 So I'm Nathan Hill and I'm director of the Trinity Center for Asian Studies, and it's my great pleasure today for our lunchtime talk to welcome Dr. Chi Zhang. She is assistant professor in the School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University. She did her BA at Sun Yat Sen University, her MA in Durham, and then a PhD in linguistics from Newcastle, and works in Chinese language education, applied linguistics, language attitudes and pedagogy, and also the study of Chinese among national minorities of China, which is what she'll be talking about today. Her title is Prilingual Education for Ethnic Minorities, Field Studies of Tujia, the Uyghurs, and Inner Mongolia. First of all, thank you very much for procrastinating here to invite me to give this lecture. This is my great honor to share the findings we found from our three field trips. I'm going to talk about the Prilingual Education for Ethnic Minorities among three minority groups, the Tujia, Uyghur, and Mongolian minority groups. So before I talk about our field trips, maybe some background information about that. Prilingual Education actually refers to the study of three languages. The first one, Pukonghua, secondly, the language of ethnic minorities, and thirdly, English. So the relationship between the three languages is mentioned in the official document, the state council's decision to further advance and speed up the reform of minority education. So the relationship between the minority language and Pukonghua should be correctly managed. A foreign language should be offered in regions where favorable conditions exist. The document was phrased in relatively vague terms that neither favorable conditions nor a foreign language was explained, but it can be assumed that foreign language refers in most cases to English. So this English was introduced in year three of elementary curriculum back in 2002. English came into the picture of the bilingual education. Therefore, when we talk about bilingual education, we are actually talking about trying to know education. In today's lecture, you know, bilingual education and child education will be used interchangeably. Well, well, in the interest of consistency with official documents, but also reflecting the actual practice. So first of all, Chinese language, the term Chinese language language terms can be complex. It is an umbrella term referring to a standard writing system shared across mainland China with regional vernaculars very widely. So this kind of wide range, wide range of variety of spoken forms of Chinese within China can lead to difficulties of mutual intellectual ability. Remembering Chinese is another term we often see in our daily life or in academic writing. We can trace its use back to the Ming and Qing dynasty. It traditionally refers to the universal standard language or surname spoken by officials and educated people, and is therefore written as Guan Hua in Chinese. Nowadays, it is usually used to go to northern or northern line dialects, namely, Bay Fang Hua. Another two terms that often used to translate Chinese language is Han, which means towards a particular ethnicity, Han ethnicity, and the other one, Zhong Wen, which stresses the Chinese nation, the whole state nation. And therefore, the term Pung Hua, which means national common language is used in the official document. It is standardized based on the variety of Mandarin used in Beijing and the general northern vernacular. It is a variety of Chinese measures the writing system and is the most widely spoken and known Chinese throughout China, therefore it serves the function of Lingo Franco. The term Pung Hua emphasizes a statewide standard variety and therefore is intended to sound politically mutual. Well, as you can see from the official document here, the standard national spoken and written language as referred to in this law is Pung Hua and the standardized Chinese Han characters. But despite not being defined as such in the constitution, Pung Hua enjoys the fact of status of the official language in China. So the national law, as you can see from the quotation here, Pung Hua and the standardized Chinese characters shall be used as the basic language in education and teaching in schools and other institutes of education, except where otherwise provided in law. Pung Hua and the standardized Chinese characters shall be taught in schools and other institutions of education by means of the Chinese course, the Chinese textbooks used shall be in conformity with the norms of standard spoken and written Chinese language. So the national law is likely to prioritize the study of Pung Hua and suggests that it should be the instructional media. Now, the ethnic minority language, it is indeed constitutionally protected, as said in the constitution, all ethnicities have the freedom to use and develop their own languages and written sweeps. Some of those ethnic minority languages come from different language family. This literature has already shown a kind of linguistic hierarchy in China, Pung Hua as the official language for other mistreated purpose nationwide, remains as a prestigious language, whereas the language of ethnic minority is mainly or sometimes exclusively used in family domains, and consequently is less prestigious than that. So, the official document that you see in 2010, the outline of China's national plan for medium and long term education reform and development specifies that no effort shall be sparked to advance bilingual education. While open Chinese language courses in the Airways School and popularize national common language and writing system, minority people's right to be educated in native languages shall be respected and insured. So, from this official document, it seems to suggest a balanced bilingualism, probably for the purpose of national unity. Well, English on the other hand, well, although the foreign language can be any of six offered in mainland China, including English, Russian, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, the vast majority of students choose English. Since the turn of the century, English has been considered a key to modernity, and there has been great success in promoting English language education all over China. English was the third core subject tested in the university entry exam until 2017. In 2017, it is no longer scheduled during the university entry exam period each year, which is six to eight June each year. But instead, students can play English exam twice during the year, with the highest scores counted towards the final result. There has been some heated discussions in China now, regarding whether we should remove English from the university entry exam or not. But based on my knowledge from the Ministry of Education, English still remains the entry exam. It is still the third core subject for the vast majority, and it is still a prerequisite for university study for the vast majority of students. And today, we will have a look of the core deployment of the three languages, Chinese, the language of ethnic minorities and English across three regions. The three regions are, first of all, Longshan County and Yongshan County in Xiangxi or Thomas perpetual and Muji in Xinjiang and Chifeng in the middle Mongolian. There are three maps to show you where those places are. So Xiangxi is located in Hunan province, while Muji in the west of China and Chifeng in the middle Mongolia. Although it took us almost eight hours to drive from Beijing to Chifeng, it is still considered to be close enough to the capital city. Three minorities were chosen, since we think they are a representative sample of Chinese minority groups in terms of, first of all, geographical size and location. Secondly, the degree of integration with Hunan and thirdly, the economic development. So let's have a look of the geographic size. Xiangxi is the smallest among three, surrounded by regions densely populated by Han Chinese. In Mongolia, mostly share the external border with Mongolia and internal border with other provinces that have a large Han Chinese population. Xiangxi is the largest administrative region in China, orders with three Chinese provinces and eight foreign countries. In terms of the dominant ethnicity, Xiangxi and Inner Mongolia, where the dominant ethnicity is Han Chinese. On the other hand, Xinjiang, the regal group is the majority there. One of the main similarities among the three areas is that they are all less developed and less organized in comparison with eastern China, especially cities along the east coast. Well, if we take the per capita disposal income as an example, it ranges between 12,000 to 24,000, less than half of Beijing, the second richest area in China, or Shanghai, the richest. We will mainly use the government policies, observations, and also interviews from our field trips to accept the co-deployment of Hongkwa Minority Language and English with a focus on two aspects, medium of instruction in teaching and also language attitudes. So the first future is to Xiangxi. Some background of the Tu Jia language in Xiangxi, interestingly, there has been a steady increase in the Tu Jia population in 1990 to 2010, from 5.7 million to 8.4 million. And I'm aware that the 7th National Census was completed in 2020, but the statistics in relation to population according to different ethnicities has not been publicized yet, so I'm still using the data back from the 6th National Census. Since the backdrop of a steady increase in the Tu Jia population, the northern dialect of Tu Jia only survives in four countries in Xiangxi, Longshan, Youshun, Ouzhang, Zhe, Ouzhang, Baojing, and the southern dialect of Tu Jia is even only spoken by a few hundred speakers in only six or seven villages. So, in this case, the bilingual education policy is, of course, to rescue and preserve the Tu Jia language, and we can see that from the two governmental notices issued in 2008 and 2010 respectively. 2008 mentions the star of bilingual education pilot scheme, and the interesting thing for the 2010 governmental notice is that it adds another competence for that bilingual education, which is to be competent in one of the Tu Jia arts. And the interesting from folk music and drum dance to handmade arts, and the content of bilingual education evaluation was also modified accordingly from merely focusing on the language itself to the inclusion of Tu Jia cultural activities. So there are elements, but they're relatively limited and selective of Tu Jia culture. It might be a sign of inching along the way to culturalization as Ma Long proposed in 2007. It is about the political cessation and shifting towards culturalization. So a few trips to Longshan and Yongshun County, and then we conducted, we visited three schools and conducted interviews with teachers, students, parents, and also we did class observations. In terms of the medium of instruction, all our visits to four schools in these two countries show that the medium of instruction is exclusively a variety of Mandarin, Southwest Mandarin, Xinan Guanhua. Well, two main reasons we found from our few trips for the adoption of Xinan Guanhua as the instructional medium. Chinese is an essential subject tested in the university entry exam, and all other subjects on the exam are tested through Chinese. Instruction in a variety of Chinese increases students' exposure to the standard language in their education and consequently contributes to their performance on the university entry exam. It seems to be a compromise to use this language. There were barely animated speakers of the Tu Jia language among the young generation. It seems difficult to use Tu Jia to teach the Tu Jia language, especially for the beginners. However, if standard Mandarin were used, there will not be any Tu Jia ambience in the class, was said a teacher in our interview. In this circumstances, the local variety of Mandarin seems to be a compromise between the Tu Jia language and the standard Mandarin as instructional language medium. In terms of their attitudes, we notice the kind of mixed feelings of the Tu Jia people towards their own language. First of all, they recognize it is their identity marker and they show a kind of sense of solidarity towards it. But at the same time, they tend to associate it with backwardness. A possible explanation might be that the poor economic conditions in Tu Jia region may lead to a negative procession of anything related to Tu Jia, including their language. And people may not see any economic value in it. And so, they don't see the point to turn their linguistic capital into any economic capital. And also, we notice this utilitarian value of Putonghua and English, where Putonghua is associated with social economic development and English is associated with modernity and more economic advancement. Therefore, its essence were found for learning both Putonghua and English. So the next field trick was to put the Muqi in Xinjiang, located in the west of China. So, in 2000s bilingual education was changed in Xinjiang for using the minority language as the medium of instruction with Chinese as a subject course to using Chinese as the medium of instruction, alongside the minority language. And therefore actually witness the starting point for the rapid development of bilingual education. For example, all courses except for bigger language in bilingual classes in Muqi senior high schools should employ Putonghua as a medium of instruction. And following the issue of the outline of the national medium and long term education reforms and development. In fact, Xinjiang government also produce a local outline of the future chance for education, which is the outline of Xinjiang's plan for medium and long term education reform and development. In this document, it specifies that bilingual education should extend to two years before schooling by 2012. At least 85% of preschool, especially H425 ethnic minority children by 2015. The implementation of bilingual education should be generally completed in primary and secondary schools by 2015. And this kind of application should cover 75% of ethnic minority students in this two levels by then by 2020, the coverage of bilingual education should expand to 90% or more of ethnic minority students in primary and secondary schools. And ethnic minority students should be generally fluent in Putonghua by 2020. I would love to see any more update research since 2020 to see if those goals have been achieved. And more specifically, the document even specifies a medium of instruction requirement. If Putonghua is said to be a medium of instruction, the usage of Putonghua should not be lower than 85%. In the same sense, if the ethnic minority language is said to be the medium of instruction, its usage in the class should not be lower than 85%. I don't know if there are any language teachers or instructors in our lecture today. Well, with this kind of requirement, let's think about how you're going to implement that if you are teaching a language and also given this requirement. So, with all those information in mind, we conducted interviews in one primary school, three secondary schools, and one third level, isn't it? With winter students, winter and hard Chinese teachers as school leaders. So, first of all, the impact of this Chinese law education is that five more teaching hours are scheduled for Chinese class than for major. While such practice may dilute the study of the bigger language. Well, English, yes, it still remains in the curriculum, but much fewer class hours are allocated to it. When your students, if they are enrolled in bilingual class, they need to learn English through Putonghua because it's bilingual class and the medium instruction is in Putonghua. They need to learn English through Putonghua, which may reduce the opportunity to excel in English. Well, in reality, English seems to become a supplementary subject. Now, in terms of their attitudes, all the teachers have already expressed the difficulties to implement the medium of instruction requirement. The kind of concerns were shared among teachers, school leaders, and also students. The ambiguity of this medium of instruction actually made it difficult to comprehend for teachers and subsequently difficult to implement. As I mentioned, they said that 85% should be in Putonghua, 85% should be in Ligur, but, you know, how, what do you mean by 85%, 85% of the classroom time, 85% of what I'm saying. But imagine if a teacher just keeps saying, follow me, read after me, read this, write that for the whole class. Probably 100% of the teacher's usage is in the target language, either Putonghua or the Ligur. The teacher does not provide any comprehensible input that is directly towards communicative goals. So it won't have any positive impact on the students learning experience. Imposing this medium of instruction requirement may not contribute to a positive learning outcome. We know that the Ligur group is a group clearly show an attachment to a distinct cultural identity. And they are indeed a majority in Xinjiang students immersed in the Ligur language outside the classroom anyway. So imposing this regulated percentage of medium of instruction may intensify resistance to the national language. But don't forget that this kind of regulated percentage of medium of instruction is not a new invention of the Xinjiang government or, you know, by, or not a new invention by China. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, ACTFL, just in case you don't know what ACTFL is, it is the US Nations Premier Organization for Language Teaching Professionals providing vision leadership and support for quality language teaching and testing, as well as providing support to those who need to instruct and assess languages. So ACTFL recommends that learning take place through the target language for 90% or more of classroom time, except in immersion program models where the target language is used exclusively. This recommendation is also echoed by your PPLI environment post primary language island is a dedicated unit providing expertise and support for foreign language education. So, in other words, this kind of medium of instruction requirement is, is the widely proposed practice nowadays. Another thing I want to mention here is that both ACTFL and also PPLI provides a list of suggestions to tell language teachers, instructors, how to implement this kind of requirement. I think it would be great if this medium of instruction requirement in Xinjiang could also come with a list of concrete suggestions on how to implement it. Now, the third nutrient is to chiffon in the Mongolian. So, the Mongolian language in Mongolian, well, first of all, the dominant ethnicity is Chinese literature has already shown a decline interest in the Mongolian language since 1990s, what two main reasons have been identified for this. Firstly, the economic reforms and nationwide marketization contributed to this pure status of put on white and English being overwhelmingly dominant in social mobility. Therefore, governmental financial support for Mongolian education was also gradually withdrawn since the education sector was to be managed according to the market forces. We did a few trip to chiffon, which is just because of the sheer size of the Inner Mongolia is unlikely we can travel all the banners or the subdivisions of Inner Mongolia. We chose chiffon one of the 12 subdivisions of the Inner Mongolia. It has the largest population of all cities and banners in the Inner Mongolia. We visit five Mongolian national schools. And based on our future, we found a very strong utilitarian value attached to, by this time to the Mongolian language, but two possible explanations for this. Firstly, starting it allows Mongol students to benefit from favorable policies such as lower entry mark requirements for university admission. Please note that any student who is identified as Mongolian ethnicity, they are qualified for 10 points extra already for the university entry exam. But that means it doesn't matter whether you are starting the Mongolian language or as long as you're ethnic Mongolian, the Mongol you are entitled to have this extra 10 points. If you're starting the Mongolian language, you will have a lower entry mark for university admission. And also secondly, the study of this language can contribute due to an enhanced job prospect. The Inner Mongolian government prescribes that 15% of agencies must be allotted to the university graduates who are bilingual in Mongolian and Mandarin Chinese, a quota which applies to all public sector poses. However, as soon as the pragmatic value of Mongolian decreases, attitudes towards and motivations for starting the language change accordingly. We can see from the example of the changing weighting of Mongolian in the university entry exam. So the scores of Mongolian and English have been combined and recognized as one subject in the university entry exam since English was introduced in the curriculum in 2003. So the split between Mongolian English was initially 2A and then 7A. The weighting of Mongolian was lower further and the split became 50-50 in 2008. Working hard on English which is more useful for individual advancement and also for the future career. The consequence of this kind of weighting is a significant drop in interest in Mongolian. So comparing the benefits of learning English with the efforts made to study both English and Mongolian, students prefer to devote their attention to English only. So bringing them to devalue the study of Mongolian and then in 2017 the proportion of Mongolian was brought up with a split of 7-3. But this may not be ideal based on our interviews. One of the interviews is that we would like to see Mongolian to be recognized as a standalone subject in the university entry exam. Our field trip to Chifon in Inner Mongolia was conducted in 2018. So probably motivated by the utilitarian value of the minority language, the medium of instruction policies were well practiced in all classes we observed. So Mongolian was the medium of instruction during our field trip. In August 2020, the nationally compiled Chinese language textbooks for three subjects, language and literature, politics, and history was suddenly introduced by the Inner Mongolian government. The use of Chinese language textbooks for different subjects may indicate that Mongolian language might be replaced by Po Duhua in the future as the medium of instruction. So we think that the findings from Po Duhua and from the Inner Mongolia might be related to this official document that decisions regarding basic education reforms and development issued in 2001. He proposed merging and reducing the number of rural schools to optimize education resources. Therefore, approximately 220,000 rural schools were closed down in 2001 to 2010, with the vast majority of their students enrolled in urban boarding schools. So those Tu Jia or Mongolian children from rural regions or pastoral land caused the opportunity to practice their home language or even just exposure to their home language when they began attending urban boarding schools. So therefore this kind of urban rural division is likely to abbreviate the marginalization of the ethnic minority language, for example, the Tu Jia and Mongolian. And secondly, we notice a very strong pragmatic attitude towards the Chinese girl education from our field trips. Our interviews show the desire to maximize the benefits of favorable policies, such as the high university admission rates or enhanced job prospects. And that is used as a bargaining tool to navigating the academic practice, for example, to multiply students learning and to prevent the minority language from being marginalized in local academic competitions among three languages. And of course, I would like to quantify the conversion between the linguistic capital, economic capital and cultural capital because, you know, our interviewees and also a lot of those ethnic minority students and their parents are using this kind of conversion between different capitals as a bargaining tool to navigate their choices. I also found that the degree of integration with her may play a role in the medium of instruction policy design, and also actual practice adopted for regions with high degree of integration, a kind of massive bear attitude towards medium of instruction is adopted. It is either not specified, consequently allowing schools to choose the best learning experience, as in the case of to Jia, or you know the minority language is recommended as in the case of Mongolian for regions with low degree of integration, a relatively region instructional policy is adopted. So, this is probably based on a mindset of associating proficiency in Putonghua with national unity. However, as I said early on, we see a shift to Chinese language textbooks in the Mongolian. And this signify that maybe speeding up the learning of Putonghua among minority groups. Well, you probably heard about the discussion in relation to the policy review or even policy reform for ethnic minority groups. In 2007, he calls for the political cessation through change suggests eliminating minority status and a shift towards culturalization to strengthen national culture identity. Again, two scholars in 2011 proposed a more radical change. They highlight the need for a major policy change suggesting the eradication of the division between the minority and majority, as well as the dilution of ethnic consciousness and the encouragement of a shared sense of similar identity. Another radical change in the current policy is unlikely was more adjustments or refinements of existing policies may indicate that whether study and the use of Putonghua among minority groups might be all the way. Another question has been raised as well. We know that a national unity remains the central topic in Chinese education, but whether and to what extent the study of Putonghua can contribute to a unified national identity. So, that's another question I think future research can, you know, concentrate on. Thank you very much. Now, I want to ask you something based on my own experience. You mentioned, you don't have to study English, right? There's you have to stay up for a language and sort of six are available, but almost everyone does English. I was in Inner Mongolia in like 2010 or something. I was in Hoha and found that that many people studied Japanese. My Chinese is very weak. So I actually spoke Japanese to most of the Mongols that I interacted with. And, and I said, why are all these Mongols studying Japanese and they said it's because it's easier than English. And then I was just wondering, did you notice any popularity in studying Japanese among Mongols? Well, not based on the wishes we did to those Mongol national schools, even including a very rural school in the pastoral land will visit. English is still the foreign language they teach over there. But since you mentioned that Japanese is relatively easy from easy to learn. So I think that's kind of linked with the comments I got from the teacher saying that they don't have enough resources to teach English. Well, if they think that English in comparison with Japanese probably is slightly more difficult to learn and probably also to teach more resources are needed. And it is very difficult for them to, for example, use any multimedia resources or even connected online to be connected with native English speakers to learn the language. The definition of Chinese I don't know if Mason has any insights for that if we can manage to answer that we probably can come up with a better idea to help with the national unity. It is also linked to the base about what's the best, or what's the next as the minority policies, because you know, if we want to emphasize on the nation cohesion and also to build a nation as a one single entity. It is pretty important for us to find a concept that really can make it comprehensible for all people to think that, oh yes, I am X, that X can be, oh yes I am Chinese, but how do we define Chinese, like your question how do we define Chinese. If we have a proper definition for that we probably can have a good answers for a series of questions. So I'm really sorry that I don't have a very short answer for that. So since you invited me to say something here I will making a first pass at explaining the situation in China abroad. The easiest to compare to the UK. So in the in the UK. There's the English and the Welsh and the Cornish and the Scotch and maybe even the Manx and they're all different. What would we call them ethnic groups is probably what we call them nations even they do call them in the in the UK. There's this notion of the British as this sort of overarching category, but it's clear that actually somehow British and English have a special relationship, all sorts of things are clear like there's no local there's a local government for Wales there's a local government for Scotland, there's no local government for England, and the English don't feel like this is unjust because they know they're the majority and they have all the power and all the wealth and whatnot. So, so it's possible to sort of have the distinction British versus English more and less in focus. And then, and then I think partly the confusion is caused by the English language, we have the term British and English we even have the term like Burmese and Burman. We have the term Burman for the ethnicity and Burmese for the nation, but we don't have this kind of distinction for Chinese, even though it exists in Chinese and even in terms of ethnicity and ethnicity there's this, there's this ethnicity that which is the nationality of the whole country. Yeah. And then the, and then the question is how, you know, how is, how is being Chinese in the kind of British sense different than Chinese in the English sense and I think well we know that this is a mess, even in the UK so it's also related to the definition of Chinese cinema nowadays. When we talk about cinema, we have the term Chinese language cinema, Chinese language cinema, but Chinese cinema is not just Chinese language cinema. Yeah, like you said this messiness just make it impossible to come up with a proper and clear or more concise kind of definition for it about Irish education. I just one thing I noticed when I was preparing for this talk today, I also, I looked on to the PPLI website and also from the information about medium or instruction. But by the way, when they talk about the medium of instruction, either you know the American one or the PPLI one. They are mainly about the requirements recommendation for teaching foreign language. In Ireland, when they said this recommendation is for foreign language teaching, mainly French, Spanish, German, Italian, not Irish, definitely not Irish, Irish is not there. But we know in reality, we don't have that many native speakers of Irish anymore to them to some of the Irish students. They are, I'm just saying the way they learn it is the same way as learning as learning a foreign language and also in one of the questions there with it with the secondary students what that question is mainly about their study of Chinese, but when we ask them to compare their learning experience with their experience of learning other foreign language we didn't say what foreign languages is, which is not them, you know, specify whatever other foreign language, a large number of them include Irish in their answers. This kind of foreign list of Irish does exist. I'll ask, I'll ask one question, which is, you mentioned that, you know, that being, let's say having being classified as a national minority gives you extra points on the Gaokao. But then you said also in Inner Mongolia, studying Mongolian can help. English and Mongolian count together, but Mongolian sort of counts more in the average. So if you do Mongolian, that's good for you. So the question that I have is, is there a situation like that for the tuja? Like do you benefit at all if you study tuja on the Gaokao? No, not at all. And when I said you benefit more on Gaokao if you study the Mongolian language, it means that on top of 10 points that every ethnic Mongol could have. And, you know, there's this kind of decimated quota from each university they can use. So those quota is for, they can use those quota for those who are studying the Mongolian language. So for tuja, I would say they could do better. I think hopefully they will, because what we found is that they also have a quota to recruit, to recruit tuja people in the, for the public sector process. However, there's no test for the tuja language. It is just that if you are tuja ethnicity, then you are qualified to apply for that post. But for in the Mongolia, it's different. They will have interview to exam that you are indeed a foreign speaker of both Putonghua and Mongolian language, so that you can actually, you know, go for that position. I think tuja could do better. You know, if they learn from the experience from in the Mongolia, it will really help to get, how to say, to get more, to multivariate their students to learn tuja more and help to preserve that language better. Just a sort of technical follow up question, this rule that you get, sort of if you study Mongolian, you get, you get the automatic 10 points for being Mongol and then you get some extra points for studying Mongolian. Is that administrative at the level of the province of Inner Mongolia or is that a national like the province of Mongolia, the Inner Mongolia's policy for their region. So I guess this part of this, you know, being autonomous region. So they have certain autonomy on policies like this. Oh, I see, I see, I see. Because it struck me like, I don't know, like the Gaokao is this very central thing standardized across the whole country. If you let local provinces say, oh, well, just give people extra points, you know, it could be no extra points. It's the quota from each university. They can have certain quota to recruit certain people. Oh, but then it only affects universities in Inner Mongolia, right, like, no, China, but those, you know, those university across China will have a specific quota for certain group of people. And for when they recruit students from Inner Mongolia, those quota is set for those who are studying the Mongolian language. Oh, I see, I see, I see, I see. So, so, so if we have just to take an example if you have something like, I don't know, Tsinghua University, they might have okay we have these many spots for people from Shang Xi, and these many spots for people from Inner Mongolia or whatnot. And then, so from their perspective, if that's the national or that's the national policy is like my university has spots allocated according to region. But from the local regions perspective they have the ability to kind of to some extent affect the rules of how those quotas are applied. Yes, indeed. Yeah, thank you so much. Super interesting. I just want to make a plug. So I was working with Microsoft recently and made a auto completion mobile phone keyboard for to job. I thought maybe even this, you know, the sense that their languages backward or something well if they can see that their mobile phone to job. It is really great that you and your colleagues are doing that because I remember when I talked to some of the Tibetan students that they said we're using iPhone because you know this phone provides the language input, but not others. So it is great that you know you made this software and this app and it is openly available for those users. So thank you very much for this really interesting talk. So let's clap for. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you for coming.