Heroisms abound in the worst natural disaster in contemporary China, but the valor, dedication, and selflessness demonstrated by China’s men and women in uniform are especially impressive.

One of Chen Shui-bian’s famous quotes is “to dream is beautiful, wherein hope lies.” He won Taipei’s mayoral election in 1994, and Taiwan’s presidential election in 2000 with these enticing, charming words.

The response is spontaneous, prompt and overwhelming. The outpouring of sympathy, compassion and agony is genuine and unabashed. Suddenly, the killer earthquake that struck mainland China’s Sichuan province on Monday is awakening a long-dormant compatriot love hidden deep in the hearts of millions of people on this island separated from the mainland by lingering hostilities from a still unfinished civil war.

The 7.8 magnitude earthquake in China’s southwestern Sichuan province is inflicting grievous damage and suffering many times that of the Chi Chi earthquake that occurred in Taiwan on Sept. 21, 1999.

We are watching an exciting sequel to Rocky, in which a female impersonator of Rocky, named Hillary Rodham Clinton, is fighting a losing duel but refusing to throw in the towel, yelling, as the tenacious boxer did in the movie: “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

“Silence is golden/But my eyes still see.” These are the lines from a love song which evoke a deja vu:

One of the first things President-elect Ma Ying-jeou should do after assuming office May 20 is end the folly of “dollar diplomacy,” because it has been proven futile and humiliating by the latest scandal in which Taiwan has lost US$30 million paid to two diplomatic brokers who promised to lure Papua New Guinea away from mainland China to Taiwan.

The appointment of Ms. Lai Shin-yuan, an avowed separatist, to head the Cabinet’s Mainland Affairs Commission came like a thunderbolt out of the blue.

The news about Beijing’s decision to meet with the representative of the Dalai Lama should come as no surprise because mainland China has asserted from the beginning that its policy towards the Dalai Lama “has been consistent,” and the door for dialogue “has remained open.”

The ice is starting to melt, that’s for sure. The frozen Taiwan Strait started to thaw the moment Vincent Siew and Hu Jintao made a historic handshake Saturday on an island in the South China Sea.