Word: islanded
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There is certainly no love lost between the rulers of the People's Republic of China and President Chen Shui-bian over on Taiwan, the island Beijing considers a breakaway province. Again and again, the Communist regime has been infuriated by Chen's efforts to push the island closer to independence, completing its transformation from an exiled regime - the Republic of China, with its pretensions of ruling the mainland - into an entity completely separate from China, a fully sovereign nation called Taiwan. And so, on Saturday, one could almost hear the cheering in China after Chen's Democratic Progressive Party...
...Communists have learned that trying too hard to influence political affairs on the raucously democratic island only backfires. The Kuomintang (KMT), which favors closer ties with China, won 81 of Legislative Yuan's 113 seats, soundly defeating Chen's independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which took 27. The win also gives momentum to KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou over DPP rival Frank Hsieh in the March 22 vote. Chen Shui-bian called it the worst setback in the history of the DPP, and took responsibility by resigning as the party's chairman...
...when Taiwan held its first direct presidential election, China fired missiles into the strait that separates the island from the mainland in an attempt to bully voters into not supporting the independence-leaning candidate Lee Teng-hui. The act had the opposite effect and instead helped boost support for Lee; he won by a large margin. Since then Beijing has slowly been learning its lesson. "Whenever Taiwan has a big election, if Beijing makes a remark about local politics in Taiwan [it] will have a counterproductive effect," says Andrew Yang, secretary general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies...
...became a serious climber on New Zealand's South Island? Yes, but although I did a lot of climbing in New Zealand and a lot of backpacking and walking around the hills, I was really a relatively late starter as a "serious" mountaineer. When I first went to the Himalayas in 1951, I was 31 years old. I really was at my prime, though some would think I was getting on. I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40 really. When...
...getting a rack of lamb from New Zealand, but I couldn't resist asking the guy behind the seafood counter for the fish with the most frequent-flyer miles. I was going to get the opah from Fiji, but then I spotted the Chilean sea bass from South Georgia island, southeast of Argentina?more than 7,000 miles of travel just to get eaten for a magazine article. Already feeling like some sort of insane European king, I added some asparagus from Peru to my shopping cart and, for dessert, threw in a pineapple from Hawaii (which was cheating...