While many Chinese people know the conservators working at the Palace Museum through last year’s hit documentary Masters in Forbidden City, they may have barely heard of Qiu Jinxian, who was the first Chinese hired at the British Museum.

Since 1987,  the 64-year-old senior conservator from Shanghai has been there leading the restoration of ancient Chinese paintings along with the apprentices for 30 years,

Before coming to the UK, Qiu trained and worked at the Shanghai museum. Later, by chance she was just invited to demonstrate her skills at the British Museum. But once she showed her Chinese techniques by perfectly restoring a fire-damaged landscape painting by famous Chinese ink painting artist Fu Baoshi (1904-1965), the museum asked her to stay to help restore the 1,500 or so ancient Chinese paintings and calligraphy pieces housed there.

The experts at the British Museum said they were all amazed by her methods, recalling that she poured the boiling water directly on the surface of the painting after inspecting the color of the pigment, then she rinsed and dried it. The process was repeated 5 times until it had been repaired.

Today, at the Hirayama Conservation Studio under the British Museum’s Department of Conservation and Scientific Research, Qiu keeps restoring the Chinese ancient paintings with the help of her students. Some of her past students have now worked as specialists on the art in museums across the world.

“It is thanks to her that many of the Museum’s Chinese paintings can be displayed today,” the museum writes on its website.