In Danba County, Ganzi Prefecture, beside the Dadu River, pepper trees are bearing red fruit as university admission letters arrive. Eighteen-year-old Tibetan twin sisters Liu Yucheng and Liu Yujie are rushing to harvest their family's 20-plus pepper trees before the semester begins. Both have been admitted to universities in Chengdu — one to Xihua University and the other to Southwest Minzu University.

"They are among the first batch of students at Danba Middle School to use AI-assisted instruction," said their head teacher and English instructor, Li Juan. Across the snowy mountains and Qionglai Range, quality educational resources are breaking through geographic barriers — shifting from "waiting for teachers to arrive" to "technology arriving."

138 Points in English: "AI Helped Me Gain 20 Points"

Younger sister Liu Yujie scored 138 in English on this year's college entrance exam, though she doesn't consider herself naturally gifted. "My English grades in the first two years of high school were not outstanding," she said. She believes rural students often lag behind their urban counterparts in English because "city kids have broader exposure and stronger comprehension."

The sisters adopted a diligent approach: each kept a notebook, recording 20 high-frequency vocabulary words daily and reviewing them weekly. During evening study sessions and before afternoon naps, they practiced test questions and essay writing. Starting in the second semester of their junior year, Yujie specifically trained her English handwriting because her teacher said neat penmanship could earn extra marks.

The real breakthrough came in their senior year when the school introduced an AI-assisted essay grading system, developed through a partnership with Shude Middle School. "AI helped us improve by 20 points," Yujie said, explaining that the technology pulled her out of a "mountain mindset." She summarized five ways she used AI: understanding essay prompts to avoid going off-topic, building frameworks with outlines, accumulating themed material with examples and quotes, polishing drafts by identifying errors and logical gaps, and benchmarking against scoring criteria to pinpoint deduction areas in structure, content, and language.

However, she emphasized: "AI is a tool, not a ghostwriter. You can't copy its finished essays directly — that leads to low scores."

Li Juan noted that Yujie typically scored around 110 in English before, but jumped to 138 on the exam, losing only 4 points on the essay. She believes the result stems from the student's hard work combined with AI's support.

Heading to Chengdu After Harvesting Peppers

Elder sister Liu Yucheng scored 568 and was admitted to Xihua University's e-commerce program, while Yujie scored 578 and will study online media at Southwest Minzu University. For the twins, reaching university is just the first step.

Their father passed away years ago, leaving their mother to raise three daughters alone. She now works as a cook away from home. "Mom comes back at most twice a year, totaling less than ten days," the sisters said. They have been accustomed to life without their mother since eighth grade. Their eldest sister graduated from a Chengdu university this year and has started working.

Tuition and living expenses remain a pressing concern. This year, the twins applied for student loans through the local education authority. In early September, they will travel together from Danba to Chengdu for registration. When interviewed, they were on the hillside picking peppers, determined to harvest and dry all the fruit from their family's 20-plus trees before leaving.

Asked whether they want to stay in Chengdu or return to Danba after graduation, both answered in unison: "We want to come back to Danba. We've grown up here — we feel a deep attachment."

From "Quality Teachers Arriving" to "Technology Arriving"

Since 2022, eight central government departments including the Organization Department and the Ministry of Education have jointly launched a "group-based" education support program for counties in the national rural revitalization initiative. That fall semester, 15 subject teachers arrived at Danba Senior High School for targeted assistance, including instructors from Shude Middle School.

In 2025, Shude Middle School brought its "Shude No.1" AI system across the same mountains into Danba classrooms. The support model expanded from people to technology. This AI-assisted teaching system, piloted at Shude Middle School for two years, reduced essay grading time from four hours per exam to several dozen minutes while also generating improved sample essays. Since its official launch in September 2025, 23 classes and 979 students across the school have completed 94 sets of exam papers through the system.

"We've only used it systematically for about 100 days, but the results are clear," Li Juan said. Most students in her class are ethnic minorities — Tibetan, Qiang, and Naxi. Their English essays improved noticeably in a short period. "This year, the Shude class at Danba Middle School improved overall English scores by about 10 points." Teachers and students describe the change with one word: "delight."

Danba's story is not unique. Public data shows that over the past five years, Chengdu has dispatched more than 6,000 outstanding teachers to ethnic regions for teaching support and training, while receiving over 8,000 teachers from those regions for professional development in the city. The "Famous Teachers Teaching Support" program conducts more than 50 sessions annually, benefiting over 60,000 teachers and building a "permanent local teaching force" for ethnic regions.

By the Dadu River, the pepper trees remain. The first Tibetan twin sisters to use AI-assisted learning are about to enter university classrooms. Li Juan said AI-assisted instruction will expand to more subjects in the future, reaching even more students in mountain areas.