Tibetan archivist preserves history in retirement

Despite retiring at the end of last year, veteran Tibetan archive restoration specialist Dadron is still guiding efforts to preserve historical documents in the Xizang autonomous region.

Trained as part of the first cohort of restoration staff at the Xizang Archives Bureau, Dadron has spent 38 years helping to restore tens of thousands of precious archives. "These archives carry the historical memory of Xizang, and my job was to ensure that they could continue to be preserved," she told China News Service.

The region's historical archives bureau was founded in 1980, renamed several years later, and upgraded with a fully functional facility in 1987, the same year Dadron was recruited straight out of high school.

"At that time, I didn't really understand the importance of protecting cultural relics and documents," she said. "But gradually I realized these archives are invaluable witnesses of history."

In 1989, Dadron left Xizang for the first time to study restoration techniques in Beijing. She trained for nearly six months at the National Archives Administration of China and the First Historical Archives of China. "That was my first time leaving my hometown and parents to travel to the outside world," she said.

She later learned paper-pulp repair methods in Shanghai in 2008, where she helped adapt imported German equipment to meet the Tibetan archive requirements. More than 95 percent of the items in the Tibetan archives are made of Tibetan paper, with the rest being made of xuanzhi, or rice paper, bamboo cotton paper, and other materials. Repairing them is a delicate process.

"Because archives are unique historical evidence, we do not supplement any missing information, and our main focus is on protecting and repairing the damaged parts of the paper," she said.