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By PETER HESSLER
Chengdu, China

Nyima Lhamo knows what lies between Tibet and China: Poland.

At least this is true in her unique experience, which has involved a long and tangled journey from a childhood in eastern Tibet to her current position as a museum curator at Sichuan University. Along the way, the 50-year-old Tibetan has joined the Communist Party, gained a college degree in chemistry, and clung tenaciously to her Buddhist faith. She also spent a year studying art conservation at Poland's Nicolai Copernici University, where she went to the library and read everything she could find about Tibetan art. "I found some articles in English about how to restore and protect thankas [traditional Tibetan Buddhist scroll paintings]," she says. "We don't have any of those materials here."

Such research speaks volumes about the status of art conservation in China, where a museum curator must ferret English articles out of a Polish library so she can learn how to preserve Tibetan art. But it also illustrates the determination of China-based Tibetans as they struggle to protect their culture. This resourcefulness was the focus of a recent course in which a US aid organization spent three weeks giving intensive training in art conservation to Nyima Lhamo and 18 other Tibetans.

"These students will be the first generation of trained Tibetan conservators, as well as the first generation of museologists," says Karen Yager, a New York-based art conservator who served as the primary instructor for the course, which was sponsored by the Kham Aid Foundation. Established in 1997, Kham Aid is one of a growing number of organizations that attempt to aid Tibet within the Chinese system. Such efforts sometimes find themselves under attack by both sides of an explosive issue: the Chinese are suspicious of any foreign involvement in the region, and some pro-Tibet activists view such assistance as tantamount to supporting Chinese occupation.

But for the most part Kham Aid has skirted such problems by sticking to non-political issues like promoting education and protecting Tibetan art. While some critics might claim that even this kind of assistance represents a tacit approval of the Chinese presence, Ms. Yager says that she is comfortable with her work, which last year included a major two-month restoration of 300-year-old murals at western Sichuan province's Baiya Monastery.

"I'm not working with anybody except the Tibetans," she says. "And we're doing things that aid and develop Tibetan culture. Many of the Tibetans who get things done work with the Chinese, and the way they do this is by walking a very fine line. These are people who have to work with the politics -- they have to be realistic."

Nyima Lhamo is a prime example of a Tibetan who has learned to thrive within the Chinese system. She is the only Tibetan faculty member at Sichuan University, where she taught chemistry before accepting the position as museum curator. Throughout her 22-year tenure on the faculty, she has been careful to preserve her Tibetan identity. Despite her membership in the Communist Party, which promotes atheism, she has quietly kept her faith, and her apartment is probably the only one on campus where visitors are served yak butter tea. Her living room is decorated with an enormous portrait of the Potala Palace, the traditional residence of the Dalai Lama. But mostly she has preserved her identity by focusing on one goal: protecting traditional Tibetan art.

"Our museum has between 400 and 500 thankas like this," she says, pausing in front of an early-18th-century scroll that hangs in the Sichuan University Museum. The painting features a delicate portrait of Buddha on cloth, and, like all Tibetan thankas, it follows strict guidelines established by past masters. The earliest beginnings of this tradition were first established in the mid-seventh century, when religious men from the south brought Buddhist religion and its art to Tibet. By the 15th century, Tibetan Buddhism had developed its own distinct style of religious iconography, combining both Indian and Chinese artistic elements.

Thankas could serve a number of purposes, ranging from funeral offerings to meditation guides, and they often decorated monasteries, where years of incense and lamp smoke invariably damaged the paintings. Many were completely destroyed during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, when Chinese campaigns against religion ruined most Tibetan monasteries and temples. But many religious buildings survived in Tibetan parts of western Sichuan, which includes some of the wildest and most remote mountains in the country. This remoteness, however, has also made it difficult for restoration efforts. And perhaps the most galling problem for conservators like Nyima Lhamo is that even the few thankas that find their way to museums are often poorly preserved. "Most of our thankas aren't on display," she says. "Ever since I came here, I've wanted to restore and display more of them, but it's hard. Money is always a problem. But even money isn't as important as knowledge -- that's what we lack the most."

The recent Kham Aid restoration course addressed both of these issues, aiming to impart maximum knowledge at minimum expense. Located at a Tibetan college in the western Sichuan city of Kangding, the course was an exercise in resourcefulness. "I showed them the ideal materials, and then from there I taught them how to use the available materials," says Ms. Yager. "For example, a vacuum table costs $30,000 in a museum, but I showed them how to build one for $150. A suction disk will go for hundreds or thousands of dollars; we built one out of tubing and wire and net and Chinese vacuum cleaners that I modified. It cost us $75. We did humidity tables for $10."

Nyima Lhamo translated the lessons on chemical analysis, and the other 18 students, most of whom are art teachers or students at Kangding's college, contributed their knowledge of Tibetan art. For Ms. Yager, who has been an art conservator for 25 years, it was a unique experience. "These are kids who grew up in tents," she says. "So to go from a tent to talking about distilling chemicals is really mind-boggling."

But even as this generation gains crucial technical skills, the Tibetan artifacts that have survived Chinese occupation continue to fade from neglect. Nyima Lhamo, whose education and career have been a lesson in resourcefulness, hopes that somewhere she can find the funding and training necessary to win this race against time.

"I wish I were younger," she says. "There's so much more that I need to study, and it's only recently that I've been exposed to these techniques. But the good aspect is that I'm incredibly eager, because it's all so new. It's like I'm an elementary school student again."

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