Word: wa
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...carpet welcome and greeted screaming schoolchildren who lined his path just to catch a glimpse of their hero. No, this wasn't President George W. Bush-who will arrive in China for a state visit on Saturday-it was California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, better known in China as Shi Wa...
...Days after California voters had handed their governor his biggest political defeat yet by rejecting all four of his ballot initiatives on Nov. 8, Shi Wa Xin Ge was mobbed by the Chinese public on whose minds the verdict of California voters on matters such as tenure for public-school teachers did not weigh heavily. Schwarzenegger's action flicks were among the first Hollywood blockbusters that made it to China courtesy of bootleg videotapes, and the nation rewarded the Austrian-born actor by hosting a week-long Arnold Schwarzenegger Film Festival in 2000-the first and only Chinese event...
...kilometers away, from positions of relative safety, the Burmese army launched more than 3,000 heavy mortar rounds, Yawd Serk adds. These not only hit the S.S.A.?six Shan were killed and 31 injured, he says?but also caused U.W.S.A. casualties and sowed panic in its ranks. Today the Wa fortifications below seem deserted, but Yawd Serk's soldiers are taking no chances. Nearby, on grassy slopes recently littered with Wa corpses, they plant fields of punji stakes made from sharpened bamboo to prevent a repeat assault...
...Yawd Serk says the U.W.S.A. want to crush the S.S.A. and secure new smuggling routes. Among those Wa indicted by the U.S. Justice Department is ethnic Chinese druglord Wei Hseuh-kang, who leads the U.W.S.A. troops now ranged against the S.S.A. The U.S. is offering a $2 million reward for information leading to Wei's capture. Yawd Serk denies old allegations that his own army is involved in the drug trade, and says the S.S.A. is funded by taxing goods such as logs and livestock and by donations from Shan exiles overseas. "Our door is open for anyone to come...
...Indeed, the junta's 16-year-old alliance with the U.W.S.A. is looking shaky. Rangoon is disquieted by the rebel group's bristling armory and aspirations for nationhood, while Wa resentment grows at fighting and dying in the Burmese army's own battles. Whatever happens next in the violent and complex relations between Burma's ruling generals and its diverse ethnic groups, Colonel Yawd Serk is not expecting peace for his long-suffering Shan anytime soon. "If the Wa don't come for us," he says from his hilltop redoubt, "the Burmese will come for sure...