A grand niece of the 14th Dalai Lama told Xinhua on Monday that she had joined the Communist Party of China (CPC).

"I'm proud to join the CPC," said 35-year-old Deying Drolma, grand niece of the Dalai Lama and now a soldier of People's Liberation Army. She took her oath to be a member of the CPC on June 26.

"I had tears in my eyes when I took the oath," Deying Drolmam recalled. "I felt myself the happiest one in the world."

"My grandmother Khyi Losel is a cousin of the Dalai Lama. When he fled to India in 1959, he asked her and her family to go with him but she refused. She told us we shall never betray our motherland," said Deying Drolma.

Deying Drolma wrote her first two applications to join the CPC in 1995 and 1998, but didn't submit them out of concerns of her "special relationship" with the Dalai Lama, she said.

"Last year and this year, I filed two more applications to the Party as I felt myself a qualified candidate." And she was accepted.

When Deying Drolma graduated from high school in December 1993, her relatives offered her an opportunity to study abroad, but she chose to fulfill her childhood dream of joining the PLA.

"When I was a child, I often saw PLA doctors who traveled a lot and underwent great difficulties to relieve herdsmen in Tibet from diseases," said Deying Drolma. "I was touched and have decided to become a PLA soldier ever since."

Two years after joining the army, Deying Drolma was enrolled in the Lanzhou Military Medical College of the PLA, majoring in nursing. After graduation, she became a nurse in the Infectious Disease Department of a PLA hospital in northwest China.

"Deying Drolma has been working very diligently in the past 16 years. And she always performs well on her job," said Dang Rongchang, director of the hospital's political department.

Deying Drolma, who speaks fluent Chinese and Tibetan, brought her language advantage into full play in caring for the Tibetan patients by taking extra work upon herself, Dang said.

She is praised by the patients as "the angel in white on the prairie" because in addition to doing her job she helped them bathe, comb hair and trim nails, Dang said.

Deying Drolma now wears a sweater that her Tibetan patient So Namdrol weaved for her in gratitude.

She disinfected more than 300,000 pieces of medical appliances without a single mistake during her ten years working in the hospital's department of medical instruments, Dang said.

Deying Drolma said her family still keeps in touch with a brother of the Dalai Lama who resides in Hong Kong. She said her father even visited the Dalai Lama in India in 1989 and 1993.

"The Dalai Lama left his hometown in Qinghai (in northwest China) when he was five and returned only once at the age of 18," she said. "He is an old man now. And old people tend to miss their hometown. I wish he can come back to have a visit."

Deying Drolma says she has a happy family. Her husband works at a power plant and her seven-year-old son is a primary school student.

Talking about her son, Deying Drolma smiled brightly. "The boy is way too naughty. He only listens to his father."