Illuminating the future

But icy temperatures also affect students. Many families are too poor to buy warm clothes. Locals explain that adults can wear the same garments for years but children outgrow theirs.

Milk and meat come from a government-subsidized school pasture.

Wolves keep eating the sheep. Youngdingqupai says the solution would be a cinder-block enclosure. But the school doesn't have the 10,000 yuan ($1,600) it would cost to build one - a price exacerbated by the fact materials must come from about 500 kilometers away.

The school signed an agreement with the herder requiring the pasture to provide 20 kilograms of butter a year.

"The kids don't like tsampa (roasted flour, a Tibetan staple) without butter," Youngdingqupai says.

"So more dairy goes to butter and less to milk and yoghurt."

Educators drive 150 kilometers every week to the county seat to buy vegetables - a rarity a few years ago - to improve students' nutrition.

"But they're used to yak dairy and meat, and don't really like other foods," Youngdingqupai says. "Still, they need them."

The principal believes the children's dietary attitudes can change. More dramatic transformation has been achieved in their parents' worldviews.

Several years ago, families believed children should herd rather than study.

"There has been a transformation in parents' mindsets," Youngdingqupai says.

"Most parents now send their kids to school rather than to herd. Many even check on their kids' progress."

Educators contacted each family and told them school was the right choice.

This required navigating thousands of kilometers of crumpled prairieland, where the tent-dwelling nomads who comprise about 90 percent of Qumahe's 20,000 herders roam, far from any road.