New schools open in quake-hit Tibetan town

Karma Tseji, 15, was among the early birds to arrive at the newly-completed campus for Tibetan students in his home county of Yushu on Saturday, the first day of the spring semester.

He had been looking forward to this day since he tearfully waved goodbye to his mother in the summer of 2010 and was sent away to a public boarding school in northern China's Shanxi Province, about 36 hours away from his home province of Qinghai by train.

He was among 8,600 middle school students who had to attend faraway schools after a devastating earthquake razed Yushu county and left nearly 2,700 people dead in April 2010.

Most of the students were sent to provinces of Shanxi, Hebei, Sichuan, Liaoning, Shandong, and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Tianjin municipality -- places they had previously only known as points on a map.

From Tibetnews