A recent survey showed that people in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, spend as much as 20 percent of their incomes on education.

Parents are quite generous in paying for their children's education, resulting in a boom in various kinds of schools and training courses in the city. Some well-equipped kindergartens charge 500 yuan per month, but many parents still try to get their kids enrolled.

One music training class sponsored by the city's children's palace is always full of students, whose parents don't hesitate to buy expensive instruments.

The Gangxuan Sparetime Language School, which was set up in 1988, was the first of its kind in Lhasa and it gets 300 new students every year.

Local bookstores are also crowded with parents and their children, most of them Tibetans, who are a majority in the autonomous region.

Even hiring a family teacher is not easy, but many parents like to get a better education for their children, according to one Tibetan woman who works at a government institution. (Xinhua)