Word: lama
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the exiled tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, last visited Taiwan eight years ago, Beijing went ballistic. To China's leaders, the Dalai Lama is Public Enemy No. 1 for, they claim, fomenting Tibetan separatism. Until very recently, the Beijing view of Taiwan was just as jaundiced and one-dimensional: a renegade province led and populated by disloyal subjects bent on denying China's Party-given right to rule them. Put the two together and you have the mainland's worst "splittist" nightmare. As the Dalai Lama sat down with all the island's then top political figures, Beijing...
...Fast-forward to today. On Aug. 30 the Dalai Lama landed in Taiwan to comfort and bless victims of Typhoon Morakot, one of the deadliest storms to strike the island. The Chinese leadership's reaction to the Dalai Lama's presence? Simply that it "resolutely opposes this." Beijing canceled or downgraded some bilateral events, but these were not deal breakers. For Beijing, which has fired missiles toward Taiwan in the past, the action was akin to throwing a snowball. In fact, on the Dalai Lama's first full day in Taiwan, the two sides, once the most implacable of foes...
...Take the Dalai Lama episode. The opposition DPP invited him to Taiwan in order to put Ma in a spot - he'd be damned by his own people as a mainland lackey if he did not okay the visit and condemned by Beijing if he did. Ma took a gamble: he approved the trip - and bet on China's leaders appreciating his dilemma. They did. Their censure was directed solely at the DPP, with no mention of Ma whatsoever. Far from harming cross-strait relations, the Dalai Lama's visit revealed how mature those relations have become...
...boarding the high-speed railway to the south. The next morning, across from his hotel, aborigine protestors held banners saying he was just doing "lip service," unlike other religious volunteers who were helping them rebuild their homes. When reporters asked him what he thought of the protests, the Dalai Lama cheerfully responded, "Wonderful. These people enjoy freedom of expression and thought. I love that...
...After answering reporters' queries in Siaolin, a man named Wang Min-liang and his female friend kneeled before him offering a khata - a long white silk scarf usually given to bless a highly respected person in Tibetan culture. The Dalai Lama touched their cheeks with his hands and hugged them, and Wang, who lost fourteen family members including his parents and siblings to Siaolin's mudslides, began to cry. "I came to share their traumatic experience," the Dalai Lama said that day. "I don't want to cause any inconvenience to anybody." That anybody - President Ma - is probably glad...