Mar. 12, 2010 -- Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is home to 13 Chinese ethnic groups.

The region's ethnic groups have been involved in constant migration, which has caused religious and cultural intermingling and produced unique regional customs.

But during the process, different languages among various ethnic groups have also hindered regional development and blocked communication and further understanding among them.

In the past decades, the regional government has made an all-out effort to promote bilingual education and has achieved fruitful results.

Let's hear from Damin.

Ten-year-old Mahmut Ekper is reciting a poem written by Li Bai, a well-known Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty more than 14 hundred years ago.

For a child born in a Uygur family, Mahmut handles his Chinese surprisingly well.

His mother says she sends her son to a bilingual kindergarten where he learns both Uygur and Chinese.

"Uygur is our mother tongue, and Chinese is our official language. Learning Chinese enables us to obtain more knowledge, because there are fewer historical resources written in Uygur, no matter whether they are written material or on the internet. So learning Chinese in this way can help us know more about the history and culture of our ethnic group."

Bilingual teaching has become a prominent trend in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Fu Chunli, a high-school teacher in the region, explains how bilingual education works there.

"In Xinjiang, many children from ethnic groups like Kazaks, Uygurs or Uzbeks go to bilingual kindergartens to receive their preliminary education. They can learn both Chinese and the language of their own ethnic group. I am from Xibe, so I had learned both our own language and Chinese since primary school."

Fu Chunli says as Xinjiang has a variety of ethnic groups, children from each group usually attend their own schools. Many children from ethnic minority groups can not speak or read in Chinese, which limits their chances to pursue higher education, or find a job.

Bilingual teaching was started in Xinjiang in the 1950s and has been developing rapidly in recent years with support from the regional and central governments.

In 2009, the total amount of investment in bilingual teaching in the area surpassed 8 billion yuan, or more than 1 billion U.S. dollars.

Most kindergartens in southern Xinjiang have advanced equipments like computers and projectors to assist in bilingual teaching.

In her hometown in western Xinjiang, Fu Chunling says bilingual teaching has already become incorporated in preliminary education, primary schools and high schools.

The merging of schools among different ethnic groups has also encouraged the promotion of bilingual teaching.
"The merging of those schools originally and exclusively for Han or other ethnic groups helps to create a friendly environment for bilingual teaching. Now in our county, or even in the whole region, this is a predominant trend. After the mergers, we can help each other between schools and teachers and even students in learning different customs and languages and further promote teaching qualifications."

Besides exchanges among local schools, the regional government has also provided many training opportunities outside the region for local teachers from various ethnic groups.

By the year 2014, a total of 2 thousand teachers in Xinjiang will take part in a training program to enhance their abilities to teach in schools in rapidly developing cities.