Perseverance and closure of an Independent Tibetan School: 30-Year Journey of Jigme Gyaltsen Ethnic Vocational School

In July 2024, Jigme Gyaltsen Ethnic Vocational High School, which had operated independently for 30 years, announced its closure. Known as the best Tibetan-language educational institution and a private welfare school in the greater Tibetan region, it has now come to an end. The author of this article once served as an IT technician at the school, handling numerous digital archives and witnessing the establishment, struggles, development, and eventual forced closure of this institution on this land. Now living overseas, the author learned of the school’s shutdown. However, due to censorship, former colleagues and Tibetan friends could not convey their sorrow. The author took up the pen to write this detailed recollection.

By Ginger Duan

On July 14, 2024, in Golog Prefecture, Qinghai Province, the esteemed monk of Ragya Monastery and renowned educator Jigme Gyaltsen announced via a bilingual Tibetan-Chinese post on WeChat that the independently operated Jigme Gyaltsen Ethnic Vocational High School, which he founded, would be closing down after 30 years. The school had long offered free admission to students from farming and herding communities across the Tibetan regions of five provinces. It was regarded as one of the finest Tibetan-language educational institutions in the Greater Tibetan Area. This legendary private welfare school on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has thus come to an end. The announcement emphasized that the closure was not due to the will of any individual or organization. Still, it was based on the national standards for vocational schools and relevant directives from the Qinghai Provincial Committee.

Some have commented that “black snow” has fallen over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, extinguishing a beacon for the Tibetan people.

Ragya Town, a small settlement along the Yellow River in Golog Prefecture, Qinghai Province, is home to this iconic institution. Here, when locals say “the school,” everyone knows it refers to this one—it feels like there is only one school in Ragya. Between Ragya Town and the school lies the mountain “Ani Qungong,” meaning “Great Roc Spreading Its Wings,” at the foot of the mountain stands Ragya Monastery, the first monastery on the Yellow River. I will use “Ragya School” in the following text to refer to Jigme Gyaltsen Ethic Vocational High School.

From 2018 to 2019, I briefly worked as a network technician at this school. While there, I became deeply immersed in its environment and worked closely with many digital archives. I witnessed Ragya School’s founding, struggles, development, and eventual forced closure on this land through this. I witnessed its rise and fall, its joys and sorrows.

This school was called the “Harvard of the Tibetan people,” its forced closure carries profound significance for the entire Tibetan region. Now, living overseas, I learned of the school’s shutdown. I saw my Tibetan friends on social media drowning in tears, yet unable to express their grief in their native language due to censorship on social media like WeChat.

I deeply feel a connection between myself and this distant school, and the sorrowful cries from afar resonate with me. Since I am overseas, I decided to write it all down.

01 A Fusion of Tradition and Modernity: An Educational Experiment

Jigme Gyaltsen (hereafter referred to as “the Principal”) was a monk from Golog who founded Ragya School in 1994. It was the first private welfare school in Qinghai Province and a pioneering educational reform in Tibetan regions at the time.

Traditional Tibetan society primarily relied on monastic education. For both men and women, becoming a monk or nun and going to a monastery was often the only way to receive an education. Monasteries had a comprehensive education system comparable to modern primary and secondary schools, with various degrees and certifications. For example, the Geshe degree is akin to a doctorate in Tibetan Buddhism. Families would willingly support their children’s monastic studies by providing food, clothing, and pocket money. In Tibet, monasteries functioned as more than just schools; they also served as welfare organizations, banks, hospitals, and academic institutions.

The Principal, who had received higher education, graduated from the Advanced Buddhist Institute founded by the Panchen Lama in Beijing before deciding to return to his hometown. At that time, Amdo Tibet was underdeveloped and lacked educational resources. Traditional monks were unfamiliar with modern knowledge and skills such as law, Mandarin, or computer science and had no place to learn them. Meanwhile, Tibetan children from nomadic families, due to their traditional pastoral lifestyle, had limited access to education. For example, in 2020, a Tibetan herdsman named Tenzing Tsondu(DingZhen) became an internet sensation in China because of his handsome appearance. After achieving fame as a livestreamer with millions of fans, he was revealed to be illiterate in Chinese. This wasn’t unusual in traditional Tibetan society, as herding on the grasslands didn’t require literacy.

To promote modern education in Tibet, the Principal combined the traditional monastic education system with the modern school system to create a unique integrated model that admitted both monks and lay students of all ages. Since pastoral families in Tibetan areas don’t face the same academic or employment pressures as in mainland China, it was common to see young teenagers studying alongside older herdsmen with beards who had spent the past decade tending sheep in the same classroom. Ragya School placed no restrictions on age, religious status, or sect. Even students who were completely illiterate at the time of admission were treated equally. They lined up to register and were placed in classes according to their level of Tibetan literacy.

As a welfare school, Ragya School adhered to the principle of “education for all without discrimination.” Each year, the school enrolls about 200 students; sometimes, even the principal’s relatives have to wait in line for three years before being admitted. Priority was given to orphans, dropouts, overage youth, and young monks from poor rural and nomadic families. The school even accepted Mongolian, Han, and other ethnic students and tulkus from various regions.

Once admitted, students were provided with free tuition, meals, and accommodation. The school’s curriculum was rooted in the traditional Tibetan “Ten Sciences” while incorporating modern scientific knowledge. The school includes a junior high school and a senior high school. The junior high school offered foundational courses such as basic Tibetan, Mandarin, and mathematics, while the senior high school evolved into a vocational high school with seven specialized programs tailored to Tibetan culture: Tibetan medicine, advanced Tibetan studies, computer applications, tourism, English, arts and crafts (Thangka painting), film production, and alpine guiding. Most of these programs were developed as school-based curricula with published textbooks.

The school accommodated more than 1,000 students, ranging in age from 6 to 42, with about one-third being monks. Students came from farming and herding regions across Qinghai, Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, and beyond.

02 Difficult Start-up, Unique Operational Methods

The establishment of the school was initially very difficult, lacking resources in many ways: funding, policies, teachers, and construction were all challenges. The principal was neither a Rinpoche nor a distinguished eminent monk. When the school was founded, he only had 3,000 yuan in deposit. He had to travel extensively, seeking loans and resources, hoping to persuade people to support his endeavor. Eventually, he gained the support of Rinpoche from various monasteries and the then-governor of Golog Prefecture. After many twists and turns, he secured land and obtained the government’s approval to open the school.

When the school was first established, the campus was built with the help of the nine students who initially enrolled. At that time, the students and teachers had no accommodation and had to live at the Ragya Monastery. During winter weekends, they would go to nearby mountains to gather branches and yak dung to keep the stoves burning for warmth. Local villagers, monks from Ragya monastery, and the school’s students worked together, using bags to carry soil and level the ground to create the sports field. They also felled trees to construct the first school buildings.

In a documentary about the school’s history, I saw how the wood for the early buildings was sourced. The students were allocated into three groups: the first group felled trees upstream of the Yellow River; the second group floated the logs down the river to Ragya; and the third group retrieved the wood from the shallow banks of the Yellow River near the school. This was how many of the school’s early buildings were constructed.

Principal Jigme Gyaltsen was an educator and an entrepreneur. The school initially maintained its independence through funding provided by the “Snowland Treasures” dairy company (hereafter referred to as the Dairy Factory), which he established. The factory’s early techniques were learned from two Europeans, and its dairy products were initially exported overseas. The dairy business provided income for herders and all its profits were used to cover the school’s expenses, allowing it to offer free education and boarding for students and pay staff salaries.

By the time I had just graduated from university and began to engage with the operations of social organizations, I was amazed at how the principal, who had spent years on the plateau, learned and established such a progressive concept of “social enterprise.” By using this advanced model, he promoted sustainable development in pastoral regions.

Later, however, the export channels for the dairy factory’s products faced issues, and the products could no longer be sold overseas, leaving the domestic market as the only option. Over time, the factory’s efficiency declined, and the principal had to seek funding from other sources. Given the influence of Ragya School and the principal’s reputation, fundraising was not initially difficult. At that time, various social sectors and local governments were eager to provide resources to the school: The Hong Kong Jockey Club funded the construction of modern school buildings. The Trace Foundation supported several school expenses. Beijing Blue Charity Foundation donated many books to the school library. Government subsidies were provided to impoverished students for living expenses.

However, transferring donations to the school’s accounts became more difficult due to increasingly restrictive government regulations and policies. Overseas funds were no longer accepted, and even domestic funds could not be accessed. Gradually, the school began to experience financial difficulties. Before it closed, it was said that the school had gone three years without paying regular salaries.

The teachers’ salaries had never been high to begin with, and when the financial issues arose, the school stopped paying the salaries of monastic teachers. Since the monks don’t have families to support, the school provided their meals and accommodations, and their families could provide tiny allowances for personal expenses. However, lay teachers, who had families to support, found it much harder to cope. Many had no choice but to leave the school.

One teacher, who had studied at a university on the mainland, told me that working at Ragya school was a social service but not a service without an end. After serving for some time, one had to leave—continuing serving was not sustainable.

In October 2018, the Trace Foundation issued an open letter announcing its gradual cessation of most activities in Tibetan areas of China, citing fundamental changes in conditions on the Tibetan Plateau for an overseas foundation. The Trace Foundation, headquartered in New York, funds and supports community and educational initiatives in Tibet. Many private Tibetan-language schools, including Ragya School, have received their support.

At the time, I was in China and completely unaware of this significant change. I had only heard sporadically that introducing China’s Foreign NGO Law had made it difficult for foreign donors to fund initiatives like ours. Back in the day, my knowledge of Tibet was very limited, and I didn’t know where to find reliable research materials to learn. Our projects run by our organization in Tibetan areas also faced challenges: we struggled to find full-time teachers willing to work on the Tibetan Plateau and secure funding partners interested in supporting this project.

As a recent college graduate on a short-term network technician assignment, I was just beginning my journey on this plateau. My responsibilities were to consolidate and transform the outcomes of earlier projects and wind down some of the initiatives.

03: Holistic Education in Single-gender School

Ragya School is an all-boys school. Situated in a pastoral area at an altitude of nearly 4,000 meters on the grasslands along the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the campus is surrounded by freely roaming rabbits, marmots, and herds of grazing yaks and sheep. Scattered groups of students often sit in clusters, reciting the key points of their daily lessons. Every morning and evening, the sound of their reading reverberates throughout the campus, forming a unique and vibrant sight on campus.

Additionally, the students, whether laypeople or monks, engage in daily debates, either one-on-one or in groups. Holding prayer beads in their hands, they often debate so passionately that their faces turn red, and words fly back and forth with fervor. Even though I couldn’t understand what they were arguing about, I could feel the youthful energy and determination around them.

The principal named the school ” Gang Jong Sherig Norbu Lobling institution” (meaning “Snowland Institute of Wisdom” གངས་ལྗོངས་ཤེས་རིག་ ནོར་བུའི་སློབ་གླིང་། 雪域知明院 ). Beyond the daily outdoor group recitations and debates, the school offers various vibrant extracurricular activities held at set times each week. These include Tibetan-Chinese-English trilingual debates, speech competitions, brainteasers, poetry recitals, tongue twisters, comedic skits, historical quizzes, science and legal knowledge competitions, essay-writing contests, and Tibetan neologism translation competitions. Almost all these activities are student-organized, with senior students passing down their experience to the younger ones.

The school places a strong emphasis on multilingual education. I still remember that during sports festivals and school anniversary celebrations, the announcements on stage were made in as many as five languages: Amdo Tibetan, Lhasa Tibetan, Kham Tibetan, Mandarin, and English. The linguistic differences between Tibetan dialects can be significant; for example, an Amdo speaker meeting someone from Lhasa might not be able to communicate at all and might have to resort to Mandarin. In the past, literate monks could communicate through written Tibetan, as its script was standardised. At Ragya School, students can master this writing system and the written language commonly used among Tibetan intellectuals without needing to ordain as monks.

In traditional Tibetan areas, women had very limited access to education. To change this, the principal began applying to the local education authorities in 1997 to establish a girls’ school. The principal said, “Girls’ education is mothers’ education, and mothers’ education is education of humanity.” After raising funds through various channels, he founded the Grassland Girls’ School in 2005 at the foot of the sacred Ragya Mountain. This was the first girls’ school in Tibet, and its students were the children of nomadic families from across the area. The principal believed that developing a girls’ school would allow girls to organize their own activities independently, ensuring their participation wasn’t overshadowed by boys.

I had few opportunities to interact with the girls’ school students; most encounters were public. They were generally much shyer than the boys. I once shared a meal with them and had a simple conversation. I was always an outsider to the circle of local teachers, and the students regarded me as a mysterious figure, treating me with extra respect, which only deepened the divide between us. When we met, it was usually during school events where they performed programs at the vocational high school campus where I worked.

The girls always wore elaborate Tibetan chupas suits. Their faces glowed with a faint blush, nervousness, and a gentle smile. Their hair was meticulously groomed, shining, and neat. Unlike the boys, who would play, wrestle, and run around, the girls were quiet and shy and often avoided direct eye contact. Unfortunately, I didn’t have many chances to explore their world further.

Like the boys’ school, the girls’ school also offered a variety of activities, including daily one-on-one debates based on the school curriculum. The principal believed that “Logical debates not only enhance reasoning and communication skills but also help develop intelligence, strengthen memory, and deepen critical thinking in youth.” Through gradual exploration, he skillfully integrated traditional monastic logic debates (pramana) into modern education, using traditional debating methods to explore modern knowledge.

Teachers adapt the school’s curriculum to fit Tibet’s unique context. For example, their English textbook was called “Highland English Reader,” written in English to describe the plateau’s natural landscapes and culture. An English teacher explained, “Mainland textbooks are not suitable for us. Teaching students to express our culture in English is the goal of our education.”

Many of the school’s teachers are elite intellectuals with multilingual proficiency and diverse academic backgrounds. In philosophy classes, they teach everything from the Tibetan philosopher Pandita masters to Hegel and Nietzsche. In astronomy classes, they discuss stargazing and calculate the Tibetan New Year (Losar) and Shoton Festival using the Tibetan calendar. In English classes, a teacher born in India recites English poetry fluently and teaches students how to converse in everyday English. In computer classes, students learn to install Tibetan input methods and convert corrupted files displaying garbled characters into Tibetan text. They practice making slideshows and designing magazine layouts as though they are constantly preparing to apply their skills in real-world scenarios.

In my view, the school embodies the principles of holistic education, aiming to cultivate students as well-rounded intellectuals proficient in their native language and culture. Each senior graduate completes one or two final projects, including township chronicles, family genealogies, monastic histories, and creative works like paintings, poetry collections, academic papers, music videos(MV), documentaries, or short films. These projects have led to a vibrant collection of independent publications and films.

I sometimes felt the students’ cultural life was as vibrant as university life. The key difference was that creating these projects wasn’t about meeting graduation requirements but stemmed from a pure desire for cultural exploration and intellectual curiosity.

04: Public Punishment

If there’s one teaching method at the school that I found hard to accept, it would be the strict disciplinary system. My former teacher once told me that I should attend the school’s weekly assembly if I had the chance, but I need to be mentally prepared—because I might find it shocking as someone from a different cultural background. During these assemblies, teachers publicly reprimand students who had misbehaved in the past week, sometimes even slapping them in front of everyone. The most severe infractions I can recall were related to integrity, such as cheating on exams or secretly keeping a mobile phone.

On a sunny afternoon, I was invited to observe one of these assemblies. The gathering reminded me of the school meetings I had in my own middle and high school, conducted entirely in Tibetan. The theme of the meeting was “Learning from Lei Feng Day.” After the main topic was addressed, there was no singing of the national anthem. Instead, the atmosphere grew tense, as if everyone knew what was about to happen.

I retreated indoors, too nervous to take out my phone to document the moment, waiting silently for it to unfold. Three students walked onto the stage. My view from the teaching building was behind them. I couldn’t see their expressions clearly. They bent forward, heads bowed, facing an audience of hundreds of students. A teacher, referred to as an Aku (a local honorific), began announcing the reasons for punishing the three students. Then, he slapped each of them a few times. The slaps didn’t seem heavy, but I felt shocked.

As someone raised in Han Chinese society, I had never experienced such a severe disciplinary approach. (They always occur in an informal way). A voice in my head cried out: This shouldn’t be happening! This is corporal punishment. How can they do this?Another voice countered: Perhaps this is a remnant of monastic education in the region. Should I respect their ethnic customs and rules? I felt torn, shocked, and confused. The moment made such an impression that I can no longer recall how many slaps were given or how I left the assembly and returned to my dormitory.

Later, I asked a few Han Chinese teachers who had also taught at the school, and none of them had ever attended these assemblies. I felt like a fool who had clumsily stumbled into the Middle Ages, utterly unprepared for the severity of the punishment I witnessed.

Traditional Tibetan Buddhist monasteries have a monastic position known as gegue格贵, responsible for managing the monastery’s roster and enforcing discipline. Han Chinese often refer to them as “iron-rod lamas.” I couldn’t confirm whether this style of public punishment was connected to the gegue, but the teachers at the school saw it as a positive way to instill a clear sense of right and wrong in the students. Monks in monasteries, they explained, also faced similar punishments for breaking rules or failing to memorize scriptures.

The school’s educational reforms were part of an effort to secularize and modernize traditional monastic education. However, it was obvious that this method of punishment was one aspect they had yet to reconsider or reform.

05: A Legendary Existence

I once asked a Han Chinese teacher who had been teaching at the school for many years how this school differed from the inland schools where she had worked previously. She replied that the students had an intense thirst for knowledge and a much closer teacher-student relationship. She used the phrase “respecting teachers and valuing the Rules” (尊师重道), a term that felt distant to me, something I had read in books about the past but had not met in the real world.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/NuMaBz06MNI?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Every graduation season, students would pitch tents on the grasslands, host film exhibitions, have picnics, play games, and celebrate. After graduation, some students pursued higher education, others returned to monasteries for further spiritual practice, returned to their hometowns, or stayed at the school as teaching assistants or teachers. A strong alumni network had formed among the students. Many of the teachers at the school were former students who, inspired by its educational philosophy, returned to teach despite receiving modest salaries and enduring the harsh conditions of the plateau. Some graduates even went back to their hometowns to fund schools in their hometown, spreading the seeds of Tibetan education across the Tibetan Plateau.

It wasn’t until the school was shut down that I realized it was the last private school in Tibet to teach in the Tibetan language. Looking back at its history, I often feel that this school’s journey from humble beginnings to 30 years of operation in Tibet is nothing short of legendary—a mythical existence.

In recent years, the government has increased investment in public schools in Tibetan areas, even teaching high school students to use robots and artificial intelligence. After seeing a Tibetan high school student on the news say, “In the future, drones can be used for herding,” it reminded me that using the modern photography equipment such as action cameras, gimbals, and drones that the students at Ragya school had already been using for years. These tools were among their favorites. However, I believe the difference lies in this. At this school, pastoral children were taught how to use drones and similar technological tools to improve productivity in their communities and enrich their cultural lives. Public education, however, seems to select a subset of students to teach them high-tech skills while instilling the idea that they are superior and should stay in cities to focus on technology—no longer herding livestock in the future. At Ragya school, technology was a tool for the collective welfare, not a sieve to divide people into hierarchies.

Public education, whether through boarding schools in Tibet or inland high schools, seems to uproot young Tibetans, transplanting them from their lands into urban environments. A small number of academically successful students may become government officials or teachers. However, most who fail to gain admission to universities and secure formal jobs can no longer return to their nomadic way of life on the grasslands. They often end up working as restaurant staff, drivers, tour guides, chefs, or hotel workers in county towns.

Over the past 30 years, Ragya School has nurtured many students who are not only well-educated in modern subjects but also proficient in Tibetan, with deep cultural roots. These students have made meaningful contributions in their fields across the Tibet Plateau, becoming intellectuals, educators, artists, writers, civil servants, and entrepreneurs.

Other students went on to work for NGOs, implementing environmental protection and snow mountain monitoring projects in Tibet. Afterward, he opened a guesthouse in Xining to foster cultural exchange between Tibetans and Han Chinese. One student made a documentary about the seasonal changes of the Yellow River and dreamed of building a natural history museum in their hometown. Another opened a typing and printing shop in their county, turning it into a cultural company. Some went to big cities to become professional photographers or video editors, venturing into the film industry. One student, the eldest son in his family, excelled academically and aspired to move to the city but ultimately decided to return hometown to take over the family’s herd of hundreds of yak and sheep.

One monk student returned to his monastery after graduation, writing a book about his monastery’s history and tracing his family’s migratory history. He told me regretfully that publishing a book now is extremely difficult due to the high cost of publication permits and stringent censorship. Independent publications are not allowed to be mailed. A bookstore in Ragya town that sold a few unpublished books was shut down, and the owner was arrested. I had visited that bookstore before; it was one of my favorite places in the town.

06. Adaptable Resistance

In my observation, the teachers at the school are well-versed in the survival strategy of non-confrontation.

In regions long subjected to multiple censorships and tight regulation, particularly in areas concerning ethnic affairs and religious activities, everyone at the school seemed to have accepted the reality of living under heavy-handed rule. As a result, they did not harbor hostility toward political propaganda; instead, they were even willing to embrace it in exchange for a degree of freedom in obscured, unnoticed corners of life.

For instance, during my time at the school, the front of every classroom prominently displayed the Chinese national flag and portraits of central overnment leaders, from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. No one would actually discuss these leaders, but the presence of their images served as a protective layer for the school. Many things within the school followed this kind of logic: avoid unnecessary opposition when it is not needed, and comply as much as possible when compliance is feasible.

Most of the teachers I interacted with were good in Chinese. Some of them weren’t opposed to saying they were Chinese. They even believed they could be Chinese, Tibetan, Communist Party members, and Buddhists at the same time. Sometimes, when I talked about the crisis in Tibetan-language education with these teachers, they confidently argued: “We are part of the 56 ethnic groups. We are Chinese. The Tibetan language we speak is also Chinese. Since China is a multi-ethnic country, why shouldn’t we be allowed to use our mother language?”

In the years before I arrived at the school, under various pressures, the official Education Bureau assigned several system-affiliated teachers to the school. The school even established a Communist Party branch( will use party to refer communist party below), appointed an executive vice principal in charge of administration, and recruited several Party members. I asked one of these Party-member teachers if joining the Party meant they could no longer Chanting scriptures and prayers to buddhas and bodhisattvas. He dismissively replied, “I can practice Buddhism at home, and I’m a Party member in the office. When I don’t chant scriptures, my family does it for me.”

Traditional Tibetan schools typically do not have centralized offices where all the teachers gather to work. Instead, each teacher grades assignments and meets with students for office time in their own dormitory living rooms. When the Golog Prefecture Education Bureau came to inspect the school, they deemed this is unprofessional. In response, the principal specifically set up a large room, labeled desks with teachers’ names, and had a few teachers sit there reading and drinking tea to create the illusion of a proper teachers’ office to pass the inspection.

In the years leading up to the school’s closure, it faced numerous obstacles from various quarters. For example, the Education Bureau began to prevent the school from recruiting students from outside the Qinghai province. Historically, the school had long admitted students from Tibet across regions and provinces. The Bureau argued that this cross-regional recruitment violated relevant regulations and stopped issuing student registration for those from outside the Qinghai province. However, some students don’t care and still studying at Ragya School despite not being granted official registration. Those students didn’t come to Ragya for the sake of a diploma but to learn traditional knowledge and ethnic culture.

The school cafeteria received government meal subsidies. In the period before its closure, the school started accepting subsidies and funding from the Education Bureau. There was no other choice—if these compromises could help maintain the school’s independent operation and allow Tibetan language and ethnic culture to be passed on, they were worth it. My Tibetan friends made all these compromises and sacrifices in an effort to delay the school’s closure and to ensure that a few more classes of students could be educated on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

07 The Threat of Closure

The pressure to shut down the school had always loomed. “The government doesn’t want private schools teaching Tibetan language and ethnic culture anymore. All schools have to become state public,” I often heard teachers at Ragya School say during my time there.

In Tibet, as early as 2018, local governments began suppressing ethnic education, gradually shutting down private schools that taught in Tibetan and forcing students to attend government-run schools. Starting in the summer of 2021, local authorities in Qinghai closed a wave of private schools and formally arrested at least one teacher and two students to crack down on Tibetan opposition to educational policies erasing ethnic culture.1

In 2020, the Chinese government introduced Mandarin instruction in Inner Mongolia, eliminating nearly all Mongolian-language schools. Around the same time, schools teaching Korean and Uyghur languages also closed one after another. Recently, social media has been flooded with posts mourning the “last lesson” commemorating the end of ethnic minority language education in college entrance exams (Gaokao).

For three decades, Ragya School persisted in using Tibetan as the medium of instruction, relying on independently developed curricula to preserve ethnic culture. In the past, even public schools in Tibet taught other subjects in Tibetan. However, in present public schools in Tibet, the government enforces a standardized curriculum taught entirely in Mandarin. Tibetan is relegated to being taught as a second language, like English.

Rumors about Ragya School’s impending closure had circulated for years—and they were more than just rumors. In fact, the girls’ school had been forced to transfer to government management years ago. I heard that if the principal do not hand over one of girl school or boy school to the government, the government would shut down both of them. Helplessly, the principal handed over the Grassland Girls’ School to the Prefecture education bureau, turning it into a government managed private school. This compromise allowed the boys’ school to continue survive for a few more years—until its recent closure.

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Some Tibetans chose more covert methods of resistance. They taught Tibetan in remote elementary school educational outpost, short-term holiday programs, or even within the public school system. However, the government’s reach extended into every aspect of education. In remote Tibetan villages, the “school consolidation” campaign led to the forced closure of many village schools and educational outpost.2 Children were left with no choice but to travel long distances to attend school, making the government’s push for boarding schools seem inevitable.

Recent research estimates that about 1 million Tibetan children aged 4 to 18 have been forcibly separated from their families to live in boarding schools, returning home only once a week. These schools enforce assimilation through compulsory Mandarin instruction.3

During winter and summer breaks, many parents sent their children to monasteries or tutoring classes to study Tibetan. However, these small-scale, community-organized Tibetan language tutoring programs also faced government crackdowns. In 2021, the government began banning students from attending informal Tibetan tutoring classes during school holidays.

In January 2024, Tsering, a sophomore at Tibet University, died in Lhasa. Reports suggest she had been teaching Tibetan to children during her school breaks. Some speculate that her death followed police questioning related to her efforts to organize Tibetan language classes.4

Others chose to resist within the existing education system. In 2024, a senior teacher at a public school in Maierma, Ngaba County, named Dhondup, had his teaching license revoked and was dismissed. His crime? Encouraging students to learn about Tibetan culture and use the Tibetan language.5 The school stated that his teaching methods did not align with national education policies. This boarding school, like many others, had transitioned to Mandarin instruction for all subjects after 2018, as part of the government’s policy shift.

At Ragya School, nearly all the teachers and students’s mother tongue are not Mandarin, and everyone emphasized their commitment to preserving traditional ethnic culture. This might sound like an abstract notion. I often asked myself and others: what exactly is traditional ethnic culture? Some believed it to be Buddhism, Tibetan literature, the Tibetan language, folklore, and history. In my view, the cultural emphasis at Ragya School went beyond just the knowledge of Tibetan history and culture. It was more about embodying the qualities of a traditional Tibetan intellectual: logical and flexible thinking, cultural confidence rooted in Tibetan subjectivity, and a broad outlook.

In traditional Tibetan society, monasteries bore the responsibility of education. Dingzhen, who didn’t know a single Chinese character but could read Tibetan, learned it as a child at a nearby monastery. Herding children could attend short-term Tibetan language program at monasteries. and don’t have to shave their heads and ordain as monks. In the past, even students enrolled in regular schools often studied Tibetan at monasteries. Monasteries were hubs for intellectuals and cultural elites in Tibetan society. Typically, the smartest children in Tibetan families were sent to monasteries to become monks, preserving cultural traditions while praying for their families and accumulating merit.

At Ragya School, about one-third of the students were monks. There were even reports of individuals lurking near the school gates to count how many monks in school. Rumors suggested that the principal was using the school as a guise for running a monastery. However, the school’s curriculum resembled that of an ordinary school, focusing on academic and cultural subjects, as evident from the class schedule. The campus and teaching facilities were familiar to other schools.

It was clear that Ragya School was an innovative experiment in modern education reform, initiated by Principal Jigme Gyaltsen. To label it a monastery undermines the significance of this effort. The school’s finances were always much tighter than the nearby Ragya Monastery. During its early years, the school’s steward often borrowed food from the monastery due to financial difficulties, which sometimes left the school unable to provide adequate food for the teachers.

As the school expanded, financial challenges persisted, repeatedly pushing it into crises. The cheese factory, once a source of revenue, struggled with export issues, cutting off its contributions to the school. In response, the school sought alternative solutions. Around 2012, it established Chakgen Laoye Cultural Leisure Park, an attempt to boost the school’s finances through the restaurant business, though the impact seemed limited. Ultimately, while lay teachers received meager salaries to support their families, monk teachers relied entirely on family support, with the school only covering their meals and accommodation.

When I worked at the school, I once mentioned my plans to go abroad and write about the school. The response was cautious. They advised against it, fearing that any association with foreign connections could be used as a pretext to shut down the school. “They’ve long wanted to close our school,” they said. “They’re just looking for an excuse.” For years, I refrained from discussing my experiences at the school in public, even though its philosophy, unique circumstances, and precarious situation were so remarkable and precious.

Abroad, I often heard people searching for places to learn Tibetan. Occasionally, when I met Tibetans overseas, I shared that I had worked at a school in Tibet. I told them I stand with Tibet, but they seemed unsure what that meant. With thousands of schools in Tibet, they don’t understand how special where I had worked. Only a few grasped how invaluable this school was in the Tibet and how it profoundly influenced even an outsider like me.

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Rumors of the school’s closure circulated months before it happened. Teachers began discussing it but kept it from the students. At the slightest hint of trouble, they would burn incense, consult oracles, and chant prayers, hoping the school would survive the ordeal. In the years after I left, the lower school (middle school) had almost no student, and word spread that future admissions would cease. It is said that, the existing students would graduate, and the high schoolers would be redirected to public vocational schools. Ragya school could still offer short-term vocational training programs, such as driving and baking courses.

In the months leading to its closure, a group arrived at the school, requesting every teacher to draft proposals for improving their disciplines to make them more standardized. This prompted a tense flurry of activity among the staff, who worked to refine their proposals, hoping to impress the inspection team and keep the school open. However, the group stayed only a few days and left, seemingly skeptical about the school’s ability to meet their expectations. Few knew what had transpired behind the scenes.

Teacher T, however, remained optimistic. They said, “Nothing is set in stone. Maybe the school will still reopen in September?” Yet, in the years following my departure, the school faced immense pressure, or I can say internal crisis. They start unable to secure quality teachers or retain students. After salaries stopped, numerous teachers resigned, and teaching quality declined. Besides government restrictions on enrollment, many students chose to drop out themselves. The school’s situation deteriorated, but everyone continued to cling desperately to a myth.

The closure of the school is undoubtedly sorrowful, but its internal crises made continued operation increasingly untenable. Perhaps it’s better to embrace change and allow the school to exist in another form—akin to a rebirth (or reincarnation). I recall when my Ragya friends asked me to provide tech support after I moved abroad. Even then, they echoed the sentiment: the school may find a different way to continue to exist.

The news of the closure finally reached Teacher L, who had taught Chinese language for four years. She only realized the school was shutting down when she saw students, draped in monks’ robes and khatas, covering their faces as they cried and walked out of the school gates. A Buddhism practitioner herself, she had remained detached, unaware of the school’s developments, and was not even in the teachers’ group chat, as she couldn’t read Tibetan.

08 The Last Lesson

The final lesson at Ragya School didn’t end with anyone writing “Vive la France! ” (Long live France) on the blackboard. The graduates learned about the school’s closure during their graduation ceremony. Dressed in green sashes, they listened as their teachers offered words of encouragement for their futures, bowing their heads and wiping away tears. For the first-year and second-year students, there would be no graduation ceremony at Ragya School anymore. After the graduates left, these students were gathered together and informed: “The school is closing. Today, you’re graduating too.”

At past graduation ceremonies, students would walk out of the school with khatas in hand, tying them to the school gate as a gesture of gratitude and blessings for their alma mater. This time, however, the students wept uncontrollably, using their khatas and monks’ robes to wipe their tears. Words failed to convey the emotions in their hearts. They tied the khatas to the school gate, expressing their highest respect and deepest reluctance to part.

In a video, I saw a monk teacher standing on the stage where I once watched them hold weekly assemblies and punish students. Below him, the students, draped in green sashes, knelt before him, bowing and sobbing uncontrollably. On WeChat, beneath the video of the students crying, the comments were all in Chinese, filled with regret, pleas, sorrow, and long strings of crying emojis. There wasn’t a single comment in Tibetan. Any comment in Tibetan simply couldn’t be posted.

Now, they no longer have the right to express their grief in their mother tongue.

County officials began enforcing stability measures among locals, warning locals not to share news about the school’s closure or videos of students crying. Aside from a few scattered videos on WeChat, platforms like Xiaohongshu and Weibo stopped displaying content related to Ragya School. Monks who shared public articles were summoned to the police station and interrogated: Why did you share it? Are you dissatisfied with government policies? Some were even coerced into signing pledges with red finger prints, promising not to make statements that contradicted national policy.

The principal’s notice stated that after the school’s closure, both students and teachers could transfer to a public vocational high school. However, very few actually willing to go to this school local in the capital of Golog Prefecture. The reason was simple: the students came from Tibetan regions across five provinces, traveling all the way to Ragya to study Tibetan language and traditional culture. If they have to go to a public school, there was no reason to go as far as Golog.

Reactions varied. An Aja I know, who lives in Ragya, told me she couldn’t sleep at night. “Ragya has nothing but this school,” she said. “Without the school, we have nothing.” Her sister came from another county to visit her, and they spent sleepless nights talking about the school. “Our Tibetan people’s soul is gone,” she said. Her son told me, “All of Ragya is weeping. All of Golog is weeping. All of Tibet is weeping.”

An uncle living in Xining remarked bitterly, “Ten years ago, we Tibetans would have revolted. Now, what can we do? We can’t even cry loudly, fearing others will hear us. It’s unbearable.”

A teacher posted a statement written in Tibetan on WeChat public platform, but it was soon deleted:

I am providing this general response to everyone.

Hello, since last night, I’ve been inundated with calls and messages from everywhere. Taking so many calls, you can’t hold but break down into tears. I’ve been asked about what happened at the school, and so on. Many people said the faculty in school couldn’t sleep last night.

The fact is, the Jigme Gyaltsen Nationalities Vocational School we established in Golog has been ordered to shut down, as per a directive from the Qinghai Provincial Committee.

On July 12, our Principal Jigme Gyaltsen explained the situation to all the teachers, and all the faculty and students were shocked. Tears streamed down the faces of students everywhere in campus. He said, “We have always been paying close attention to the overall direction of the country, and this decision aligns with national policy. In the future, we will continue to move forward along this same path. Students should keep striving to learn and never lose sight of their life goals.” He also offered plenty of advice on how to seize every opportunity in life.

Today, we bid farewell to all the students. Faces are drenched in tears. Watching students cry is an unbearable pain. Everything is a result of cause and effect; it is irreversible. Beyond holding firm to the universal rules, I have nothing more to say.

In short, this is the situation. Please refrain from asking us further questions about this matter. These days, I truly don’t feel like saying much more. Further details will be announced later.

Many people went to see the principal. Upon meeting him, they would burst into tears, unable to utter a word. Many others called him; as soon as the call connected, they cried silently on the other end. The principal would not hang up, allowing them to cry until they done. He sighed and said, “What else you can do if you keep crying?”

As a spiritual practitioner, his equanimity left us astonished. He posted on his social media:

“Impermanent things are never eternal. The world is ever-changing, following the inevitable law of impermanence. We believe in rebirth, and educating across lifetimes is what truly matters. Why not pray for education in the next life? If death is irreversible, what good does crying do? Therefore, it’s better to pray for a perfect body in the next life. Please, do not grieve; instead, take responsibility for your future.”

Anger, protest, and speaking out seem only possible when one believes they can make a difference. The Ragya people today appear devoid of the will to express their suffering. Stripped of their ability to voice anger in their mother tongue, the Tibetans are left with nothing but tears of grief.

Clouds obscure the moon, and today’s misfortune feels like an endless dark night. Even the pain of death might not compare to what has happened today. One commentator remarked that this school was seen as the pride and shining beacon of the Tibetan people—a great star of society. Without it, we won’t fully grasp how much our language and culture are fading away.

On June 18, 2024, just a month before Ragya School was shut down, Xi Jinping visited Golog Xining Ethnic School in Xining, Qinghai Province, emphasizing the need to foster a “sense of shared identity within the Chinese nation.” This is a full-time boarding public school built with aid from Shanghai. Its students are primarily children of nomadic families from Golog Prefecture. The school is located in Xining, the provincial capital of Qinghai, a nine-hour drive from Golog Prefecture.

Most students are far from their homes and parents, receiving standardized education taught entirely in Mandarin. A friend of mine has a child enrolled there. Although most of the students at this school are Tibetan, there is not a single Tibetan language class offered in its middle or high school curriculum.

After leaving Tibet and moving abroad, I finally had the chance to delve into the history of this land.

In 1958, the People’s Liberation Army entered the Amdo Tibet, Golog , shelling the main hall of Ragya Monastery, the shrines, and the palace where the Dalai Lama had stayed, destroying the Kangyur scriptures. In 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards obliterated all religious remnants of Ragya Monastery. According to the Tibet Times, the great purge left no single thangka behind at Ragya Monastery. The Red Guards even used woodblocks to print scriptures, such as firewood, to boil tea, forcing the people of Ragya to drink the tea.

In 1985, Wang Lixiong rafted along the Yellow River alone, landing at the Ragya Bend, where he saw the majestic “Anye Chengo” sacred mountain spreading its wings and the Ragya Monastery at its foot. At that time, there was no school in Ragya. The monastery had many ruins left from the PLA shelling in 1958 and the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. In the past, Ragya Monastery was the largest Gelug monastery in the Yellow River basin, home to thousands of monks.

In March 2009, 27-year-old monk Tashi Sangpo from Ragya Monastery was found to have pamphlets and materials related to Tibet issues in his residence. He was subsequently taken to the Ragya police station. Unable to bear the torture and questioning by military police, he escaped from the station and jumped into the Yellow River in front of the monastery to take his own life. The Ragya people never found Tashi Sangpo’s body in the Yellow River. Enraged, Tibetans surrounded the local police station. The authorities deployed armed police to suppress the incident, and eight laypeople and monks were sentenced.6 March 10th is Tibetan Uprising Day, a time when protests erupt across Tibetan areas and military and police controls are intensified. It is also when the ice and snow begin to thaw. How piercingly cold must the Yellow River water have been at that time?◼︎

Ginger Duan is a Chinese dissident based in California, United States. She served as a computer teacher at the prestigious Ragya Jigme Gyaltsen Nationalities Vocational High School in Golok in the traditional Tibetan Province of Amdo from 2018-2019. The Author can be contacted at gingerduan.