Tibetan art revival

An exhibition of 30 thangka paintings by master painters from Qinghai is now on at the National Art Museum of China. Lin Qi reports.

When Nyangbon, 47, now a State-level master of arts and crafts in Northwest China's Qinghai province, began to learn thangka - traditional Tibetan Buddhist painting - that had been carried on for centuries in his native town of Tongren, it was a dying art. Very few thangka artists, including Nyangbon's master, Shaur Tsering, were alive, and they were aging.

At that point, Nyangbon, then 12, dropped out of school and was sent by his father to study thangka so that he could make a living from it.