By Mark O'Neill

LUOSUI VILLAGE, China, 13 Sep. (Reuter) - The people of Luosui share the village with their goats and pigs, and soot from their open hearths blackens their homes -- but one room in each house is sacrosanct, spotlessly clean.

That room is the Buddhist shrine where the family hangs pictures of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist god-king the Dalai Lama and other holy leaders above an altar covered with offerings. Reviled by the Beijing government that accuses him of trying to split China, the Dalai Lama is revered by the Muosuo tribe who live in Luosui in a corner of China's southwestern Yunnan province near Tibet.

Around Lugu Lake live 50,000 members of the Muosuo tribe, who are reviving their Buddhist faith after decades of communist revolution and ultra-leftist persecution. Luosui's 476 people make their main devotions at a temple on an island in the lake, 15 minutes by wooden canoe from the shore. The temple's senior monk, or lama, is Ah Zhong He, 75, who sits below a painting of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, capital of the Himalayan region of Tibet, and recites Tibetan scriptures to his disciples. He has three students training to be lamas.

Erchepinchu is a tall, handsome 17-year-old, wrapped in a maroon robe and with his head shaven. "I chose to come here three years ago," he said, sitting cross-legged beside Ah Zhong He. "It is hard work learning Tibetan. I do it by memory. Becoming a lama means I cannot marry, quarrel, smoke, drink or eat lean meat." He plans to follow his teacher and go to study in Lhasa, where Ah Zhong He was a student from 1943 to 1954. "We are honoured that our son is studying to be a lama," said his father Dashi Akaachincha. "Belief in Buddhism is strong in the village. It gives us social order and discipline."

The family may be too poor to send their son to Lhasa when he is 18 but hopes to do so when he is 20, he said. "He could be there for two years or for his whole life." Akaachincha proudly shows visitors the family shrine, adorned with pictures of famous lamas, including the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Communist rule has left its scars around the Lugu Lake. When the communists took over, or "liberated," the area in 1956, seven years after the rest of China, local landlords were stripped of their land and privileges.

However, some received official posts in keeping with their religious standing and prestige among the Muosuo population. Far worse was the persecution in the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution where temples were ransacked, holy objects destroyed and worship forbidden. Some of the ultra-leftist Red Guards involved in the destruction were local Muosuo people. "From 1967 to 1978 I could not read the scriptures except at home very secretly," recalled Ah Zhong He. His temple ha s been repaired at a cost of $12,000 donated by local people, but two others in the area vandalised in the Cultural Revolution are not restored.

A large temple in the nearby town of Yongning, is home to 50 elderly lamas and 200 students, compared with 400 lamas and 300 disciples before the Cultural Revolution, Ah Zhong He said. Before 1956, about one third of adult men in Yongning were lamas.

Akaachincha, village mayor from 1954 to 1976, is confident that their local Buddhist faith, which survived the attacks of Communism, will outlive a new challenge, mammon. A sudden influx of foreign and Chinese tourists since 1992 has brought unprecedented wealth to families that have built guesthouses to accommodate them and do business with them. "The faith of the young is as strong as ours," said Akaachincha. "This wealth will not influence our religion. It only means we can buy better objects and worship Buddha in a better way."