YUSHU, China — When officials forced an informal school run by monks near here to stop offering language classes for laypeople, Tashi Wangchuk looked for a place where his two teenage nieces could continue studying Tibetan.

中国玉树——当官员强迫附近僧人开办的非正式学校停止给俗家子弟上语言课时，扎西文色(Tashi Wangchuk)希望能再找个地方，让两个十几岁的侄女继续学习藏语。

To his surprise, he could not find one, even though nearly everyone living in this market town on the Tibetan plateau here is Tibetan. Officials had also ordered other monasteries and a private school in the area not to teach the language to laypeople. And public schools had dropped true bilingual education in Chinese and Tibetan, teaching Tibetan only in a single class, like a foreign language, if they taught it at all.

令他惊讶的是，尽管在这个地处西藏高原的集镇上几乎所有人都是藏人，他却找不到一个学习藏语的地方。官员还下令其他寺院和该地区的一所私立学校不得教俗家子弟藏语。公立学校之前就已经放弃了真正的汉藏双语教育，藏语即使会教，也只是和外语一样的一门课。

“This directly harms the culture of Tibetans,” said Tashi, 30, a shopkeeper who is trying to file a lawsuit to compel authorities to provide more Tibetan education. “Our people's culture is fading and being wiped out.”

“这直接损害到了藏人的文化，”30岁的扎西文色说。经营着一家店面的他正试图通过起诉，强迫当局提供更多藏语教育。“我们民族的文化在不断地减少和消灭。”

China has sharply scaled back, and restricted, the teaching of languages spoken by ethnic minorities in its vast western regions in recent years, promoting instruction in Chinese instead as part of a broad push to encourage the assimilation of Tibetans, Uighurs and other ethnic minorities into the dominant ethnic Han culture.

近年来，中国大幅缩减和限制广大西部地区的少数民族所使用的语言的教学，转而推行汉语授课。这是一项大规模行动的一部分，旨在鼓励藏人、维吾尔人和其他少数民族融入占支配地位的汉族文化。

The Education Ministry says a goal is to “make sure that minority students master and use the basic common language.” And some parents have welcomed the new emphasis on teaching Chinese because they believe it will better prepare their children to compete for jobs in the Chinese economy and for places at Chinese universities.

教育部称目标是“确保少数民族学生基本掌握和使用国家通用语言文字”。一些家长也对重新重视汉语教学表示欢迎，因为他们认为，这样会让自己的孩子准备得更好，以便在中国的经济中争夺就业岗位，在中国的高校里争取到一席之地。

But the new measures have also stirred anxiety and fueled resentment, with residents like Tashi arguing that they threaten the survival of ethnic identities and traditions already under pressure by migration, economic change and the repressive policies of a government fearful of ethnic separatism.

但新措施也引发了焦虑，并加剧了怨恨。扎西文色等人表示，它们事关民族认同和传统的存亡，这些东西本已经因移民、经济改革和惧怕民族分离主义的政府实行的压迫政策而承受着压力。

The shift away from teaching Tibetan has been especially contentious. It is most noticeable outside central Tibet, in places like Yushu, about 420 miles northeast of Lhasa, in Qinghai province.

脱离藏语教学引发的争议格外大。这在西藏中心地区以外的玉树等地极为明显。玉树在拉萨东北约420英里（约合680公里）处，属于青海省。

Many schools in these areas — home to nearly 60 percent of China's Tibetan population — had taught mainly in the Tibetan language for decades, especially in the countryside. Chinese was taught too, but sometimes not until later grades.

这些地区生活着中国近60%的藏人。在长达数十年的时间里，这里的很多学校一直主要用藏语教学，特别是在乡下。他们也教汉语，但有时候要等到高年级才教。

“This is why almost all innovation in Tibetan literature, film, poetry and so forth, plus a great deal of academic writing, since the 1980s has come from Qinghai,” said Robbie J. Barnett, a historian of Tibet at Columbia University.

“这就是为什么自20世纪80年代以来，藏文文学、电影、诗歌等领域的几乎所有创新，以及大量的学术写作都来自青海的原因，”哥伦比亚大学的藏史学家罗比·J·巴奈特(Robbie J. Barnett)说。

But in 2012, officials in Qinghai and neighboring Gansu province introduced a teaching system that all but eliminated Tibetan as a language of instruction in primary and secondary schools. They had backed off a similar plan in 2010 because of protests by students and teachers across Qinghai and Gansu, and even in Beijing.

但在2012年，青海及邻省甘肃的官员推行的教育系统在小学和中学的语文教学中基本上消除了藏语教学。官员们曾在2010年暂停过一个类似的计划，因为计划遭到了青海和甘肃各地、乃至北京的学生和教师的抗议。

Schools were ordered to use Chinese as the main language of instruction, which led to layoffs of Tibetan teachers with weak Chinese-language skills. And new Chinese-language textbooks were adopted that critics said lacked detailed material on Tibetan history or culture.

学校被勒令用汉语作为主要的教学语言，这导致汉语较差的藏族教师被解聘。而批评人士指出，学校采用的新的汉语教材缺乏有关西藏历史和文化的详细资料。

In March 2012, a student in Gansu, Tsering Kyi, 20, set fire to herself and died after her high school changed its main language to Chinese, her relatives said. She is one of more than 140 Tibetans who have self-immolated in political protest since 2009.

2012年3月，甘肃的一名20岁的学生才让吉(Tsering Kyi)在她就读的高中把语文教学语言改为汉语后自焚身亡，她的亲戚说。才让吉是自2009年以来用自焚进行政治抗议的140多名藏人之一。

Three years later, frustrated students are still taking to the streets. In March, high school students marched in Huangnan Prefecture in Qinghai. The local government accused the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, and “hostile Western forces” of tricking students to “defy the law, disrupt society, sabotage harmony and subvert the government.”

三年过去了，仍有不满的学生走上街头。今年3月，高中学生在青海黄南藏族自治州示威游行。当地政府指责西藏流亡精神领袖达赖喇嘛和“西方敌对势力”教唆学生“对抗法律，干扰社会，破坏和谐，颠覆政权”。

This month, a petition circulated on WeChat, the Chinese messaging app, calling on officials to open a Tibetan-language primary school in Qinghai's provincial capital, Xining, which has had no such schools under Communist rule.

本月，一份在中国的即时通讯平台微信上流传的请愿书，呼吁官员在青海省省会西宁市开办一所藏语小学，自从共产党执政以来，西宁一直没有藏语小学。

“Letting 30,000 Tibetan children learn their mother tongue so they can carry on their own traditional culture is a very important matter,” said the petition, which got more than 61,000 signatures before censors blocked it.

请愿书被审查者屏蔽之前已得到了逾6.1万个签名，请愿书写道，“让3万名藏族孩子学习他们的母语、使他们能够继续自己的文化传统是一件很重要的事情。”

But Tibetan attitudes are complicated by the practical reality of living in a country where the Chinese language is dominant, and where parents and children sometimes prefer English as a second language of education, not a minority language. Some Tibetan parents worry that their native language and culture are dying but nevertheless tell their children to prioritize Chinese studies, in part because the national university entrance exam is administered only in Chinese.

但是，藏人的态度被在汉语占支配地位的国家中生活的现实复杂化，中国的家长和孩子有时更喜欢用英语、而不是少数民族的语言作为教学的第二语言。虽然一些藏族家长担心他们的母语和文化正在消亡，但仍告诉自己的孩子要学好使用汉语教学的课程，这部分是因为全国统一的高等学校入学考试只用汉语。

“The parents think that Chinese is most important for their children's future,” said Phuntsok, a monk at a Yushu monastery told by officials to close its Tibetan classes this year.

“这些家长认为，汉语对他们孩子的未来至关重要，”玉树一家寺院的僧人平措(Phuntsok)说，他所在寺院的藏语课今年被叫停。

The government says it supports bilingual education. In practice, though, bilingual education now generally means using Chinese as the main language of instruction, while a minority language is taught as a separate subject.

政府在嘴上表示支持双语教育。但在实践中，目前的双语教育一般意味着把汉语作为主要的教学语言，把少数民族语言作文语言课单独开设。

Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan writer in Beijing, said that when she lived last year in Lhasa, she stayed by a kindergarten that promoted bilingual education. She could hear the children reading aloud and singing songs every day — in Chinese only.

家在北京的藏族作家次仁唯色说，她去年住在拉萨时，附近有一家提倡双语教育的幼儿园。她每天都能听到孩子们高声朗读和唱歌的声音，但只有汉语。

“A lot of Tibetan people realize this is a problem, and they know they need to protect their language,” said Woeser, who studied Tibetan on her own after years of schooling in Chinese. She and others estimate that the literacy rate in Tibetan among Tibetans in China has fallen well below 20 percent, and continues to decline.

“很多藏族���都意识到这是个问题，他们知道他们需要保护自己的语言，”唯色说，她在接受了多年的汉语教育后自学了藏语。她和其他人估计，在中国的藏人中，有藏文阅读能力的人已经不到20％，而且仍在继续下降。

The only thing that will stave off the extinction of Tibetan and other minority languages is allowing ethnic regions in China more self-governance, which would create an environment for the languages to be used in government, business and schools, Woeser said.

唯色说，避免藏语和其他少数民族语言消亡的唯一途径就是允许中国的少数民族地区有更多的自治，这才会给在政府、企业和学校中使用少数民族语言创造一个环境。

“This is all a consequence of ethnic minorities not enjoying real autonomy,” she said.

“这都是少数民族不享有真正自治权的后果，”她说。

The Chinese constitution promises autonomy in ethnic regions and says local governments there should use the languages in common use. In 1987, the Tibetan Autonomous Region, which encompasses central Tibet, published more explicit regulations calling for Tibetan to be the main language in schools, government offices and shops.

中国宪法承诺让少数民族地区享有自治权，并称地方政府应该使用当地普遍使用的语言。1987年，面积覆盖藏中地区的西藏自治区曾发布更明确的规定，提倡把藏语作为学校、政府办公室和商店的主要语言。

But those regulations were eliminated in 2002. These days, across Tibetan areas, official affairs are conducted mostly in Chinese, and it is common to see banners promoting the use of Chinese.

但是，这些规定在2002年被取消了。如今，在整个藏区，官方事务主要用汉语进行，还经常能看到提倡使用汉语的横幅。

Such efforts are in part a response to the Tibetan uprising in 2008, when anti-government rioting broke out in Lhasa and spread across the plateau.

这些努力在某种程度上是对2008年西藏暴动的响应，那年在拉萨以及整个青藏高原爆发了反政府骚乱。

“The government thinks people who go to ethnic schools have a stronger Tibetan nationalist identity,” Woeser said. “The government thinks if they switch the instruction to Chinese, then people will change their views.”

“政府认为在民族学校上学的人有更强的藏族认同，”唯色说。“政府认为，如果把教学语言换成汉语，人们就会改变他们的观念。”

Monasteries have long served as educational institutions in Tibetan society, with monks and nuns among the elite few who could read and write before Tibet came under Chinese Communist rule in 1951. Until recently, many monasteries held classes on the written language for ordinary people, and monks often gave lessons while traveling.

寺院作为西藏社会教育机构的历史悠久，在1951年中国共产党统治西藏之前，僧人和尼姑属于能用藏语读写的少数精英者行列。直到最近，许多寺院仍为普通人开设藏语文字课，僧人出门旅行时也经常给人上藏语课。

But over the past two years, officials in many parts of the plateau have ordered monasteries to end the classes, though Tibetan can still be taught to young monks.

但在过去的两年里，青藏高原许多地方的官员已下令寺院停止教授藏语课，虽然藏语仍可传授给年轻的僧人。

Tashi said he first learned to read and write Tibetan in primary school and from older brothers who had studied with a monk. He continued studying as a monk himself for three years, and in 2012, he took private classes in Yushu for a few months.

扎西说，他最初是在小学学习藏文读写，还得到了两个哥哥的帮助，他的哥哥曾和一位僧人学习藏文。他自己出家后继续学了三年藏文，并于2012年在玉树上过几个月的藏语私塾。

He thought he might take his nieces to those classes, but found they had been shut down.

他原认为能把自己的侄女送到这种私塾去，却发现私塾已被关闭了。

“My nieces want to become fluent in Tibetan but don't know where to go,” he said. “Our words will be lost to them.”

“我的侄女们希望能说流利的藏语，但不知道去哪学，”他说。“我们的语言将在她们这一代流失。”