among China's elderly and rural populations -- segments that frequently have been neglected by a Communist hierarchy increasingly focused on modernizing an industrial economy.
Sophie Xiao, Falun Gong's media contact, says many of the Hong Kong followers choose not to go public, and practitioners say they occasionally draw taunts. But passersby hardly bothered to look up as a group of about 20 Falun Gong followers went through its exercise routine recently in Hong Kong's Kowloon Park.
However, there are other pressures. One 33-year-old woman claimed that she was fired from her job because of links with the movement, and many of those interviewed for this article spoke on condition that there be no mention of their employer.
Calls by pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong to ban the movement or draft anti-subversion legislation have added to worries about an erosion of Hong Kong's freedoms guaranteed under the terms of the territory's return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
In many ways, the Hong Kong government's handling of Falun Gong is seen as a bellwether of those freedoms. Early this month, Hong Kong's secretary for security, Regina Ip, kept the debate going by labeling Falun Gong followers "devious people." However, she did not call for a ban.
Many observers say that the issue could come to a head in May when Chinese President Jiang Zemin and former President Bill Clinton are due to attend a high-profile business conference in Hong Kong. Any public confrontation between Jiang and Falun Gong demonstrators would almost certainly add pressure on Hong Kong's government to act against the group.
So far, Falun Gong followers say they haven't decided what they will do during Jiang's visit. "It's still very far ahead," Xiao said.