Outpost in Beijing gives mixture of home, culture and learning

Basang Phanthok, 17, is a sophomore at the Beijing Tibet Middle School, which she and her nearly 300 classmates from Tibet consider to be a home away from home.

The Beijing school, which is near the North Fourth Ring Road on Gaoyuan Jie, opened in 1987. It is the largest, and one of the best, Tibetan middle schools established in China outside of the Tibet autonomous region.

By August, it had educated 1,135 middle school students and 4,458 high school students.