A middle-aged Tibetan woman named Cering entered the red and white Potala Palace carrying a prayer wheel, butter and highland barley wine.

"The grand Potala Palace is matchless in the world. It is not only beautiful but also has the mighty Buddha," said the 43-year-old woman.

Every Buddha Month, which falls on April in Tibetan calendar, thousands of Tibetan Buddhist believers flocked to the Potala Palace to pray for the health of family members and good reincarnation of the dead.

There is a saying in Tibet: If you haven't been to the Potala Palace, you haven't been to Lhasa, or even Tibet. With its imposing construction and religious culture, the Palace has become the holy shrine deep in the hearts of all Tibetans.

The palace, erected at an altitude of 3,763 meters high, is the largest castle-like building group in Tibet and it displays the essence of construction, painting and religious art in Tibet. And it was included in the list of world cultural heritage by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1994.

For most Tibetans, the palace is full of magic. "It is the world's highest palace," acknowledged Wangdu, a Tibetan Buddhist worshipper who is paying religious homage to it. "The most mysterious thing is that you do not know how it was constructed."

The rock wall is five meters thick in some parts and modern people cannot imagine how these boulders were carried onto the steep Red Hill, where the palace was situated.

The height of the hill shows the wealthy social strata and highlights the royal family's paramount power. The steep hill also enforces the defensive function of the palace, combining its magnificence and the security of the castle together.

The thickness of the rock wall, all in granite, gradually decreases from the ground to the top.

"The Potala Palace is a building structure without a blueprint, and the style is unique," said 62-year-old Jampa Gaisang, in charge of the administration of the palace.

Gaisang started to participate in the maintenance of the palace since 1989.

The Potala Palace absorbs the construction art from people of Tibetan, Han and Manchu ethnicities as well as the essence of construction from India and Nepal. The whole building structure is composed of palaces, castles and living quarters, distributed in different layers.

The Potala Palace, originally built in the seventh century, was ruined in a fire caused by thunder, and subsequently restored by the Fifth Dalai Lama over three centuries ago.

Apart from a model of construction art, the Potala Palace is also an amazing treasure house of the religious artistic works of the Tibetans. Since the fifth Dalai Lama moved into the palace, it became a place of power and treasures from all over the region flowed into the palace, in which the most valuable are Buddhism scriptures.

Some of the books are written in silver or gold ink, and the most precious is a kind of Buddhist scripture from India.

During 15 years from 1989 to 1994, the Chinese government allocated 53 million yuan (about US$6.4 million) for the maintenance of the palace. In 2002, China started the maintenance work of three important cultural treasures in Tibet with an input of 330 million yuan (approximately US$40 million), of which 179 million went to the maintenance and renovation of the Potala Palace.

(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2004)