At the First Primary School of Lhasa, a slew of school buildings appear spectacular under a blue sky, including teaching, dormitory, and dining ones. Children are sitting in spacious, bright classrooms, enjoying a joy brought about by Tibetan-Chinese bilingual teaching. In the dedicated moral education room of the school, the journalist sees a lot of showcases in which various books and newspapers are tidily arranged and so are many Tibetan handicrafts and clothes. The school principal tells the journalist that the school arranges for its students to come here every week to learn the history and rich culture of the development of the Tibetan nation and read science and other extracurricular books, with a view to broadening the students' vision.

The youth represent the future and their growth significantly affects the country's future development. To let Lhasa's children enjoy the same education as that available in big cities, Beijing and Jiangsu Province signed the Agreement on Educational Assistance for Lhasa of the Tibet Autonomous Region with Lhasa, thus establishing a long-term teacher training exchange mechanism. With the general support of Beijing and Jiangsu Province, a series of schools have been built in Lhasa as part of the assistance program, including Beijing Junior High School, Jiangsu Junior High School, Haicheng Primary School, and Zhaxigang Nanjing Hope Primary School of Maizhokunggar County.

The construction of two high schools built with assistance from Beijing and Jiangsu Province is now in full swing, and it is expected that the two schools will be built and begin to recruit students this year. The journalist is told that each school built with external assistance will completely use teaching resources from the assisting municipality or province, and be equipped with such advanced equipment and systems as a campus online multifunction hall, multimedia classrooms, computer rooms for teachers, language teaching classrooms, a classroom computer-assisted projector system, and a campus closed-circuit TV interactive control system. All teachers at each of the schools will come from the assisting municipality or province in question, and the schools will be able to share educational resources with other first-class schools.

Qiongda, a graduate from Tibet University, is a Chinese teacher of Grade 1 at the Senior High Branch of Lhasa Beijing High School, and tells us that conditions were harsh at the only school in his township, which was far from his village, when he went to primary school. The school's more than 30 boys were crowded in a single dormitory, and had to sleep on the floor because there were no beds at all. It was very cold in winter. Vegetables were scarce in the Tibet Autonomous Region back then, and led by their teachers, Qiongda and his classmates had to grow some easy-to-survive vegetables, like potatoes and radishes, by themselves. The food hardly changed at all throughout the year. Upon hearing of the building of high schools with assistance from external municipalities or provinces, Qiongda happily says, "In the future, farmers' children will be happier and enjoy the same educational environment as those of Beijing and Jiangsu Province. I believe Lhasa's primary education will become better and better."

Indeed, with a joint effort by governments at all levels, Lhasa's primary education will undergo fundamental change. A series of preferential educational policies will enable farmers' children to receive a good education and take the lead in building a greater Lhasa when they grow up. (Genduo)