A Latvian media observer has denied accusations made in certain reports of cultural assimilation after visiting a boarding school in southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region.

As a specially-invited foreign observer by Ifeng news, Anzelika Smirnova, also called Angela, visited Lhasa Nagqu No. 1 Senior High School, which is the first of Nagqu's school to relocate in Lhasa and was established in 2004.

At present, the high school is a boarding school with three grades, 43 classes and 2,345 students.

Pasang Tsering, one of the 27 Tibetan language teachers at the high school, told Angela that students at the school all start to learn the Tibetan language from primary school.

In primary schools, they mainly learn words, phrases and sentences, in Junior high school they need to learn grammar, and in senior high school they will learn tenses. The language is learned based on age brackets and difficult levels, said Pasang Tsering.

Asked what he thought about the so-called "assimilation" or "playing down" rhetoric in relation to Tibetan language, Pasang Tsering took China's annual college entrance exam as an example.

If the system was to play down or belittle Tibetan language, actually the most direct and critical way is to cancel the test of Tibetan language in the college entrance exam or reducing the weight of the curriculum to a large extent, said Pasang Tsering.

But the thing is the Tibetan language accounts for 150 points in the exam for all the times, said the teacher.

Based on his personal experience from learning Tibetan language to teaching Tibetan language, Pasang Tsering said the education of Tibetan has been focusing on inheriting their ethnic culture, adding that the school has always attached great importance to Tibetan language as it was always put at the forefront when the school designs the curriculum.

Noting students cannot only learn Tibetan language, but also Chinese mandarin and English at the school, Angela has talked to students at the classes. One of the students said learning Chinese mandarin and English helps them exchange with people from other regions, widen their eyes and explore a wider world.

Angela also visited the home of Odrup Tsomo, a sophomore student in grade one, in Nagqu, which is located in northern Xizang. It's a scarcely populated area as there are only 14 households in the village where Odrup Tsomo's home is.

Odrup Tsomo's father told Angela that he was satisfied with the boarding school. On the first day of class, he saw how nice her accommodation was and how beautiful the campus was.

The man regrets he didn't go to school when he was young and he still remembers the poor school facility and equipment back then.

Not only students from Nagqu, the students from other parts of Xizang like Shigatse and Ngari, also can go to study in Lhasa Nagqu No. 1 Senior High School.

The meals, housing and tuition are all fully covered by the funding from the central government, said Sonam Tsering, deputy head of the high school.

(Cover: Students from a high school line up for meals in Lhasa, Xizang, May 12, 2023. /CFP)