LHASA (Dec. 25) XINHUA - Six European doctors last night celebrated the Christmas eve in Lhasa, capital city of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

They are volunteers sent by a Belgium-based international medical organization to work in accordance with a medical assistance program in this remote and underdeveloped region, and gave up their vacations for work.

"This is the fifth Christmas I celebrated in this plateau city, and I have become quite used to it," said Francoise Mathieu, a female surgeon from Belgium.

"Needless to say, celebrations and festivities here are no match to those in Europe," she noted. "But we are happy all the same, especially after receiving cheese sent by our families."

While becoming increasingly popular among urban youth in other parts of China, Christmas has never been celebrated in Tibet, whose residents are almost unexceptionally pious Buddhists.

However, the Lhasa City Bureau of Public Health did not forget to prepare Christmas presents for the doctors, a delicate tapestry embroidered with the pattern of yaks the region's special animal.

The director of the bureau, a Tibetan woman, expressed her thanks to the European doctors for their contributions to the improvement of local public health conditions.

"We sincerely wish you a merry Christmas and every success in the new year," she said.

During the past six years, foreign volunteers have cooperated with local medical workers to cure 6,000 patients of the Kaschin-Beck disease, and helped train 600 village doctors for the suburban counties of Lhasa.