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...feng knows she was one of the lucky ones. "My husband thought we were washed away," says Wu, a pregnant preschool teacher, sitting in a shelter for typhoon victims in the small town of Cishan in southern Taiwan. When Typhoon Morakot struck the island on Aug. 8, bringing nearly 9 ft. (around 2.5 m) of rain and the island's worst floods in over 50 years, Wu grabbed her 1-year-old son and climbed three hours to higher ground. There, she and hundreds of people from her village waited three stormy days and nights before military helicopters rescued...
...Typhoons regularly sweep over Taiwan, but few living on the island today have seen anything like Morakot. It was the deadliest natural disaster to hit the island since a magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck in 1999, killing over 2,400. The storm dumped a year's worth of rain on the island in three days, leading to floods that left at least 136 dead and nearly 400 missing, as well as widespread damage...
...Living in temporary shelters throughout Taiwan, Wu and some 7,000 other people made homeless by Morakot are trying to cope. The Cishan shelter's main hall is filled with drinks, crackers, new clothes, slippers, toothpaste, soap and towels - part of the outpouring of support from around the island. "It is good to be alive and to know people care," says Wu. But, she adds, "we're still in trauma." Still, Wu is one of the more optimistic residents; she, at least, wants to return to her village. Many don't. Yin Jui-rong, an aboriginal farmer whose village...
...Local government leaders of the opposition party in the south - the area hit hardest by the typhoon - invited the Dalai Lama to comfort and pray for the victims of the worst natural disaster to hit the island since a 1999 earthquake killed more than 2,400. The Dalai Lama will arrive on Aug. 30 to give speeches and visit disaster areas for six days. This will be his third visit to Taiwan; the first two were in 1997 and 2001. The presidential office said it agreed to this visit on religious and humanitarian grounds, adding that it believed the visit...
...cross-strait relations." Political commentator Antonio Chiang says China's obligatory protest will not hurt Ma's platform of improving relations. "Beijing is going to make some noise, but that's it," he says. "They understand Ma's in big trouble." Beijing, whose goal is eventual unification with the island, is wary of the DPP, which leans towards independence for Taiwan, and would certainly like to see Ma re-elected in 2012. Ma's drop in popularity is probably more of a concern to China than the Dalai Lama's visit is. (See pictures of Taiwan's typhoon terror...