In the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, some students are taking a pass on the commonly used Cyrillic alphabet and focusing their efforts on learning a traditional, vertical Mongolian script that dates back to the empire of Genghis Khan. They are among a growing number of Mongolians who are inspired to study the ancient letters after seeing protests in China’s Inner Mongolia region against a new language policy to replace Mongolian with Mandarin in schools.