Published by: World Tibet Network News Thursday, November 6, 1997

WASHINGTON 06-NOV-97, (AP) -- Every Friday, Grace Spring gets up and drives to the Chinese Embassy to hold a silent vigil. For 10 years now, she has been waging a one-woman protest against China's hard-line rule in Tibet.

Thousands of motorists drive by as Spring stands there, clutching her Tibetan flag. It rains. It snows. She hopes her persistence will encourage others to take an interest in her cause.

Now, as she completes the 10th year of her solo protest, Spring is heartened by rising U.S. interest in Tibet.

Last week, when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Washington, Spring was there in the crowd as thousands of protesters demanded that Tibet be released from Chinese control. Today, a new government-appointed special policy adviser on Tibet testifies before Congress for the first time.

And for Americans not tuned into politics, five new movies set in Asia, including "Seven Years in Tibet," are showing in theaters nationwide.

For years, Spring felt isolated as she pressed her campaign against American ignorance and apathy about Tibet, a Himalayan region annexed into China in the 1950s.

In the early 1980s, she opened her Washington home to a nun, two Buddhist monks called "lamas" and a translator who came from Tibet to open a meditation center.

"When I told people I had lamas at my house, they said, `Gosh, that's really nice, but where do they sleep?"' Spring recalled.

In an upstairs bedroom, she replied. "But how do they get up the stairs?" her friends asked. "I'm not talking about four-legged llamas!" Spring told them in exasperation. "I'm talking about two-legged lamas."

The lamas made a snow Buddha on her front yard. Before Tibet was annexed into China, the country was a kind of religious kingdom. Buddhist monks had a strong voice in how Tibet was ruled. After the annexation, Tibet's religious and civil leader known as the Dalai Lama was forced into exile.

The United States does not dispute Chinese rule over Tibet, but wants Beijing to open talks with the Dalai Lama. "My wish is that they will sit down and have dialogue with his holiness about what is possible in Tibet," Spring says.

This is why Spring has made herself a Friday fixture at the embassy.

"I get up and say I'm not going and then my body gets dressed and, by golly, I'm following it right out the door," says Spring, a Washington-area artist in her 50s.

"When I'm not there, people ask, `Where have you been?"'

Supporters flash their headlights, honk their horns and make the victory sign. One motorist gave her a pair of battery-heated socks. Some people look the other way when they see her. Others hand her a blueberry muffin or hot coffee. Two Chinese-Americans on bicycles regularly give her a thumb's up.

Chinese officials seem resigned to her presence in a tiny park across from the embassy's front door.

"This is the way things are in the United States," said embassy spokesman Yu Shuning. "What can we do?"