Dalai Lama v. China

maltabella

nice metaphor!
And, despite political opinions, I agree with you.

Dilliwala

It already is - a people's republic belongs to 'Da People', doesn't it?

On second thoughts, I just remembered - one of their neighbours is called 'Democratic People's Republic'!

..., including India.

See yesterday's news? PLA is nowadays making incursions, er, excursions into Bhutan, ostensibly to see what our reaction will be. Another domino being lined up?

That may be Taiwan's official position, but a lot of Taiwanese people donate money to the Tibetan cause. Maybe indirectly, like for the Shanti stupas around India, but for the PRC even that is bad enough.

vistet

As an interesting illustration to this , read (but don´t buy) Sky Burial by Xinran , who has met a lot of unreflected positive response in the west, probably in part from the author being portrayed as a Chinese dissident. Noble sacrifices to unite Chinese and Tibetans , shouldering the role of princess Wencheng again to bring culture and technology to the less fortunate , etc. , etc. ,

It is also presented as a true story , and that this has been accepted at face value says something of the reviewers : somebody should for example have been able to throw a glance at the map and ask how the main character , a doctor , was able to experience altitude sickness travelling to Chengdu , at the impressive height of .. 500 meters.

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high road to ..

dzibead

Hee hee! Well, I have heard that the Chinese have a terrible time dealing with altitude. As far as I'm concerned, that's God's way of telling them that they're supposed stay the hell out of Tibet.

I've never read this book but I've wondered about it. From what little I know about it, it seems to be infused with a particular kind of Chinese romanticism about Tibet -- the same kind of sentiment that underlies both the propaganda about the noble Han traveling to Tibet to "enlighten" the natives (and my older Tibetan friends tell me there were plenty of Han Chinese particularly in the '50's who sincerely believed in this "mission") and the current popularity of Tibetan ethnic stuff among Chinese tourists in Tibet (put on a Tibetan costume and have your picture taken in front of the Potala! Yipee!).

All of this reminds me very uncomfortably of the way certain kinds of white people in both North America and Europe romanticize (and patronize) Native Americans -- after slaughtering them, breaking treaties with them (the Seventeen Point Agreement?), confiscating their lands, confining them to reservations, and sending their children off to "English" schools to "de-Indianize" them. Yep. Literal and cultural genocide, followed by shallow romanticism: the evolutionary trajectory of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. (It happened with the Highland Scots and the English, too.) Ugh.