1,200-year-old monastery in Tibet to be renovated

A 1,200-year-old monastery in Tibet will be repaired at a cost of USD 2.2 million to restore its original layout and style.
The work on Shide Ling Monastery, located in regional capital Lhasa, is expected to start in late March and cost around 15 million yuan (USD 2.28 million), an official with the region's cultural relics bureau said today.
The repair, outsourced to a specialist local architecture firm, will be based on old photos and maintain the monastery's original layout and style.
Walls that are too fragile to support the structure will be torn down and replaced, and those with minor cracks will be fixed.

Specialists will be assigned to protect the wall paintings during the repair, state-run Xinhua news agency reported today.
Shide Ling Monastery was built in the ninth century and was once home to Living Buddha Reting, who served as Tibet's regent in charge of political and religious affairs after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1933.
Reting was fatally poisoned in 1947 by the pro- imperialist Regent Taktra and the monastery was set on fire, the report said.