Tibetan artist Namgyal has devoted nearly half his life to the traditional art of Thangka. The 26-year-old, who began practicing the age-old Buddhist banner art when he was 14, is paying his first visit to Beijing, where he will stay until late August.

Although he has left his Tibetan hometown of Kangding, in Sichuan province, to travel to the Olympic city for his first time, he has not come to watch the Beijing Games.

Instead, he, along with some 100 plus Tibetan artists and trained guides who speak Tibetan, Mandarin and English, will welcome visitors from around the world to a grand exhibition about Tibetan culture at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in downtown Beijing.

"I hope visitors will like the exhibition and go to visit my hometown," he says.

The exhibition presents hundreds of Thangka paintings portraying stories of the central epic poem of Tibet, The Epic of King Gesar.

Handed down by generations of ballad singers in Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia over 1,000 years, The Epic of King Gesar is considered one of the world's longest epics - containing 20 million plus words in more than one million verses. It tells how the half-human, half-god Tibetan king conquered the devils of other tribes and sought to help ordinary people.

Visitors will be able to see Namgyal and other Tibetan artists paint in the exhibition hall and watch live performances by artists from the Garze Tibetan Song and Dance Troupe from Sichuan.

Also on the program is Ani, a renowned Tibetan artist from Derge, in Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, in Sichuan province. Clad in traditional costume, Ani will sing songs from The Epic of King Gesar.

The 270 Thangka paintings on display have been selected from the King Gesar Epic Thangka Painting Series, which has a total of 1,288 works created by over 200 Tibetan researchers and Thangka painters over the past decade. The collection was listed as an intangible cultural heritage under State protection in 2007.

The pieces selected for the Beijing exhibition, featuring 2m-tall by 1.4m-wide Thangkas, aims to convey a complete account of The Epic of King Gesar, says 50-year-old Genqiu Tashi, the founder of the King Gesar Epic Thangka Painting Series and deputy director of Ling State King Gesar Culture Co Ltd in Garze, the project's key organizer. In 2002, the prefecture's government gave the company 70 percent control over the project, which was initiated in 1999.

Born in a small village in Derge, the westernmost city in Sichuan, also considered to be the hometown of King Gesar, Genqiu was only a few years old when he first heard ballad singing of the legendary ruler who conquered devils and brought prosperity and happiness to the people.

"Love for The Epic of King Gesar is deeply rooted in my heart," says Genqiu.

Through his teenage years, Genqiu traveled on his own, visiting and learning from painting masters in various villages and monasteries. At a ripe 21 years, he assumed the position of chief art tutor for monk students at the world-famous Derge Sutra Printing Institute.

In the years following, he joined all major conservation efforts for damaged murals and ancient Thangkas in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Sichuan, Tibet and western China. During his journeys, the artist was struck by the beauty seen in the scared art collections of several monasteries that held ancient Thangka masterpieces about King Gesar.

Still, the project, which has incurred over 23 million yuan ($3.35 million) in costs, presented a challenge for the artists. The lack of authoritative blueprints on the Thangka series made it hard to create the collection, says Qiudengzi, a Tibetologist from Garze and chief literary scriptwriter for the King Gesar Epic Thangka Series.

At least 100 versions of the legend about King Gesar have been found circulating among ballad singers, Qiudengzi explains. Although basic rules are respected by all painters, he says the stories of King Gesar are plentiful and portrayals of the King vary from one painting school to another, and from region to region across China.

Therefore, to guarantee the depictions of the King and the epic's 30 other key characters, ancient weapons and daily events were kept in line with historical records and widely recognized oral narrations, a band of researchers, folklorists and Thangka painters have traveled to Sichuan, Tibet, Qinghai, Yunnan, and even to Nepal and India, to research and gather materials for the project over the years.

Based on their work, the scriptwriter was able to weave together major plots from 73 of the most widely known versions of The Epic King Gesar to shape the backbones of the project.

Eventually, the massive Thangka painting process kicked off in 2002 and was sealed off in late 2007. It involved more than 120 veteran painters who were selected from a pool of over 1,000 candidates working under the guidance of Genqiu.

"To ensure high efficiency and precision for the final piece, we adopted a working mode similar to the assembly line in the manufacturing sector," says Zeren.

Painters and craftsmen were divided into groups. Each was responsible for one of the eight major painting stages, including the monochrome sketching, initial color rendering, tracing in gold dust, eye-depiction, polishing and mounting.

The Thangka painters adhered to traditional painting techniques, making use of natural or mineral colors, and even gold dust or ground powder of precious stones. The Karma Gadri painting style, the oldest and most complicated style of Thangka art, was used to highlight the most vivid details of scenes from The Epic of King Gesar, according to Zeren.

The exhibit is further unique because King Gesar is the main focus in each of the serial Thangka paintings, unlike traditional works that usually portray the Buddha or other Buddhist gods and goddesses as the centerpiece, says Yang Guangyou, general manager of Ling State King Gesar Culture Co Ltd.

The exhibition will make its global debut on a world tour following the Olympics.

"One day, I suddenly hit upon an idea: Can I paint a series of Thangkas by myself to tell the whole story of King Gesar? " recalls Genqiu.

He also wanted to project to bring attention to the vanishing Thangka presence.

"It will help more people who do not speak Tibetan access the fantastic stories of King Gesar. The Epic is more than folk tales. It is like an oral encyclopedia about Tibetan culture and history," he says.

As the artistic expedition endured, more and more people teamed up with Genqiu to help him with the mission of integrating The Epic of King Gesar with the art of Thangka painting, Tibetan opera singing and Tibetan folk singing.

With warm support from King Gesar researchers, Thangka painters and local government, the project snowballed into a huge cultural endeavor that has attracted attention from across the country, according to Zeren Jimei, chief marketing director for the project.