Teenagers travel far for better schooling

Thousands of kilometers from home, in a strange city with a sometimes loose grasp of the language, teenagers from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region find themselves homesick, lonely and struggling to communicate.

But their dreams of a better education help them to persevere through the tough beginnings at one of the pilot schools in Beijing that have been recruiting Xinjiang students since 2000, when the central government started a program to help improve their education.

"Although the school is 3,000 kilometers away from home, it's still worth studying here," said Dilara, a senior from Hami, who is now studying at Luhe High School in eastern Beijing's Tongzhou district.