Asia’s weird 2023: from Dalai Lama’s gaffe to ‘puking mullet bird’, stories that amuse and enrage
- Dalai Lama set tongues wagging over a gaffe, a comedian slammed over a tasteless MH370 joke and AirAsia CEO soared online for being topless
- Animals also made the news: a ‘puking’ bird became New Zealand’s feathered icon of the century thanks to John Oliver, while a man aspired to be a dog
1. Dalai Lama’s slip of the tongue
The Dalai Lama, the 87-year-old spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, set tongues wagging globally after a viral video of him asking a young boy to suck his tongue drew widespread condemnations.
The video shows the Dalai Lama planting a kiss on the boy’s lips as the child leans forward to pay his respects. The Buddhist monk is then seen sticking his tongue out and asking the child in Tibetan, “Can you suck my tongue?”
He later apologised over the incident.
Many users on X, formerly Twitter, slammed the Dalai Lama, calling him “disgusting” and “absolutely sick”.
But some defended him, saying reactions to the video were “blown out of proportion” and an attack on the Tibetan way of life.
Journalist Tenzin Pema said Tibetan culture had been misconstrued to create a false narrative against the Dalai Lama. Some gestures – not commonly known to the rest of the world – were considered by Tibetans to be “pure unadulterated acts of love, faith and compassion”.
The words nge che le jip, uttered by the Dalai Lama in the video, are a common and playful refrain uttered by Tibetan elders and innocent-sounding to Tibetans but they did not seem that way to outsiders when translated into English as “suck my tongue”, she said.
2. Till death do us art
