April 25 started as a normal Sunday in Beijing. But before the day was out, thousands of ordinary people in drip-dry shirts had mysteriously appeared outside Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound of the Chinese Communist Party near the Forbidden City. Here they formed a mile-long line around its walled perimeter and then finally flooded out onto the Avenue of Eternal Peace, where they calmly sat down with an eerie orderliness in front of the compound’s main gate and peacefully began to meditate. There were no political banners rippling in the wind, no headbands proclaiming freedom and democracy, no bullhorns amplifying provocative slogans as during the student movement of 1989.
Read more…China's new spiritual uprising