By Yang Guang

    BEIJING, Nov. 18 -- Pan Shixun has lost count of the number of times he has been to Tibet. Except for Ngari in the region's western part and Medog in the southeastern part, the 75-year-old painter has left his footprints on almost every inch of the plateau.

Pan Shixun stands beside his painting We Walk on the Broad Road, displayed at the National Art Museum of China. (Photo: China Daily/Yang Guang) Photo Gallery>>>

    Pan remembers his first visit to the region in 1960 as a student of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. He never thought his half-a-year stay then would inspire his lifelong pursuit of portraying the land closest to the gods with his brush, and sow the seeds of his "Tibet complex".

    "When it comes to Tibet, I'm always overcome with guilt because I have never been able to express what I have felt for the land and its people to the fullest," says the silver-haired painter. "This is what drives me to Tibet again and again."

    Pan is among 139 painters whose works are currently on display at the National Art Museum of China. Titled Inspiration

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from Plateau - Chinese Fine Arts Exhibition, the exhibition is the largest to date on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and will last through Nov 30.

    The 345 paintings, spanning the past 60 years, feature the dramatic changes that have occurred in the region before and after its peaceful liberation in 1951.

    Standing in front of his 1964 work, We Walk on the Broad Road, Pan says he feels "lucky to have been a witness to Tibet's sea change". The painting shows a group of Tibetan road builders in high spirits, walking, talking, and laughing.

    Pan also recalls vividly an elderly Tibetan woman he ran into in 1960. He wanted to sketch her weather-beaten looks and tried to get her to smile.

    To his surprise, he found the woman had actually forgotten how to smile, from long years of suffering.

    When Pan went to Tibet for the second time in 1963, he saw a different people. Once he became acquainted with them, the locals would even light-heartedly pat him on the back and share a joke.