"Dalai" is just the Mongolian translation of his Tibetan name: Tenzin "Gyatso", which translates to "Ocean" in English.

Yes. I was simply responding to someone earlier who had said it was Chinese.

"yo shangui,
How are you familiar with the nationalities of the 'commentors above'? And do you know that as an Icelander, Bjørk's country has no modern history of imperial expansion? A nice cynical position you've got there, but it doesn't at all relate to this post or this thread."

Yo omphagia agogo!

I'm not, that's why I said, "American activists (and commentators above)" (the adjective "American" was supposed to apply to both "activists" and "commentators above." You'll note also that I specifically criticized an American actor, Richard Gere. Finally, I didn't criticize Bjork specifically (though she is a property owner in NYC and I doubt she's going to be giving her land in Nyack back to the Native Americans) and in fact welcomed her to be my God-King! Not cynical, just trying to be realistic (aside from the God-King part). I actually lived in China for many years and have good friends there and in the US who are Tibetan and have showed me some of the nuances of this issues that are missed at Beastie Boys concerts.

Oh, and "Dalai" is Mongolian, not Chinese.

"The Dalai Lama's title, which is half Chinese (Dalai) and half Tibetan (Lama), supports the argument that Tibet has always been part of China."

Unfortunately, historical reality does not support this argument at all. At best, Tibet has occasionally been a client state of China at various points in the last 1500 years of so. China has very rarely had full military control over Tibet in that period and has almost never had political control.

I do think that the PRC has acted horribly in Tibet and has no moral right to control Tibet. At the same time, how many of the American activists (and commentators above) who are outraged at what the PRC has done are willing to give their real estate in the US back to the Native Americans? Has Richard Gere turned over his various homes and the land they occupy to their rightful owners? I think not. It's easy to demand justice when it only costs other people.

The depressing thing is how much Tibet is a non-issue to most mainland Han Chinese. That is, they are 100% confident in their belief that China has a perfect right to behave how it has there. This bodes very poorly for any hope of increased independence for Tibet. Of course it was a theocratic slave society prior to China's invasion so perhaps going back to the true old days wouldn't be that great either.

In any case, I would happily be a lower caste in a theocratic slave society were Bjork to be my God-King.

大自然 does indeed mean "nature" or "Nature." "The great outdoors" would be a very misleading translation both of the way the term is used in current Chinese and how it developed historically. I think some of you might be getting mislead by the 大 here but 大自然 is a common term. The nuclear power plant is indeed labeled as 核子站, so it is NOT meant to be a coalfire plant.

I don't think this image would be at all odd to the average person growing up in the PRC (or Taiwan for that matter). Industrialization has long been a point of national pride and nature has not traditionally been seen as the polar opposite of man-made. Remember, Chinese landscape paintings almost always include either human people or buildings. A pagoda is no more or less "natural" than a power plant.