Workers examine a fresco. [Photo by Wang Kaihao/China Daily]

Residents from neighboring areas are being hired for the project and each of them is paid 180 yuan a day, says Champa Tsering.

New life for frescoes

The renovations of Buddhist sanctuaries in Tibet is taking different forms.

For example, in the Drepung Monastery, the biggest monastery in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region, experts from the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage are working with the lamas to save the fading frescoes.

The monastery was built in 1416, but it was expanded over the next few hundred years, which led to a section of the frescoes in the Tsokchen Temple, the main structure, being hidden since the 18th century.