Learning in harmony

Students reap rewards of shared, inclusive development in the Tibet autonomous region, Alexis Hooi reports in Lhasa and Nyingchi.

Growing up in a traditional herder's family, Tibetan Penba Tashi always wanted to help those around him and contribute to society. For the past three years, the 22-year-old has been studying and training as a medical major at Tibet University — steadily working toward his childhood dream of becoming a physician.

"I am the first in my family to attend university. It's thanks to the help and support from the Xizang government, its policies and subsidies for needy ethnic students like myself," he says, using the Chinese name of the Tibet autonomous region.

"Studying and living with students of other ethnic groups also helps us understand and learn from each other."

The undergraduate also lauds the efforts of regional authorities that attach importance to Tibetan knowledge and other ethnic resources for multidisciplinary education. The university library, for example, with its more than 800,000 books covering the ethnic Tibetan and Han languages, 2,400 traditional wood prints, 16,000 ancient works, 5,000 foreign language publications, and nearly 30 terabytes of digital data on other resources such as e-books, academic papers, and teaching materials, provides an invaluable, comprehensive channel for enriching his medical studies and life, he says.

"Ethnic Tibetan and Han students here all help to complement each other's studies," Penba Tashi says. "I can explain some of the Tibetan customs, practices, and traditional medicinal knowledge, while my Han classmates help me with the details of language, like Mandarin."

His experience in the regional capital, Lhasa, reflects the rewards being reaped by residents, from the latest developments in the education sector, in line with the inclusive, shared, and sustainable growth pursued throughout the region and beyond.

In late May, President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to a major forum in Beijing on the development of Tibet, and urged the region to speed up high-quality development in the new era and ensure its residents live a better life.