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.
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.