Word: siaolin
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Under a vast plain of dried mud, set between southern Taiwan's lush mountains, 400 bodies still lie that were buried alive three weeks ago in typhoon Morakot, the island's most recent and deadly natural disaster. The now infamous village of Siaolin - the worst hit by Morakot - was the first stop for the Dalai Lama, Tibet's leader-in-exile, on his visit to Taiwan this week. Wrapped in his saffron and maroon robes, he sat in the traditional leg-cross on a blue and gold straw mat, overlooking the tragic plain, and recited Tibetan prayers. He then stood...
...Buddhist, the only thing we can do is pray for them," the Dalai Lama said to a group of reporters following him to Siaolin. This week, the Tibetan spiritual leader has come to Taiwan to pray and console. Unlike his first two visits in 1997 and 2001, when he met with incumbent presidents Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian, both advocates of independence for the island, he won't be meeting or even crossing paths with President Ma Ying-jeou, who has been drawing Taiwan closer to China. (See pictures from the Dalai Lama's 60 years of leading...
...even as the Dalai Lama reiterated that he had come on purely humanitarian grounds, politics was very much on the minds of the people following him around Siaolin. Nearly a hundred reporters shadowed him on the long drive to the remote village in the mountains. After his prayers, they asked him about Tibet's own relations with China. "We Tibetans are not seeking separation," he replied. The Dalai Lama has been pursuing "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet and the preservation of his people's culture and religion, but China sees him as a separatist, and is wary of his interaction...
...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...
...Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou, Morakot has also become a political storm. The same day that national television aired footage of mourners at the village of Siaolin, where some 400 people are thought to be buried by mudslides, Ma appeared on the evening news wearing a cheerful blue-and-white baseball cap and polo shirt at Taiwan's World Youth Baseball Championship. It was not the President's only faux pas. Earlier that week, Ma told reporters that residents living in Morakot's path were not "well prepared," pinning the slow evacuation on the victims and showing an aloofness...