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A man died after 54 days of fasting at the direction of qigong master 气功大师 Liu Shanglin 刘尚林. Everyone knows the publishers of the Epoch Times, but less well known is the qigong fever 气功热 that spawned the group, and continued with lower intensity even after a crackdown.
Ian Johnson's The Souls of China sets the scene: qigong as traditional practice (practices sometimes claiming spurious roots), as pseudoscience (promoted by Qian Xuesen 钱学森 among others), and as a commodifiable product. Not completely unlike Western New Age stuff.
If there was a religious revival in China, it was qigong and its "charismatic religious movements," led by people like Zhang Xiangyu 张香玉, who claimed healing powers, and managed to hold rallies in Beijing after June of 1989, because she had the support of key Party members.
There was Yan Xin 严新, who, in '87, when a fire spread the Northeast, claimed to have helped put it out with his qi, Zhang Hongbao 张宏堡, leader of Zhong Gong 中功 and alleged rapist, who ended up escaping to America where Trent Lott supported his asylum (look up that story)...
Here's a bizarre video of Ge You 葛优 being healed and offering his own testimonial to Zhou Derong's 周德荣 expertise on Exploring Life Science 生命科学探索 in 1994. There was an attempt to reign in the excesses and promote socially healthy qigong, but not stamp it out.
David Palmer's "Embodying Utopia: Charisma in the post-Mao Qigong Craze" picks up the story: masters bucked against official efforts to shut them down, and leveraged their large followings to stage gatherings. Most of the masters got rolled up, even before the 610 Office.
This pops up several times in Jia Pingwa's 贾平凹 Ruined City 废都 (1992), actually. One master claims that Mao Zedong used qigong to hypnotize the Red Guards. But anyways, on a low level, officially heterodox qigong never went away, but adapted to the new situation.
The place the guy died is called Riyuexia 日月峡. There are videos up of the master, Liu Shanglin, explaining his approach, which sounds pretty chill. Even if he's not a Zhang Hongbao type, the history of qigong movements in modern China means this type of stuff makes news.
