The parish ledger says it all.

Lying askew on a shelf in the Deqin county library, Father Francis Gore's last entry in the dun-coloured book records in flowery script how Franciscus, son of Pantou and Paulae of Longbachicka village in this northwest corner of Yunnan province, on the Tibetan border, received his "Sacred Confirmation [in the] Year of our Lord February 13th, 1951."

Inside a Catholic church in Cizhong

Three hours' drive south of Deqin, in a tiny village called Cizhong nestled deep in the remote mountain ranges that were once under Tibet's administration, is a man who remembers both Gore and Savioz.

Liu Wenzeng is sitting in his ramshackle wooden house drinking homemade red wine. Pictures of Jesus and Mary look down from rough plaster walls, as does a red metal plaque distributed by the local branch of the Communist Party, documenting the inhabitants' virtues - one star for patriotism, another for neighbourliness, cleanliness and so on.

A tanned, wiry man with silver-framed glasses and an affable smile, Liu downs a glass of his Rose Honey wine, made from vines brought by the missionaries 100 years ago, and lets out a loud "aaah" of satisfaction.

Pope Gregory XVI decreed from Rome that Tibet must be converted

The survival of the Catholic Church in this distant corner of the world, a gruelling week's drive from Yunnan's capital Kunming, is remarkable, reported the South China Morning Post in a feature article by its China correspondent.

The area's inaccessibility means outside influences are few, but once established they are tenacious.

In more than a dozen small villages strung along the narrow banks of the upper Mekong and Salween river valleys, like pearls on a chain, the Catholic Church has survived 150 years of hostility from Buddhist lamas and the Communist Party.

Born in 1937, Liu was 14 when Father Gore scribbled that final entry in the Cizhong parish register. China expelled all foreign priests from its territory after the 1949 revolution and discouraged-often violently-religious practice.

Liu's parents, who were Nationalist village officials and Christians, came from an intellectual family, a rare thing among Cizhong's population. "I remember the fathers ... I was about seven," he says. "I used to spend quite a lot of time with them. They wore their long dresses and had beards......They were good to me."

Ironically, one of the stars that Liu doesn't have on his plaque is for education. The former school teacher was never able to recoup the status he had before 1966.

Aged 29 and teaching in a school near Deqin after teacher-training college in Kunming, Liu was stripped of his job when the Cultural Revolution struck.

As a practising Catholic, teacher and son of Kuomintang officials, he had three major black marks against his name. Liu was sent back to Cizhong, where he laboured as a farmer for 15 years.

The town's Catholic church, a late 19th-century stone and wood building with curving Chinese-style eaves, was shut down, reopening soon afterwards as a primary school. But the village was short of teachers, and in the early 1980s the Party asked Liu to teach again. He never reclaimed the 15 years of lost pension.

The extraordinary tale of Tibet's small but robust Catholic population unfolds along the banks of the Mekong and Salween rivers.

The story begins around 1846, when Pope Gregory XVI decreed from distant Rome that the church must convert Tibet from its staunch and proud adherence to Buddhism.

The Pope formed the Tibet Mission and entrusted it to the Missions Etrangeres de Paris, a French group that first sent missionary priests to Asia in the 14th century. The Tibet Mission was a difficult project-almost impossible.

Entering Tibet via India and China around 1860, the missionaries lasted only a year. They were interlopers who challenged the power of the lamas in their giant temples, and the lamas employed peaceful and violent methods to be rid of them.

The Buddhists' opposition to the Missions Etrangeres was so vehement that, during its 100-year presence in the area, its envoys had only a one-in-two chance of survival.

Of the 44 priests sent to Tibet, half of them died, according to Father Jean Charbonnier, the Paris-based head of the Missions' China Service. Sickness took some-strange fevers and infections - but many died violent deaths, murdered either by brigands or, more often, by assassins paid by the lamas.

But Christianity did get a chance, inspite of the struggles, to grow. The lamas owned all the land in their domains and taxed farmers heavily. In contrast, the French bought their land through alliances with local secular rulers and sold or loaned it to farmers.

As a result, says Charbonnier, Christian communities prospered. The missionaries also brought with them rudimentary medical knowledge and quickly acquired a reputation for ministering not only to wealthier, but healthier, flocks. Catholicism spread, slowly but surely.

Until the Communist Party took over the land.

Liu nostalgically remembers the last batch of missionaries, who arrived in the 1930s. "They built a school for the girls and tried to each us Latin," he says. "They spoke many languages." Liu was particularly impressed by Father Gore, who spoke French, Latin, Chinese and Tibetan.

The priest was a famed linguist who wrote a book outlining the intricacies of Tibetan grammar. He died in France in 1954, shortly after leaving China, having sent the bulk of his voluminous language and cultural research to Hong Kong for safekeeping.

There are 14 churches in this stunning landscape, 2,000 metres above sea level where the Mekong cuts a deep gorge through steep mountains.

It's harvest time in Cizhong. And almost everyone is outside bringing in the wheat. At 9.30am, the dull sound of a bell rings out over the village - a call to prayer. But this is the busiest Sunday in the farming calendar, so only nine worshippers are attending church, a sharp drop from the average congregation of several hundred.

Eighty percent of Cizhong's 1,950 residents are Catholic; 15 percent are Buddhist and 5 percent are followers of Dongba, the Naxi religion. They are devout people, but first and foremost they are farmers.

Like other churches in the region, Cizhong has no priest. Only a church in Yanjing, across the border in Tibet proper, has that honour. On special occasions such as Easter, a priest visits from Dali, but that's not enough. Cizhong's faithful have devised their own, unusual â??Mass'. They still use Tibetan-language prayer and hymn books from a century ago, translated by the missionaries.

But the service is a cultural hodge-podge. The faithful sing and pray for up to three hours, with tunes that recall the ritual chanting of Buddhist monks. They kneel and rise in prayer repeatedly.

After the service, which ends abruptly as if by prearranged signal, a male worshipper approaches the altar, genuflects and closes the slightly opened gate.It's a symbolic gesture that seems to say, "The priest has left."

One by one they file out of the church and rush down the village road to join the harvest.

Source-The South China's Morning Post