Tibet's star quality


When Herge’s Adventures of Tintin spread from Belgium across Europe in the 1960s, Tintin’s fictional travels in Tibet featured in one of the most popular strip-cartoon stories.


So influential was Tintin in Tibet that in June 2006 it won the International Campaign for Tibet’s Light of Truth award, presented by the Dalai Lama, for its "significant contribution to the public understanding of Tibet".


Western fascination is as strong as ever with Tibet and its rich Buddhist culture, which has survived mostly intact since the 1950s despite the ravages of Chinese troops and zealous Communist Party officials. Tibetan Buddhist monasteries are also thriving in many Western nations.


"More than any other land, Tibet has provided ... an exciting target for a corpus of romantic transferences and has continuously fired the imagination of Western escape artists," U.S.-based China scholar Orville Schell wrote in his book Virtual Tibet.


Hollywood has captured the magic and mystery in films such as Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet, which starred Brad Pitt, and Martin Scorsese’s biopic of the Dalai Lama, Kundun.


Actor Richard Gere, a friend of the Dalai Lama, is perhaps the best known of Hollywood’s Tibet fans.


Many Western politicians also treat the Dalai Lama with the utmost respect, provoking rebukes from China’s ruling Communist Party.


In October 2007, former U.S. president George W. Bush put his arm around the Dalai Lama and led him by the hand to the podium to receive the congressional Gold Medal, the highest U.S. civilian honour.


German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are among other leaders who have angered China by having meetings with the Tibetan Buddhist leader.


Tibetans inside and outside China usually welcome the interest in their culture and the support for the Dalai Lama – a phenomenon that has been heightened by the 50th anniversary of the March 10, 1959, beginning of the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule and the flight a week later of the Dalai Lama into exile in India.


At the Rongwo Buddhist monastery in China’s Qinghai province recently, Tibetan monks showed two photographs of the Dalai Lama on their mobile phone. In the two pictures, the Dalai Lama was with new U.S. President Barack Obama and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.


"It gives me hope to know that these foreigners are supporting the Dalai Lama," one of the Rongwo monks said. "I have more hope and strength when I see these photographs, and I hope that Tibetans can find a peaceful solution."

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