USEFUL SKILL: A girl practices Tibetan Embroidery at Hainan Prefecture Vocational and Technical School (PAN XIAOQIAO)

Moreover, the school set up a baseball team in 2007. The program bridges team members and their peers in other parts of the country, as they were sent to schools in east China's Jiangsu Province during summer and winter vacations for exchanges. Proficient students have opportunities to compete against baseball teams in other provinces and participate in summer camps.

Team member Xianba Cairang won the title of "fine player of 2013" at the Pony Baseball World Series Asia-Pacific Zone Tournament, which was held in Soeul, South Korea, between July 29 and August 2, 2013.

Given that many students in the school grow up in a Tibetan-language environment, teachers spend their extracurricular time translating teaching materials from Chinese into Tibetan, so that Tibetan students can read and learn easily. Most of the materials they translate are math and science textbooks, which pose big challenges to the teachers. Nevertheless, their hard work not only benefits the school, but is also helpful to other high schools in similar situations, as this is the first time that such textbooks have been translated into the Tibetan language.

Shaping professionalism

Hainan Prefecture Vocational and Technical School is a state-run vocational school, with a student base that is 87 percent Tibetan, and with 97 percent of those students coming from rural and pastoral areas. Due to economic difficulties, some of them have never been to primary or middle school.

However, at this school, while being able to grasp certain skills, they don't need to worry about daily life during their three years' of education, thanks to the government's huge subsidies. Eleven disciplines, such as automobile maintenance, Tibetan medicine, accounting, and traditional art like tangka painting and Tibetan embroidery, are offered at the school.

Tsering Dolma is a 28-year-old teacher. She has been teaching Tibetan embroidery for six years since she graduated from the same school. The horse embroidery she is working on is a commission order from an American client, which she will sell for 10,000 yuan ($1,666).

A few of the students in the embroidery class are orphans, while some come from single-parent families. When graduating from the school, their art can fetch a good price, just like Tsering Dolma's does. By then, many students will no longer have to worry about how to support themselves or even their families. Many of the school's graduates now stay at home, doing embroidery, and companies order art from them and then they are sold around Qinghai and even in other places around the country.

(Reporting from Qinghai Province)