In a remote hillside schoolyard, a group of first-grade girls is immersed in play. When a teacher calls them for lunch, they scamper to line up for big bowls of rice and vegetables. Squatting in small groups to eat, they have more food before them than they've ever seen in a meal.

Unlike their parents, illiterate subsistence farmers scattered on mountain peaks along the China-Burma (Myanmar) border, these girls have food every day. They are also learning to read and write Mandarin in a brand new school building, they have clean clothes, and they will always know how old they are.

The children - members of the Lahu, one of China's poorest and most isolated ethnic-minority groups - are acting out a bold experiment in Chinese education.

Spurred by concerns that significant gaps in wealth between majority Chinese and the country's minorities could fuel social unrest, the Chinese government has tried to provide comprehensive education for minority children. Though minority groups constitute less than 4 percent of the population, they occupy more than half the country's landmass, particularly in crucial border areas.

But state funding for minority education is unevenly distributed. Lacking resources, and facing a poor, indifferent public, local officials often claim progress where there really is none. And even in areas that do receive aid, some question the long-term impact on families, schools' treatment of native language, and the issue of assimilating children into a larger group.

To others, however, the choice is obvious. Su Chen, deputy mayor of Muga, near the city of Lancang, and herself a Lahu, sees educational opportunities as essential to the future of her people. "We need to be more educated, cultured, and civilized," she says. "We need more science and education."

The Lahu effort got under way with a grant from the New York-based Ford Foundation. Though under intense pressure to meet Beijing's demand for reform, the regional leader in Lancang, the county seat of the Lahus in Yunnan province, lacked the resources to comply. So Teng Xing, an education specialist at the Central Academy of Minorities in Beijing, stepped in with a Ford Foundation grant and a fresh idea.

With an uneven crew cut and muscular build, Professor Teng looks more like a construction foreman than one of China's foremost authorities on minorities. Teng, who is Chinese, spent more than 20 years researching minorities, including the Tibetans and Uighurs. He wanted to apply his research to find a solution to the Lahus' poverty.

So he gathered 45 5- to 7-year-olds from the poorest families among the 10,000 Lahus living around Muga. Because Lahu society is matriarchal, and because boys traditionally have more educational opportunities in poor regions, he chose only girls. They live at the school, visiting their families only on holidays. The $15,000 grant will pay for their education, room, and board for six years.

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