Oh, and there's that thing about the "murderous cult" he's in

It seems the Australian Broadcasting Corporation follows the tried-and-true inverted pyramid format for writing news stories ... only sometimes they leave out the "inverted" part. Take this story about Xue-Jun Wang, a Sydney Dance Company dancer, for example. He was in Shanghai to perform Mulan, a collaborative project with the Shanghai Song and Dance Ensemble (the show will go on Oct. 18-19 at the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, by the way). And yesterday, Wang got kicked out of China -- "without explanation," as the ABC puts it.

The story said that Wang was 43 and it mentioned what he was doing in Shanghai. It said he was "forced to pack his bags" despite the protests of Sydney Dance Company artistic director Graeme Murphy and the presence of "an Australian consular official."

And then, late in the story, it says Wang gave books critical of the Chinese government to a friend here. Hmmm, getting closer. And then the ABC gives us this gem, which it saved for the very last paragraph of the story:

He also believes the decision may have been made because he told the security officers that he is a Falun Gong practitioner.

Yeah, that might have something to do with it.

The Sydney Morning Herald did a better job with the story.

Photo of Xue-Jun Wang taken from the Sydney Dance Company website.