DEBATING: Students practice yinmingxue with one other at Hainan Prefecture No.1 Minority High School (PAN XIAOQIAO)

Students choose on their own which type of education they want. Generally speaking, students from the towns like to take the Chinese classes while those from pastoral areas prefer Tibetan, as for them this is the language they use in their daily lives. They don't need to worry about their college entrance examination either, because at the Beijing-based Minzu University of China and the Lanzhou-based Northwest University for Nationalities, among other specialist universities, all offer courses in indigenous languages including Tibetan.

In order to promote Tibetan culture, every week there are three days rof morning exercises and three days of Guozhuang, or Tibetan Bonfire Dancing, and the school's drum team wear traditional Tibetan dress while performing in public.

In the past, children in Tibetan ethnic areas were often absent from classes in April and May to dig for an expensive herb called aweto, which could help their families bring in huge incomes. Nowadays, thanks to the greatly upgraded education quality and sharply increased subsidies for every student, parents take their children to schools voluntarily, according to Hua Bentai, Director of the Education Bureau of Hainan.

Hainan Prefecture No.1 Minority High School is also a boarding school, with a large number of Tibetan students. The school also offers two models of education, similar to the way practiced in the abovementioned primary school. Besides, it pays a lot of attention to making its education unique and outstanding in one or two aspects.

Yinmingxue, known as hetuvidyā in Sanskrit, is a way of explaining logic with Buddhism that is practiced in Tibetan Buddhist monastaries, and was introduced into the school's curriculum in 2007. Two sides debate aspects from Buddhist scriptures that they claim disagree with each other.