title: Manoj Prabhakar

text: In 1999, Prabhakar participated in an expose of match-fixing by the Tehelka news organisation. However, he was then charged by the BCCI with involvement in match fixing and subsequently banned from playing cricket for the Indian team.


title: Manoj Prabhakar

text: In 2011, he was dismissed from his coaching role with the Delhi cricket team after he publicly criticized the players and selectors.


title: Manoj Prabhakar

text: Prabhakar joined the Congress party and unsuccessfully contested election to the Indian Parliament from Delhi in 1996. Prabhakar is married to actress Farheen, who is known for her roles in the films "Jaan Tere Naam" and "Kalaignan". The couple lives in Delhi, with their two sons, Raahil Prabhakar and Manavansh Prabhakar, and also Rohan Prabhakar, a son from previous marriage with Sandhya.


title: Manoj Prabhakar

text: A Bollywood film "Azhar" released in 2016, directed by Tony D'Souza, was based on his teammate Mohammad Azharuddin life and revolves around Match fixing scandals in late 90s and 2000. Prabhakar's character was portrayed by Karanvir Sharma in the film. According to the report of "The Times of India", Prabhakar was unhappy due to his depiction in bad light in the film.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: Marshon Demond Lattimore (born May 20, 1996) is an American football cornerback for the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Ohio State, and was drafted by the Saints 11th overall in the 2017 NFL Draft.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: Lattimore attended Glenville High School in Cleveland, Ohio. He played cornerback and wide receiver for the football team. As a senior, he was one of six finalists for the U.S. Army Player of the Year Award. Lattimore was rated as a four-star recruit and committed to Ohio State University to play college football.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: Lattimore redshirted his first year at Ohio State in 2014 and played in only seven games his redshirt freshman year in 2015, due to hamstring injuries. He fully recovered from the injuries to become a starter in 2016. On November 29, 2016, Lattimore was named First-team All-Big Ten by the coaches.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: Coming out of Ohio State, Lattimore was projected to be a first round pick by the majority of NFL experts and analysts. He was invited to the NFL Combine, but chose not to perform the bench press, shuttle, and three-cone drill. He attended Ohio State's Pro Day and decided to only run positional drills for scouts and representatives. Although he had a history of hamstring injuries and was limited to a single year of starting experience in college, he was ranked the top cornerback prospect in the draft by NFLDraftScout.com, "Sports Illustrated", ESPN, NFL analyst Bucky Brooks, and NFL analyst Mike Mayock. Lattimore was also ranked as the best cornerback by Pro Football Focus.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: The New Orleans Saints selected Lattimore in the first round (11th overall) of the 2017 NFL Draft. He was the first of five cornerbacks selected in the first round of the draft.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: On June 3, 2017, the Saints signed Lattimore to a fully guaranteed four-year, $15.35 million contract with a signing bonus of $9.31 million.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: The Saints were expected to bring Lattimore along slowly and allow him to sit behind starters Delvin Breaux and P. J. Williams and compete for the role as the third cornerback on the depth chart against Ken Crawley and De'Vante Harris. Head coach Sean Payton named him the third cornerback behind P. J. Williams and Ken Crawley after Breaux suffered a fractured fibula on August 16. He started the first two regular-season games after Crawley was listed as inactive for both.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: Lattimore made his NFL debut on "Monday Night Football" in the season-opener against the Minnesota Vikings and recorded four solo tackles in the 29–19 loss. The following week, he had a season-high seven combined tackles, two pass deflections, and a forced fumble during a 36–20 loss against the New England Patriots. Lattimore left the game in the fourth quarter and was placed in concussion protocol after colliding with teammate Vonn Bell as they both tackled wide receiver Brandin Cooks. Lattimore became the starting cornerback prior to Week 4 after Williams was demoted in relation with a disciplinary issue. Two weeks later against the Detroit Lions, Lattimore recorded five combined tackles, deflected two passes, intercepted a pass attempt from quarterback Matthew Stafford, and returned it for a 27-yard touchdown during a 52–38 victory. The interception and touchdown were the first of his career. On November 2, 2017, he was named the NFC Defensive Rookie of the Month for the month of October. Lattimore missed Weeks 12–13 due to an ankle sprain during a Week 11 victory over the Washington Redskins.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: On December 21, it was announced that Lattimore was selected to play in the 2018 Pro Bowl. During Week 16, he made five combined tackles, four pass deflections, and intercepted his fifth pass of the year off of Matt Ryan in a 23–13 victory over the Atlanta Falcons.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: Lattimore finished his rookie year with 52 combined tackles (43 solo), 18 pass deflections, five interceptions, and a touchdown in 13 games and starts. His five interceptions were the fifth most of all players in 2017. Lattimore was named the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year and received an overall grade of 90.5 from Pro Football Focus and had the fourth highest grade among all cornerbacks in 2017. He was ranked 82nd by his peers on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2018, one of three rookies to make the list.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: The Saints finished atop the NFC South with an 11–5 record. On January 7, 2018, Lattimore started his first NFL playoff game and recorded two solo tackles and a pass deflection during a 31–26 NFC Wild Card round victory over the Carolina Panthers. The following week, he made four solo tackles and deflected a pass in a 29–24 road loss to the Vikings in the NFC Divisional round, which became known as the Minneapolis Miracle.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: In the season-opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Lattimore primarily covered wide receiver Mike Evans, who caught seven passes for 147 yards including a 50-yard touchdown. Due to the Saints' poor play on defense, they lost by a score of 48–40. After the game, Lattimore stated: "It isn't going to get me down. Everybody gets beat. We needed to get slapped in our face one good time to see we're not on a level we think we're on." During Week 11 against the Philadelphia Eagles, he made his first interception of the season off of Carson Wentz in a 48–7 victory. Two weeks later against the Dallas Cowboys, Lattimore forced Amari Cooper to fumble the ball and recovered it. After the play, Lattimore put $23 into the Salvation Army's Red Kettle by the endzone as the Saints lost 13–10. Two weeks later against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Lattimore intercepted Jameis Winston in the endzone and forced a fumble off Chris Godwin in a 28–14 road victory.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: Lattimore finished his second professional season with 59 combined tackles, 12 pass deflections, two interceptions, four forced fumbles, and three fumble recoveries in 16 games and starts. He received an overall grade of 74.1 from Pro Football Focus in 2018, which ranked as the 20th highest grade among all qualifying corner backs.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: The Saints finished atop the NFC South with a 13–3 record and were the no. 1 seed in the NFC for the playoffs. In the Divisional Round of the playoffs against the Eagles, Lattimore made two interceptions off of Nick Foles in the 20–14 win. The first came in the second quarter when Lattimore picked off a pass that was intended for tight end Zach Ertz and the second occurred in the fourth quarter when wide receiver Alshon Jeffery dropped a pass that fell into his waiting hands, sealing a Saints win as the Eagles' offense never got the ball back. In the NFC Championship game against the Los Angeles Rams, Lattimore made six tackles in the controversial 26–23 overtime loss.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: During Week 3 against the Seattle Seahawks, Lattimore recorded a team high 12 tackles in a 33–27 road victory. Three weeks later against the Jacksonville Jaguars, he recorded his first interception of the season off of Gardner Minshew in the 13–6 road victory.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: In Week 5 against the Los Angeles Chargers on "Monday Night Football", Lattimore recorded the game winning tackle on wide receiver Mike Williams short of the first down marker on fourth down during the 30–27 overtime win.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: In Week 8 against the Chicago Bears, Lattimore recorded his first interception of the season off a pass thrown by Nick Foles during the 26–23 overtime win.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: On September 12, 2021, Lattimore signed a five-year, $97.6 million contract extension with the Saints.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: In Week 5, Lattimore had six passes defensed in a 33–22 win over Washington, earning NFC Defensive Player of the Week.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: In Week 2 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Lattimore was ejected after getting into a fight with Mike Evans in the fourth quarter in the 10-20 loss. Lattimore was shoved to the turf from Evans after Lattimore exchanged words with Tom Brady and being shoved by Leonard Fournette.


title: Marshon Lattimore

text: On March 25, 2021, Lattimore was arrested for possession of a loaded handgun that was believed to be stolen, and was charged with possession of a concealed weapon and receiving stolen property, a fourth-degree felony. He was booked into Cuyahoga County Jail with bond set at $5,000.


title: Deewangi

text: Deewangi () is Pakistani romantic drama television series, produced by Abdullah Kadwani and Asad Qureshi under 7th Sky Entertainment. It has Danish Taimoor and Hiba Bukhari in their second project together after Haara Dil.


title: Deewangi

text: The story revolves around Nageen (Hiba Bukhari), who hails from a lower-middle-class background, and Sultan Durrani (Danish Taimoor), a wealthy businessman who hails from a political background. Sultan lost his parents at a very young age and lived with his grandmother Bi Jaan (Ismat Zaidi) ever since. Nageen lives with her sister Nuzhat (Faiza Gillani), brother-in-law Rashid (Noor-ul-Hassan) and Rashid's mother. Nageen only lands menial jobs because she does not have a degree, and is hired as a bus hostess at a private bus company.


title: Deewangi

text: Sultan crosses paths with Nageen when his car suddenly stops working on the highway and has no other choice but travel in a bus. In that brief journey, Sultan is drawn to Nageen when he sees her confronting a harasser. Afterwards, he starts travelling by bus every now and then just to meet Nageen but she ignores him and only treats him as a passenger. To seek her attention, Sultan buys all the bus tickets one day to travel alone with Nageen. He expresses his feelings for her but she rejects him because of their class difference. She gets more frightened after a man throws acid on Faryal (Nageen's friend) for refusing his proposal. On the other hand, Sultan's cousin, Narmeen (Zoya Nasir), who wants to marry Sultan, finds out about Nageen and makes a plan to trap her. After a few days, Sultan forcefully tries to put a ring on Nageen's fingers but she refuses and slaps him. Narmeen's secret agent records a video and it goes viral on social media. The video makes Sultan look like a harasser and as a result, his uncle loses general public elections. Nageen reaches out to Sultan for his forgiveness and he accepts her apology. Sultan again proposes to Nageen and she accepts it this time. Nageen's family is very happy with the marriage, but most members of Sultan's family oppose it as they want him to marry Narmeen. On the wedding day, Nageen is kidnapped and every one suspects her of running away with someone else. Sultan calls off the wedding and Nageen's character is questioned in the society.


title: Deewangi

text: Nageen is let go after two days. Her family believes that she has either been raped or ran away on her own wish. Nageen tries to assure them that nothing bad happened with her nor she ran away. She has no explanation to give concerning the two-day kidnapping. After a few days, Nageen goes to Sultan to make him believe of her innocence, but Sultan reveals that he was the one who kidnapped her and that the marriage was just a plan to seek revenge from Nageen for the slap and the public humiliation. Nageen is heartbroken. She threatens to expose Sultan in front of the media but Sultan blackmails Nageen with photoshopped intimate pictures. He also pays Rashid (brother-in-law) 50 Lac Rupees to keep their mouth shut.


title: Deewangi

text: Sultan marries Narmeen on Bi Jaan's insistence. Rashid forcefully arranges Nageen's marriage with Anwar but Nageen plans to runaway with the help of her sister. One day, Anwar comes to Nageen's house when she is alone and tries to rape her so Nageen, out of self-defense, grabs the first hard thing she sees, hits him on the head, and escapes. Nageen goes to Lahore to her Aunt's house. On the way, Nageen meets Haroon (Ali Abbas) who tries to become her friend but she turns him down. Haroon helps Nageen a lot in Lahore. Nageen lands a job as a Receptionist in a TV Channel company. She finds out that Haroon also works as a reporter in the same company. They become friends and Haroon starts liking Nageen. Sultan leads an unhappy married life with Narmeen and missed Nageen constantly but tries to deny his feelings. In Lahore, Haroon proposes Nageen but she is reluctant as Haroon's mother doesn't approve of the match. However, Nageen and Haroon manage to get married anyway. On the other hand, Sultan begins his search for Nageen. One day, Sultan finds out about Narmeen's conspiracies and in a fit of rage, he throws Narmeen out of the house. However, Narmeen hits a wall and dies after giving birth to their daughter. Sultan and Bijaan hide it from everyone but Bijaan is angry at Sultan and doesn't let's him meet his daughter. Eventually Narmeen's father gets to know about it. Narmeen's father tries to shoot Sultan, but accidentally shoots Bi Jaan and she dies. Narmeen's parents cut all ties with Sultan and doesn't allow him to meet his daughter Rameen. Thus Sultan loses all his loved ones and temporarily shifts to UK.


title: Deewangi

text: Four years pass by. Nageen leads a happy married life with Haroon although they have financial issues, they also have trouble while having a baby and Haroon's mother constantly taunts Nageen. Sultan returns to Pakistan and tries to meet his daughter, but Narmeen's mother doesn't allow him. Sultan still loves Nageen. One day, Sultan sees Nageen and again becomes obsessed with her.


title: Deewangi

text: Sultan started stalking Nageen and in order to get closer to her, appoints Haroon in his company. Sultan provided a furnished house to Haroon's family in Karachi so that they can shift to Karachi and he can get close to Nageen more often. Sultan strengthen his ties with Haroon's family but Nageen keeps on trying to avoid him. After realizing that all his efforts are useless, Sultan hired Haroon's ex, Ramsha in his company and conspires with her to make hurdles in Nageen's life. Ramsha got close to Haroon and started manipulating him against Nageen. Ramsha was also suspicious about the obsession of Sultan with Nageen, after digging in Nageen's past she gets to know the affair of Sultan and Nageen. On the other hand, Nageen tried to save his marriage by telling Haroon truth about her past with Sultan. Haroon in fit of rage confront Sultan and try to hit him but his servants attacked Haroon and made his injuries look like an accident. Ramsha realizes that Sultan is dangerous and selfish person so she partnered with Nageen in order to punish Sultan legally. However, Ramsha ended up committing suicide. Nageen claimed that Ramsha is murdered by Sultan but cops said she died by shooting herself.


title: Deewangi

text: In order to expose Sultan, Nageen agreed to marry him and ask Sultan to provide money for treatment of Haroon. However, during nikah Nageen neglect to marry Sultan and creates a scene in front of media, infuriating Sultan. He took Nageen to his home where during an argument Nageen shot him. Haroon took the blame of shooting Sultan and was locked up by cops. Sultan was taken to hospital, where he asked cops to release Haroon and that he has shot himself. Haroon's mother accept Nageen as her daughter-in-law. Nageen and Haroon ended up together while Sultan dying in the hospital.


title: Deewangi

text: The OST is sung and composed by Sahir Ali Bagga on lyrics penned by Imran Raza. It had gained 1.3M views in 2 weeks on YouTube after release and become trended all over Pakistan in 2020. The OST gains positive reaction and has garnered 42 million views on YouTube as of January 2022 since its release.


title: Deewangi

text: The serial started airing on Geo TV from 18 August 2019. The drama was retelecast on Geo TV from 28 September 2021.


title: Deewangi

text: Deewangi has been successfully able to sweep major nominations at Lux Style Awards and Pakistan International Screen Awards in 2021.


title: Deewangi

text: After the terror incident on Pakistan Stock Exchange in July 2020, the attackers car was found in the later episode of the series, sparked reaction from audiences due to the strange coincidence.


title: Racism in China

text: Racism in China arises from Chinese history, nationalism, sinicization, and other factors. Racism in modern China has been documented in numerous situations. Ethnic tensions have led to incidents in the country such as the Xinjiang conflict, the ongoing internment and state persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, the 2010 Tibetan language protest, the 2020 Inner Mongolia protests, anti-Western sentiment in China and discrimination against Africans and people of African descent.


title: Racism in China

text: China is a largely homogeneous society; over 90% of its population has historically been Han Chinese. Some of the country's ethnic groups are distinguishable by physical appearance and relatively-low intermarriage rates. Others have married Han Chinese and resemble them. A growing number of ethnic minorities are fluent at a native level in Mandarin Chinese. Children sometimes receive ethnic-minority status at birth if one of their parents belongs to an ethnic minority, even if their ancestry is predominantly Han Chinese. Pockets of immigrants and foreign residents exist in some cities.


title: Racism in China

text: Some ethnic conflicts were violent. During the 350 AD Wei–Jie war, the Chinese leader Ran Min massacred non-Chinese Wu Hu in retaliation for abuses against the Chinese population; the Jie people were particularly affected. In the period between 350AD and 352AD, during the Wei–Jie war, General Ran Min ordered the complete extermination of the Jie, who were easily identified by high noses and full beards, leading to large numbers being killed. According to some sources more than 200,000 of them were slain.


title: Racism in China

text: Troops commanded by Tian Shengong slaughtered Arab and Persian merchants in the Yangzhou massacre (760). The rebel Huang Chao's army killed about 120,000 Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Parsi merchants in the Guangzhou massacre when he captured Guang Prefecture.


title: Racism in China

text: Despite the Muslims' high position, the Yuan Mongols discriminated against them: restricting halal slaughter and other Islamic practices, such as circumcision (and kosher butchering for Jews). Genghis Khan called Muslims "slaves". Muslim generals eventually joined the Han Chinese in rebelling against the Mongols. Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang had Muslim generals (including Lan Yu) who rebelled against the Mongols and defeated them in battle. Semu-caste Muslims revolted against the Yuan dynasty in the Ispah rebellion, although the rebellion was crushed and the Muslims massacred by Yuan commander Chen Youding.


title: Racism in China

text: The Yuan dynasty started passing anti-Muslim and anti-Semu laws and getting rid of Semu Muslim privileges towards the end of the Yuan dynasty, in 1340 forcing them to follow Confucian principles in marriage regulations, in 1329 all foreign holy men including Muslims had tax exemptions revoked, in 1328 the position of Muslim Qadi was abolished after its powers were limited in 1311. In the middle of the 14th century this caused Muslims to start rebelling against Mongol Yuan rule and joining rebel groups. In 1357-1367 the Yisibaxi Muslim Persian garrison started the Ispah rebellion against the Yuan dynasty in Quanzhou and southern Fujian. Persian merchants Amin ud-Din (Amiliding) and Saif ud-Din) Saifuding led the revolt. Persian official Yawuna assassinated both Amin ud-Din and Saif ud-Din in 1362 and took control of the Muslim rebel forces. The Muslim rebels tried to strike north and took over some parts of Xinghua but were defeated at Fuzhou two times and failed to take it. Yuan provincial loyalist forces from Fuzhou defeated the Muslim rebels in 1367 after A Muslim rebel officer named Jin Ji defected from Yawuna.


title: Racism in China

text: The Muslim merchants in Quanzhou who engaged in maritime trade enriched their families which encompassed their political and trade activities as families. Historian John W. Chaffee saw the violent Chinese backlash that happened at the end of the Yuan dynasty against the wealth of the Muslim and Semu as something probably inevitable, although anti-Muslim and anti-Semu laws had already been passed by the Yuan dynasty. In 1340 all marriages had to follow Confucian rules, in 1329 all foreign holy men and clerics including Muslims no longer were exempt from tax, in 1328 the Qadi (Muslim headmen) were abolished after being limited in 1311. This resulted in anti-Mongol sentiment among Muslims so some anti-Mongol rebels in the mid 14th century were joined by Muslims. Quanzhou came under control of Amid ud-Din (Amiliding) and Saif ud-Din (Saifuding), two Persian military officials in 1357 as they revolted against the Mongols from 1357 to 1367 in southern Fujian and Quanzhou, leading the Persian garrison (Ispah) They fought for Fuzhou and Xinghua for 5 years. Both Saifuding and Amiliding were murdered by another Muslim called Nawuna in 1362 so he then took control of Quanzhou and the Ispah garrison for 5 more years until his defeat by the Yuan.


title: Racism in China

text: The historian Chen Dasheng theorized that Sunni-Shia sectarian war contributed to the Ispah rebellion, claiming that the Pu family and their in-law Yawuna were Sunnis and there before the Yuan while Amiliding and Saifuding's Persian soldiers were Shia originally in central China and moved to Quanzhou and that Jin Ji was a Shia who defected to Chen Youding after Sunni Yawuna killed Amiliding and Saifuding. Three fates befell the Muslims and foreigners in Quanzhou, the ones in the Persian garrison were slaughtered, many Persians and Arab merchants fled abroad by ships, another small group that adopted Chinese culture were expelled into coastal Baiqi, Chendi, Lufu and Zhangpu and mountainous Yongchun and Dehua and one other part took refuge in Quanzhou's mosques. The genealogies of Muslim families which survived the transition are the main source of information for the rebellion times. The Rongshan Li family, one of the Muslim survivors of the violence in the Yuan-Ming transition period wrote about their ancestors Li Lu during the rebellion who was a businessman and shipped things, using his private stores to feed hungry people during the rebellion and using his connections to keep safe. The Ming takeover after the end of the Persian garrison meant that the diaspora of incoming Muslims ended. After the Persian garrison full and the rebellion was crushed, the common people started a slaughter of the Pu family and all Muslims: "All of the Western peoples were annihilated, with a number of foreigners with large and big noses mistakenly killed while for three days the gates were closed and the executions were carried out. The corpses of the Pus were all stripped naked, their faces to the west. ... They were all judged according to the "five mutilating punishments" and then executed with their carcasses throwing into pig troughs. This was in revenge for their murder and rebellion in the Song."


title: Racism in China

text: 80 merchant ships were commanded by Fo Lian, from Bahrain who was Pu Shougeng's son-in-law. The Qais born Supterintendent of Taxes for Persian and the Island, Jamal al-din Ibrahim Tibi had a son who was sent in 1297-1305 as an envoy to China. Wassaf, and Arab historian said that Jamal became wealthy due to trade with India and China. Patronage networks and monopolies controlled Yuan maritime trade unlike in the Song dynasty where foreigners and Chinese of the Song merchant elite reaped profits. Quanzhou's end as an international trading port was rapid as in 1357 rebellions broke out in central China so the Persian merchants Amin ud-din (Amiliding) and Saif ud-din (Saifuding) led soldiers to take over Quanzhou. A Pu family relative by marriage, Yawuna, another Muslim assassinated those two. The Muslim rebels of the Persian garrison in Quanzhou lasted a decade by exploiting maritime trade and plunder. Yawuna and his army were captured and defeated by provincial forces in 1366 and then the Ming took over Quanzhou 2 years later in 1368. Maritime trade was regulated and implemented extremely differently in the Ming dynasty. Guangzhou, Ningbo and Quanzhou all had maritime trade offices but they were limited to specific areas. The South Sea trade was no longer permitted in Quanzhou and only trade with Ryukyu was allowed in Quanzhou. The Muslim community in Quanzhou became a target of the people's anger. In the streets there was widescale slaughter of "big nosed" westerners and Muslims as recorded in a genealogical account of a Muslim family. The era of Quanzhou as an international trading port of Asia ended as did the role of Muslims as merchant diaspora in Quanzhou. Some Muslims fled by sea or land as they were persecuted by the locals and others tried to hide and lay low as depicted in the genealogies of Quanzhou Muslims despite the Ming emperors attempted to issue laws tolerating Islam in 1407 and 1368 and putting the notices in mosques. Qais was the island of Kish and its king Jamal al-Din Ibrahim bin Muhammad al-Tibi briefly seized control of Hormuz while he traded with China and India and earned great wealth from it.


title: Racism in China

text: One of Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din Omar's descendants, the Jinjiang Ding fled to Chendai (Jinjiang) on the coast of Quanzhou to avoid the violence of the Ispah rebellion. The Li family survived through philanthropy activities however they said that in the rebellion "great families scattered from their homes, which were burned by the soldiers, and few genealogies survived." and used the words "a bubbling cauldron" to describe Quanzhou. In 1368 Quanzhou came under Ming control and the atmosphere calmed down for the Muslims. The Ming Yongle emperor issued decrees of protection from individuals and officials in mosques such as Quanzhou mosques and his father before him Ming Taizu had support from Muslim generals in his wars to reunify the country so he showed tolerance to them. The Ming passed some laws saying that Muslims not use Chinese surnames. Some genealogies of Muslims like the Li family show debate over teaching Confucian culture and classics like Odes and History or to practice Islam. Ming Taizu passed laws concerning maritime trade which were the major impact upon the life of Quanzhou Muslims. He restricted official maritime trade in Quanzhou to Ryukyu and Guangzhou was to monopolize south sea trade in the 1370s and 1403-1474 after initial getting rid of the Office of Maritime Trade altogether in 1370. Up to the late 16th century, private trade was banned.


title: Racism in China

text: Persian Sunni Muslims Sayf al-din (Sai-fu-ding) and Awhad al-Din (A-mi-li-ding) started the Ispah rebellion in 1357 against the Yuan dynasty in Quanzhou and attempted to reach Fuzhou, capital of Fujian. Yuan general Chen Youding defeated the Muslim rebels and slaughtered Muslims of foreign descent in Quanzhou and areas next to Quanzhou. This led to many Muslim foreign fleeing to Java and other places in Southeast Asia to escape the massacres, spreading the Islamic religion. Gresik was ruled by a person from China's Guangdong province and it had a thousand Chinese families who moved there in the 14th century with the name Xin Cun (New Village) in Chinese. THis information was reported by Ma Huan who accompanied Zheng He to visit Java in the 15th century. Ma Huan also mentions Guangdong was the source of many Muslims from China who moved to Java. Cu Cu/Jinbun was said to be Chinese. And like most Muslims form China, Wali Sanga Sunan Giri was Hanafi according to Stamford Raffles. Ibn Battuta had visited Quanzhou's large multi-ethnic Muslim community before the Ispah rebellion in 1357 when Muslim soldiers attempted to rebel against the Yuan dynasty. In 1366 the Mongols slaughtered the Sunni Muslims of Quanzhou and ended the rebellion. The Yuan dynasty's violent end saw repeated slaughters of Muslims until the Ming dynasty in 1368. The role of trade in Quanzhou ended as Sunni Muslims fled to Southeast Asia from Quanzhou. The surviving Muslims who fled Quanzhou moved to Manila bay, Brunei, Sumatra, Java and Champa to trade. Zheng He's historian Ma Huan noticed the presence of these Muslim traders in Southeast Asia who had fled form China in his voyages in Barus in Sumatra, Trengganu on the Malayan peninsula, Brunei and Java. The Nine Wali Sanga who converted Java to Islam had Chinese names and originated from Chinese speaking Quanzhou Muslims who fled there in the 14th century around 1368. The Suharto regime banned talk about this after Mangaradja Parlindungan, a Sumatran Muslim engineer wrote about it in 1964.


title: Racism in China

text: Widespread violence against the Manchu people by Han Chinese rebels occurred during the Xinhai Revolution, most notably in Xi'an (where the Manchu quarter's population—20,000—was killed) and Wuhan (where 10,000 Manchus were killed). Some scholars claim that the Manchus were seen as uncivilized and lacking culture, adopting Han Chinese and Tibetan culture instead.


title: Racism in China

text: Tensions erupted between Muslim sects, ethnic groups, the Tibetans and Han Chinese during the late 19th century near Qinghai. According to volume eight of the "Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics", the Muslim Dungan and Panthay revolts were ignited by racial antagonism and class warfare.


title: Racism in China

text: The Ush rebellion in 1765 by Uyghur Muslims against the Manchus occurred after Uyghur women were gang raped by the servants and son of Manchu official Su-cheng. It was said that "Ush Muslims had long wanted to sleep on [Sucheng and son's] hides and eat their flesh." because of the rape of Uyghur Muslim women for months by the Manchu official Sucheng and his son. The Manchu Emperor ordered that the Uyghur rebel town be massacred, the Qing forces enslaved all the Uyghur children and women and slaughtered the Uyghur men. Manchu soldiers and Manchu officials regularly having sex with or raping Uyghur women caused massive hatred and anger by Uyghur Muslims to Manchu rule. The invasion by Jahangir Khoja was preceded by another Manchu official, Binjing who raped a Muslim daughter of the Kokan aqsaqal from 1818 to 1820. The Qing sought to cover up the rape of Uyghur women by Manchus to prevent anger against their rule from spreading among the Uyghurs.


title: Racism in China

text: The Manchu official Shuxing'a started an anti-Muslim massacre which led to the Panthay Rebellion. Shuxing'a developed a deep hatred of Muslims after an incident where he was stripped naked and nearly lynched by a mob of Muslims.


title: Racism in China

text: The Hui Muslim community was divided in its support for the 1911 Xinhai Revolution. The Hui Muslims of Shaanxi supported the revolutionaries and the Hui Muslims of Gansu supported the Qing. The native Hui Muslims (Mohammedans) of Xi'an (Shaanxi province) joined the Han Chinese revolutionaries in slaughtering the entire 20,000 Manchu population of Xi'an. The native Hui Muslims of Gansu province led by general Ma Anliang sided with the Qing and prepared to attack the anti-Qing revolutionaries of Xi'an city. Only some wealthy Manchus who were ransomed and Manchu females survived. Wealthy Han Chinese seized Manchu girls to become their slaves and poor Han Chinese troops seized young Manchu women to be their wives. Young pretty Manchu girls were also seized by Hui Muslims of Xi'an during the massacre and brought up as Muslims.


title: Racism in China

text: Ethnic resentment resurfaced in at the end of the Qing Dynasty, in the early 20th century, as exemplified by Uyghur leader Sabit Damulla Abdulbaki's remarks about ROC Chinese and Tungans (Hui Muslims):


title: Racism in China

text: An American telegram reported that Uyghur groups in parts of Xinjiang demanded the expulsion of White Russians and Han Chinese from Xinjiang during the Ili Rebellion. The Uyghurs reportedly said, "We freed ourselves from the yellow men, now we must destroy the white". According to the telegram, "Serious native attacks on people of other races frequent. White Russians in terror of uprising."


title: Racism in China

text: and Tungans were reportedly "strongly anti-Japanese". During the 1930s, a White Russian driver for Nazi agent Georg Vasel in Xinjiang was afraid to meet Hui general Ma Zhongying, saying: "You know how the Tungans hate the Russians." Vasel passed the Russian driver off as a German.


title: Racism in China

text: A Chinese Muslim general encountered by writer Peter Fleming thought that his visitor was a foreign "barbarian" until he learned that Fleming's outlook was Chinese. Fleming saw a Uyghur grovel at the general's feet, and other Uyghurs were treated contemptuously by his soldiers. Racial slurs were allegedly used by the Chinese Muslim troops against Uyghurs. Ma Qi's Muslim forces ravaged the Labrang Monastery over an eight-year period.


title: Racism in China

text: In the early 20th century, Uyghurs would reportedly not enter Hui mosques, and Hui and Han households were built together in a town; Uyghurs would live farther away. Uyghurs have been known to view Hui Muslims from other provinces of China as hostile and threatening. Mixed Han and Uyghur children are known as "erzhuanzi" (二转子); there are Uyghurs who call them "piryotki", and shun them.


title: Racism in China

text: A book by Guo Rongxing on the unrest in Xinjiang states that the 1990 Baren Township riot protests were the result of 250 forced abortions imposed upon local Uyghur women by the Chinese government.


title: Racism in China

text: The Chinese government and individual Han Chinese citizens have been accused of discrimination against and ethnic hatred towards the Uyghur minority. This was a reported cause of the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, which occurred largely along racial lines. A "People's Daily" essay referred to the events as "so-called racial conflict", and several Western media sources called them "race riots". According to "The Atlantic" in 2009, there was an unofficial Chinese policy of denying passports to Uyghurs until they reached retirement age, especially if they intended to leave the country for the pilgrimage to Mecca. A 2009 paper from the National University of Singapore reported that China's policy of affirmative action had actually worsened the rift between the Han and Uyghurs, but also noted that both ethnic groups could still be friendly with each other, citing a survey where 70% of Uyghur respondents had Han friends while 82% of Han had Uyghur friends.


title: Racism in China

text: It was observed in 2013 that at least in the workplace, Uyghur-Han relations seemed relatively friendly.


title: Racism in China

text: According to Central Asia-Caucasus Institute founder S. Fredrick Starr, tensions between Hui and Uyghurs arose because Qing and Republican Chinese authorities used Hui troops and officials to dominate the Uyghurs and suppress Uyghur revolts. The massacre of Uyghurs by Ma Zhongying's Hui troops in the Battle of Kashgar caused unease as more Hui moved into the region from other parts of China. Per Starr, the Uyghur population grew by 1.7 percent in Xinjiang between 1940 and 1982, and the Hui population increased by 4.4 percent, with the population-growth disparity serving to increase interethnic tensions.


title: Racism in China

text: Some Hui criticize Uyghur separatism. According to Dru C. Gladney, the Hui "don't tend to get too involved in international Islamic conflict. They don't want to be branded as radical Muslims." Hui and Uyghurs generally have separate places of worship.


title: Racism in China

text: Han and Hui intermarry more than Uyghurs and Hui do, despite the latter's shared religion. Some Uyghurs believe that a marriage to a Hui is more likely to end in divorce.


title: Racism in China

text: The Sibe tend to believe negative stereotypes of Uyghurs and identify with the Han. According to David Eimer, one Han person had a negative view of Uyghurs but had a positive opinion of Tajiks in Tashkurgan.


title: Racism in China

text: Yengisar (يېڭىسار, "Йеңисар") is known for the manufacture of Uyghur handcrafted knives—"yingjisha" (英吉沙刀 or 英吉沙小刀) in Chinese. Although the wearing of knives by Uyghur men (indicating the wearer's masculinity) is a significant part of Uyghur culture, it is seen as an aggressive gesture by others. The Uyghur word for knife is "pichaq" (پىچاق, "пичақ"), and the plural is "pichaqchiliq" (پىچاقچىلىقى, "пичақчилиқ"). Limitations were placed on knife vending due to terrorism and violent assaults where they were utilized. Robberies and assaults committed by groups of Uyghurs, including children sold to (or kidnapped by) gangs, have increased tensions. China has been working on multilateral anti-terrorism since the September 11 attacks and, according to the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State, some Uyghur separatist movements have been identified as terrorist groups.


title: Racism in China

text: Racist incidents continue to occur in modern China and have become a contentious topic because Chinese governmental sources deny or downplay its existence. Scholars have noted that the party line of the People's Republic of China largely portrays racism as a Western phenomenon which has led to a lack of acknowledgement of racism in its own society. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China states that discrimination against and the oppression of any ethnic group is prohibited. Conversely, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported in August 2018 that Chinese law does not properly define "racial discrimination" and lacks an anti-racial discrimination law in line with the Paris Principles.


title: Racism in China

text: Despite rhetoric about equality among China's 56 recognized ethnic groups, in November 2012, newly-elected General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping released his model of the Chinese Dream, which has been criticized by scholars and media as Han-centric.


title: Racism in China

text: A 100-day crackdown on illegal foreigners in Beijing began in May 2012, with Beijing residents wary of foreign nationals due to recent crimes. China Central Television host Yang Rui said, controversially, that "foreign trash" should be cleaned out of the capital. A 2016 Gallup International poll had roughly 30% of Chinese respondents and 53% of Hong Kong respondents agreeing that some races were superior to others.


title: Racism in China

text: Anti-Japanese sentiment primarily stems from Japanese war crimes which were committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War. History-textbook revisionism in Japan and the denial (or whitewashing) of events such as the Nanking Massacre by the Japanese far-right has continued to inflame anti-Japanese feeling in China. It has been alleged that anti-Japanese sentiment is also partially the result of political manipulation by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to a BBC report, anti-Japanese demonstrations received tacit approval from Chinese authorities, however the Chinese ambassador to Japan Wang Yi said that the Chinese government does not condone such protests.


title: Racism in China

text: The Manchus were a heavily Sinicized ethnic group after the Qing conquest of Beijing and especially during the Republic of China period in the mainland, but the Manchu people are often still criticized by many Han Chinese people due to the historical problems of the Manchu invasion of China, the policy of forcing hair to be shaved and forcing to change clothes, racism in the Qing Dynasty, slow modernization, as well as Chinese humiliation by the powers in the West and also Japan.


title: Racism in China

text: Recent studies contend that historical conflicts between the Han Chinese and Muslims like the Northwest Hui Rebellion have been used by some Han Chinese to legitimize and fuel anti-Muslim beliefs and bias in contemporary China. Scholars and researchers have also argued that Western Islamophobia and the "War on Terror" have contributed to the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim sentiments and practices in China. Recent studies have shown that Chinese news media coverage of Muslims and Islam is generally negative, in which portrayals of Muslims as dangerous and prone to terrorism, or as recipients of disproportionate aid from the government was common. Studies have also revealed that Chinese cyberspace contains much anti-Muslim rhetoric and that non-Muslim Chinese hold negative views towards Muslims and Islam. Discrimination against Muslims and sinicization of mosques have been reported.


title: Racism in China

text: Middle Eastern youth in China interviewed by the Middle East Institute in 2018 generally did not encounter discrimination. However, a Yemeni national said he received unfavourable reactions from some Chinese when told he was a Muslim, something he managed to overcome with time especially after having made Chinese friends.


title: Racism in China

text: Since 2014, the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping Administration has pursued a policy which has led to more than one million Muslims (the majority of them Uyghurs) being held in secretive detention camps without any legal process. Critics of the policy have described it as the sinicization of Xinjiang and called it an ethnocide or cultural genocide, with many activists, NGOs, human rights experts, government officials, and the U.S. government calling it a genocide. The Chinese government did not acknowledge the existence of these re-education camps until 2018 and called them "vocational education and training centers." This name was changed to "vocational training centers" in 2019. The camps tripled in size from 2018 to 2019 despite the Chinese government claiming that most of the detainees had been released. The Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai has stated that accusations of genocide made by United States President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are "inaccurate."


title: Racism in China

text: There are widespread reports of forced abortion, contraception, and sterilization both inside and outside the re-education camps. NPR reports that a 37-year-old pregnant woman from the Xinjiang region said that she attempted to give up her Chinese citizenship to live in Kazakhstan but was told by the Chinese government that she needed to come back to China to complete the process. She alleges that officials seized the passports of her and her two children before coercing her into receiving an abortion to prevent her brother from being detained in an internment camp. Zumrat Dwut, a Uyghur woman, claimed that she was forcibly sterilized by tubal ligation during her time in a camp before her husband was able to get her out through requests to Pakistani diplomats. The Xinjiang regional government denies that she was forcibly sterilized. The Associated Press reports that there is a "widespread and systematic" practice of forcing Uyghur women to take birth control medication in the Xinjiang region, and many women have stated that they have been forced to receive contraceptive implants. The Heritage Foundation reported that officials forced Uyghur women to take unknown drugs and to drink some kind of white liquid that caused them to lose consciousness and sometimes causes them to cease menstruation altogether.


title: Racism in China

text: Tahir Hamut, an Uyghur Muslim, worked in a labor camp during elementary school when he was a child, and he later worked in a re-education camp as an adult, performing such tasks as picking cotton, shoveling gravel, and making bricks. "Everyone is forced to do all types of hard labor or face punishment," he said. "Anyone unable to complete their duties will be beaten."


title: Racism in China

text: Beginning in 2018, over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to assimilation, and to watch for frowned-upon religious or cultural practices. These government workers were trained to call themselves "relatives" and have been described in Chinese state media as being a key part of enhancing "ethnic unity".


title: Racism in China

text: In March 2020, the Chinese government was found to be using the Uyghur minority for forced labor, inside sweat shops. According to a report published then by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), no fewer than around 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly removed from the region of Xinjiang and used for forced labor in at least twenty-seven corporate factories. According to the Business and Human Rights resource center, corporations such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Amazon, Apple, BMW, Fila, Gap, H&M, Inditex, Marks & Spencer, Nike, North Face, Puma, PVH, Samsung, and UNIQLO have each sourced from these factories prior to the publication of the ASPI report.


title: Racism in China

text: Anti-Tibetan racism has been displayed by ethnic Han Chinese on some occasions. Ever since its inception, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the sole legal ruling political party of the PRC (including Tibet), has been distributing historical documents which portray Tibetan culture as barbaric in order to justify Chinese control of the territory of Tibet, and is widely endorsed by Han Chinese nationalists. As such, many members of Chinese society have a negative view of Tibet which can be interpreted as racism. The traditional view is that Tibet was historically a feudal society which practiced serfdom/slavery and that this only changed due to Chinese influence in the region.


title: Racism in China

text: Most Muslims in Tibet are Hui. Although hostility between Tibetans and Muslims stems from the Muslim warlord Ma Bufang's rule in Qinghai (the Ngolok rebellions (1917–49) and the Sino-Tibetan War), in 1949 the Communists ended violence between Tibetans and Muslims. However, recent Tibetan-Muslim violence occurred. Riots broke out between Muslims and Tibetans over a bone in soups and the price of balloons; Tibetans accused Muslims of being cannibals who cooked humans, attacking Muslim restaurants. Fires set by Tibetans burned the apartments and shops of Muslims, and Muslims stopped wearing their traditional headwear and began to pray in secret. Chinese-speaking Hui also have problems with the Tibetan Hui (the Tibetan-speaking Kache Muslim minority).


title: Racism in China

text: The main mosque in Lhasa was burned down by Tibetans, and Hui Muslims were assaulted by rioters in the 2008 Tibetan unrest. Tibetan exiles and foreign scholars overlook sectarian violence between Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims. Most Tibetans viewed the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks positively, and anti-Muslim attitudes resulted in boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses. Some Tibetan Buddhists believe that Muslims cremate their imams and use the ashes to convert Tibetans to Islam by making Tibetans inhale the ashes, although they frequently oppose proposed Muslim cemeteries. Since the Chinese government supports the Hui Muslims, Tibetans attack the Hui to indicate anti-government sentiment and due to the background of hostility since Ma Bufang's rule; they resent perceived Hui economic domination.


title: Racism in China

text: In 1936, after Sheng Shicai expelled 20,000 Kazakhs from Xinjiang to Qinghai, Hui troops led by Ma Bufang reduced the number of Kazakhs to 135. Over 7,000 Kazakhs fled northern Xinjiang to the Tibetan Qinghai plateau region (via Gansu), causing unrest. Ma Bufang relegated the Kazakhs to pastureland in Qinghai, but the Hui, Tibetans and Kazakhs in the region continued to clash.


title: Racism in China

text: The CCP has been accused of sinicization by gradually replacing Mongolian languages with Mandarin Chinese. Critics call it cultural genocide for dismantling people's minority languages and eradicating their minority identities. The implementation of the Mandarin language policy began in Tongliao, because 1 million ethnic Mongols live there making it the most Mongolian-populated area. The 5 million Mongols are less than 20 percent of the population in Inner Mongolia.


title: Racism in China

text: The 2020 Inner Mongolia protests were caused by a curriculum reform imposed on ethnic schools by the China's Inner Mongolia Department of Education. The two-part reform replace Mongolian as the medium of instruction by Standard Mandarin in three particular subjects and replace three regional textbooks, printed in Mongolian script, by the edited by the Ministry of Education, written in Standard Mandarin. On a broader scale, the opposition to the curriculum change reflects the decline of .


title: Racism in China

text: On 20 September 2020, up to 5,000 ethnic Mongolians were arrested in Inner Mongolia for protesting against enacted policies that outlaw their nomadic pastoralism lifestyle. The director of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), Enghebatu Togochog, called it “cultural genocide” by the CCP. Two-third of the 6 million ethnic Mongolians have a nomadic lifestyle that has been practiced for millennia.


title: Racism in China

text: In October 2020, the Chinese government asked Nantes History Museum in France not to use the words “Genghis Khan” and “Mongolia" in the exhibition project dedicated to the history of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire. Nantes History Museum engaged the exhibition project in partnership with the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot, China. Nantes History Museum stopped the exhibition project. The director of the Nantes museum, Bertrand Guillet, says: “Tendentious elements of rewriting aimed at completely eliminating Mongolian history and culture in favor of a new national narrative”.


title: Racism in China

text: Reports of racial discrimination against Africans have trended in foreign media since the 1970s. The Chinese government has continually provided aid to China-friendly African countries, which includes funding university education for African students of elite backgrounds. Scholar Barry Sautman believes that tensions between African students and Chinese students escalated since the 1970s because of a lack of interaction between the two groups, racist remarks made by Chinese media, and an increase of racial assaults and slurs by Chinese students. Publicized incidents of discrimination against Africans have been the Nanjing anti-African protests in 1988 and a 1989 student-led protest in Beijing in response to an African dating a Chinese person. Police action against Africans in Guangzhou has also been reported as discriminatory. In 2009, accusations by Chinese media that African undocumented immigrants residing in China could be as high as 200,000 people sparked racist attacks over the internet against Africans and mixed African-Chinese people. In 2017, a museum in Wuhan was condemned for comparing Africans to wild animals. In 2018, the CCTV New Year's Gala sparked controversies for blackface performances and portraying Africans as submissive to the support from China. During the CCTV New Year's Gala in 2021, Chinese actors again put on blackface; the Chinese Foreign minister denied that the performance was racist.


title: Racism in China

text: Reports of racism against Africans and black foreigners of African descent in China grew during the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. Black foreigners not from Africa have also faced racism and discrimination in China. In response to criticism over COVID-19 related racism and discrimination against Africans in China, Chinese authorities set up a hotline for foreign nationals and laid out measures discouraging businesses and rental houses in Guangzhou from refusing people based on race or nationality. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian claimed that the country has "zero tolerance" for discrimination. CNN stated that this claim ignored the decades' long history of racism and discrimination against Africans in China which predated the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Racism in China

text: According to BBC News in 2020, many people in China have expressed solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement. The George Floyd protests have reportedly sparked conversations about race that would have not otherwise occurred in the country, including treatment of China's own ethnic minorities. During the 2022 Shanghai lockdown, viral locally produced videos of Africans shouting scripted, positive wishes to the Chinese audience have been criticised as stereotypical and even dehumanising.


title: Racism in China

text: It has been reported since 2008 that many Africans have experienced racism in Hong Kong such as being subject to humiliating police searches on the street, being avoided on public transport, and getting blocked from bars and clubs.


title: Racism in China

text: There have been reports of widespread discrimination in Hong Kong against South Asian minorities regarding housing, employment, public services, and checks by the police. A 2001 survey found that 82% of ethnic minority respondents said they had suffered discrimination from shops, markets, and restaurants in Hong Kong. A 2020 survey found that more than 90% of ethnic minority respondents experienced some form of housing discrimination. Foreign domestic workers, mostly South Asians, have been at risk of forced labor, subpar accommodation, and verbal, physical, or sexual abuse by employers. A 2016 survey from Justice Centre Hong Kong suggested that 17% of migrant domestic workers were engaged in forced labor, while 94.6% showed signs of exploitation.


title: Racism in China

text: Filipina women in Hong Kong are often reportedly stereotyped as promiscuous, disrespectful, and lacking self-control. Reports of racist abuse from Hong Kong fans towards their Filipino counterparts at a 2013 football game came to light, after an increased negative image of the Philippines from the 2010 Manila hostage crisis. In 2014, an insurance ad, as well as a school textbook, drew some controversy for alleged racial stereotyping of Filipina maids.


title: Racism in China

text: Some Pakistanis in 2013 reported of banks barring them from opening accounts because they came from a 'terrorist country', as well as locals next to them covering their mouths thinking they smell, finding their beard ugly, or stereotyping them as claiming welfare benefits fraudulently. A 2014 survey of Pakistani and Nepalese construction workers in Hong Kong found that discrimination and harassment from local colleagues led to perceived mental stress, physical ill health, and reduced productivity.


title: Racism in China

text: South Asian minorities in Hong Kong faced increased xenophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic, with media narratives blaming them as more likely to spread the virus.


title: Racism in China

text: The Los Angeles Times and Vice Media alleged a hiring preference for white English teachers in China over other groups. In 2014, a Media Diversified article by a former English teacher in Ningbo alleged the English teaching industry was responsible for "painting the image of ‘good English’ as a domain reserved for white people" and highlighted the need for a more diverse staff in the industry.


title: Racism in China

text: In terms of international responses to China's policies for Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongols in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Xinjiang, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region respectively, while many outside of Mongolia are familiar with China's human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and Tibetans, few are familiar with the plight of the Mongols. An international petition titled “Save Education in Inner Mongolia” has so far received less than 21,000 signatures. Former U.S. President Trump signed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 into law, and the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2019 has passed the House of Representatives. The Southern Mongolian Congress, an Inner Mongolian activist group based out of Japan, has since written an open letter asking the U.S. Congress to do the same for the Mongols.


title: Racism in China

text: Much of the world has condemned China's detention of Uyghurs. In January 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that China is committing crimes against humanity and genocide against Uyghurs, making the U.S. the first country to apply those terms to the Chinese government's abuses. Current U.S. President Joe Biden used the term genocide to refer to China's abuses while campaigning, and his secretary of state, namely Antony Blinken, affirmed Pompeo's declaration.


title: Racism in China

text: Owing to China's rise, Japan is typically wary of angering China, which is its largest trading partner. Tokyo is a close ally of Washington. It did not, however, join the U.S. and several other nations in March 2021 in imposing sanctions on China over its repression of its mostly Muslim Uyghur majority. In April 2021, however, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, during a 90-minute phone call with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, called on his Chinese counterpart to take action to improve human-rights conditions for Uyghurs. This unusually strong message from Tokyo came shortly before Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga traveled to the U.S. for a summit with President Biden on April 16. South Korea, diplomatically squeezed between its close ally that is the U.S. and its economic trading partner that is China, has remained quiet on Xinjiang.


title: Racism in China

text: A common historical response to serious threats directed towards a symbolic universe is "nihilation", or the conceptual liquidation of everything inconsistent with official doctrine. Foreigners were labelled "barbarians" or "devils", to be conceptually eliminated. The official rhetoric reduced the Westerner to a devil, a ghost, an evil and unreal goblin hovering on the border of humanity. Many texts of the first half of the nineteenth century referred to the English as "foreign devils" ("yangguizi"), "devil slaves" ("guinu"), "barbarian devils" ("fangui"), "island barbarians" ("daoyi"), "blue-eyed barbarian slaves" ("biyan yinu"), or "red-haired barbarians" ("hongmaofan").


title: Racism in China

text: Chinese orthography provides opportunities to write ethnic insults logographically; this is known as "graphic pejoratives". This originated in the fact that Chinese characters used to transcribe the names of non-Chinese peoples were graphically pejorative ethnic slurs, where the insult was not the Chinese word but the character used to write it. The sinologist Endymion Wilkinson says,At the same time as finding characters to fit the sounds of a foreign word or name it is also possible to choose ones with a particular meaning, in the case of non-Han peoples and foreigners, usually a pejorative meaning. It was the practice, for example, to choose characters with an animal or reptile signific for southern non-Han peoples, and many northern peoples were given characters for their names with the dog or leather hides signific. In origin this practice may have derived from the animal totems or tribal emblems typical of these peoples. This is not to deny that in later Chinese history such graphic pejoratives fitted neatly with Han convictions of the superiority of their own culture as compared to the uncultivated, hence animal-like, savages and barbarians.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is an international Nichiren Buddhist organisation founded in 1975 by Daisaku Ikeda, as an umbrella organization of Soka Gakkai, which declares approximately 12 million adherents in 192 countries and territories as of 2017, more than 1.5 million of whom reside outside of Japan as of 2012. It characterizes itself as a support network for practitioners of Nichiren Buddhism and a global Buddhist movement for "peace, education, and cultural exchange."


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: SGI is also a non-governmental organization (NGO) in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 1983.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: The Soka Gakkai International (SGI) was formed at a world peace conference on January 26, 1975, on the island of Guam. Representatives from 51 countries attended the meeting and chose Daisaku Ikeda, who served as third president of the Japanese Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai, to become the SGI's founding president. The SGI was created in part as a new international peace movement, and its founding meeting was held in Guam in a symbolic gesture referencing Guam's history as the site of some of World War II's bloodiest battles, and proximity to Tinian Island, launching place of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: The Soka Gakkai's initial global expansion began after World War II, when some Soka Gakkai members married mostly American servicemen and moved away from Japan. Expansion efforts gained a further boost in 1960 when Daisaku Ikeda succeeded Jōsei Toda as president of the Soka Gakkai. In the first year of his presidency, Ikeda visited the United States, Canada, and Brazil, and the Soka Gakkai's first American headquarters officially opened in Los Angeles in 1963.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In 2000, Uruguay honored the 25th anniversary of the SGI's founding with a commemorative postage stamp. The stamp was issued on October 2, the anniversary of SGI President Ikeda's first overseas journey in 1960.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In January 2015, the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo reported that the SGI had been nominated for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, as confirmed by a Nobel Peace Laureate.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In May 2015, the SGI-USA was one of the organizing groups for the first-ever Buddhist conference at the White House.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In June 2015, the SGI-Italy was recognized by the Italian government with a special accord under Italian Constitution Article 8, acknowledging it as an official religion of Italy and eligible to receive direct taxpayer funding for its religious and social activities. It also recognizes the Soka Gakkai as a "Concordat" (It: "Intesa") that grants the religions status in "a special 'club' of denominations consulted by the government in certain occasions, allowed to appoint chaplains in the army a concordat is not needed for appointing chaplains in hospitals and jails and, perhaps more importantly, to be partially financed by taxpayers' money." Twelve other religious denominations share this status.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In November 2021, the organisation in Singapore change the name from Singapore Soka Association to Soka Gakkai Singapore.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: The Soka Gakkai International comprises a global network of affiliated organizations. As of 2011, the SGI reported active national organizations in 192 countries and territories with a total of approximately 12 million members. The SGI is independent of the Soka Gakkai (the domestic Japanese organization), although both are headquartered in Tokyo.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: National SGI organizations operate autonomously and all affairs are conducted in the local language. Many national organizations are coordinated by groups such as a women's group, a men's group, and young women's and young men's groups. National organizations generally raise their own operational funds, although the SGI headquarters in Tokyo has awarded funding grants to smaller national organizations for projects such as land acquisition and the construction of new buildings. SGI-affiliated organizations outside Japan are forbidden to engage directly in politics.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: While the national organizations are run autonomously, the Tokyo headquarters of SGI disseminates doctrinal and teaching materials to all national organizations around the world. The Tokyo headquarters also serves as a meeting place for national leaders to come together and exchange information and ideas.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: The election or nomination of the leaders is typically not decided by the SGI's general membership but by a board of directors. Leadership below national staff, however, has been liberalized; in the United States for instance, the nomination and approval of leaders includes both members and organizational leaders in the process. Karel Dobbelaere notes the election of the presidents, as well as a process of "nomination, review and approval that involves both peers and leaders" in choosing other leaders.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: SGI members adhere to the philosophy of Nichiren Buddhism as interpreted and applied by the Soka Gakkai's first three presidents Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, Josei Toda and Daisaku Ikeda, incorporating social interaction and engagement into their Buddhist practice. Monthly neighborhood discussion meetings are generally held at the homes of SGI members.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: Soka Gakkai Malaysia since 2005 has held a non-competitive biennial "Run for Peace" to raise awareness of nuclear disarmament and in support of culture of peace in the community—reportedly "the largest peace run in the country held in 28 locations nationwide and involving some 115,000 runners."


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In Dubai, the SGI Gulf association has hosted since 2008 an annual "Poetic Heart" symposium, partnering with other organizations and involving international and local artists as well as poets of all ages.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: Organizational practices in the United States have been characterized as socially inclusive Buddhism. In 2008, the SGI-USA, which is headquartered in California, publicly opposed that state's Proposition 8 (which sought to prevent same-sex marriage), and coordinated with other progressive religious groups to support same-sex couples' right to legally marry.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In 2012, then-President of the Republic of China Ma Ying-jeou remarked that the Taiwan Soka Association had been recognized for its involvement the past 16 years in the general welfare of society, education and religious teaching, highlighting its disaster rescue and relief efforts in the wake of Typhoon Morakot in 2009.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In November 2019, the Soka Gakkai Peace Committee in Japan helped organize the international conference "No Justice Without Life," at which Mario Marazziti of the Italy-based Community of Sant'Egidio, among others, advocated for a moratorium on the death penalty. The Italian Buddhist Institute Soka Gakkai had earlier endorsed the Community of Sant'Egidio's international appeal "Moratorium 2000," which was launched in 1998.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: The Soka Gakkai International is notable among Buddhist organizations for the racial and ethnic diversity of its members. It has been characterized as the world's largest and most ethnically diverse Buddhist group. Professor Susumu Shimazono suggested several reasons for this: the strongly felt needs of individuals in their daily lives, its solutions to discord in interpersonal relations, its practical teachings that offer concrete solutions for carrying on a stable social life, and its provision of a place where congenial company and a spirit of mutual support may be found. Peter Clarke wrote that the SGI appeals to non-Japanese in part because "no one is obliged to abandon their native culture or nationality in order to fully participate in the spiritual and cultural life of the movement."


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In 2015, Italian newspaper la Repubblica reported that half of all Buddhists in Italy are SGI members.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: According to Yoichi Kawada, director of the Tokyo-based Institute of Oriental Philosophy, the SGI defines itself as a "movement for contributing to peace, culture and education" based on its "interpretation and practical application of the ideas in the Lotus Sutra." SGI engagement as a religious NGO affiliated with the United Nations in policy discussions on issues including human rights, sustainable development and peace building is similarly described, in the phrasing of its Charter, as contributing to peace, culture and education.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: Since 2007, the SGI has collaborated closely with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) to develop educational programs and raise awareness on nuclear disarmament, particularly among young people. The SGI also partnered with ICAN to promote the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted at the United Nations in July 2017, and for which ICAN was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN, stated in a July 2017 interview that the "SGI has been one of our greatest partners in the fight to abolish nuclear weapons."


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: To further increase public awareness of the anti-nuclear movement, the SGI also created "The People's Decade" campaign, which since 2007 has developed a global grassroots network of people dedicated to abolishing nuclear weapons. In 2014, an SGI youth delegation met with the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) regarding coordination of the SGI's efforts and the UN efforts to increase grassroots movements for nuclear abolition.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In 2008, then-High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Sergio Duarte characterized SGI's work toward nuclear disarmament as linking human security with the fundamental goal of eliminating nuclear weapons.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: According to Pax Christi International, on March 28, 2017, a joint statement of Faith Communities Concerned about Nuclear Weapons, initiated by the SGI, was delivered by Pax Christi Philippines during the first UN negotiating conference for the treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons. More than 20 religious leaders affirmed through the joint statement their shared "aspirations for peace and for a world where people live without fear," praising world leaders in attendance for "the courage to begin these negotiations" and calling on States not in attendance to join the June–July session of the conference.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: The SGI also promotes environmental initiatives through educational activities such as exhibitions, lectures and conferences, and more direct activities such as tree planting projects and the SGI's Amazon Ecological Conservation Center, which is administered by SGI-Brazil. The center is engaged in reforestation, the creation of a regional seed bank, and experiments in sustainable agroforestry.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: One scholar cites Daisaku Ikeda, SGI's president, describing such initiatives as a Buddhist-based impetus for direct public engagement in parallel with legal efforts to address environmental concerns.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In India, the Bharat Soka Gakkai (the SGI of India) debuted the traveling exhibit "Seeds of Hope," a joint initiative of the SGI and Earth Charter International. At the exhibit's opening in Panaji, the state capital of Goa, regional planning head Edgar Ribeiro spoke of lagging efforts to implement environmental laws and stated that "Only a people's movement can take sustainability forward." In Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman University College President Datuk Dr Tan Chik Heok said that this exhibition helped "to create the awareness of the power of a single individual in bringing about waves of positive change to the environment, as well as the society."


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In November 2015, the SGI signed on to the Buddhist Climate Change Statement representing "over a billion Buddhists worldwide" in a call to action submitted to world leaders at the 21st session of UN climate change talks held in Paris. The statement affirms that Buddhist spirituality compels environmental protection and expresses solidarity with Catholic and Muslim leaders who have taken a similar stance. Described as "one of the most unified calls by a religion's leadership," the statement draws on the 2009 pan-Buddhist statement, "The Time to Act is Now: A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change," to which SGI-USA among others became a signatory in early 2015.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: The SGI conducts humanitarian aid projects in disaster-stricken regions. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, local Soka Gakkai facilities became refugee shelters and distribution centers for relief supplies. Efforts also included worldwide fundraising for the victims, youth groups, and spiritual support.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In 2014, SGI-Chile members collected supplies to deliver to emergency services and refugee centers after that country's devastating Iquique earthquake.


title: Soka Gakkai International

text: In 2015, SGI-USA was part of the organizing committee that convened a day-long conference in Washington, DC of 125 Buddhist leaders to discuss Buddhism and civic activism in the United States. The conference identified climate change and the environment, education and peace and disarmament as popular priorities.


title: Il trovatore

text: Il trovatore ('The Troubadour') is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto largely written by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play "El trovador" (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez. It was García Gutiérrez's most successful play, one which Verdi scholar Julian Budden describes as "a high flown, sprawling melodrama flamboyantly defiant of the Aristotelian unities, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident."


title: Il trovatore

text: The premiere took place at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 19 January 1853, where it "began a victorious march throughout the operatic world," a success due to Verdi's work over the previous three years. It began with his January 1850 approach to Cammarano with the idea of "Il trovatore". There followed, slowly and with interruptions, the preparation of the libretto, first by Cammarano until his death in mid-1852 and then with the young librettist Leone Emanuele Bardare, which gave the composer the opportunity to propose significant revisions, which were accomplished under his direction. These revisions are seen largely in the expansion of the role of Leonora.


title: Il trovatore

text: For Verdi, the three years were filled with musical activity; work on this opera did not proceed while the composer wrote and premiered "Rigoletto" in Venice in March 1851. His personal affairs also limited his professional work. In May 1851, an additional commission was offered by the Venice company after "Rigoletto"'s success there. Another commission came from Paris while he was visiting that city from late 1851 to March 1852. Before the libretto for "Il trovatore" was completed, before it was scored, and before it premiered, Verdi had four operatic projects in various stages of development.


title: Il trovatore

text: How and when Verdi acquired a copy of the García Gutiérrez play is uncertain, but Budden notes that it appears that Giuseppina Strepponi, with whom Verdi had been living in Busseto since September 1849, had translated the play, as evidenced in a letter from her two weeks before the premiere urging him to "hurry up and give OUR "Trovatore"".


title: Il trovatore

text: When considering setting García Gutiérrez's play, Verdi turned to work with Cammarano, "the born operatic poet" (according to Budden). Their correspondence began as early as January 1850, well before Verdi had done anything to develop a libretto with Piave for what later became "Rigoletto" in Venice. At this time, it was also the first since "Oberto" that the composer was beginning to prepare an opera with a librettist but without a commission of any kind from an opera house. In his first letter to Cammarano, Verdi proposed "El Trovador" as the subject with "two feminine roles. The first, the gypsy, a woman of unusual character after whom I want to name the opera."


title: Il trovatore

text: With regard to the chosen librettist's strength as a poet in preparing verse for opera, Budden also comments that his approach was very traditional, something which began to become clear during the preparation of the libretto and which appears in the correspondence between the two men.


title: Il trovatore

text: Verdi's time and energy were spent mostly on finishing "Rigoletto," which premiered at La Fenice in Venice in March 1851. Within a matter of weeks, Verdi was expressing his frustration to a mutual friend, de Sanctis, at having no communication from Cammarano. His letter emphasized that "the bolder he is, the happier it will make me," although it appears that Cammarano's reply contained several objections, which Verdi answered on 4 April and, in his response, he emphasized certain aspects of the plot which were important to him. These included Leonora taking the veil and also the importance of the Azucena/Manrico relationship. He continued by asking whether the librettist liked the drama and emphasized that "the more unusual and bizarre the better".


title: Il trovatore

text: Verdi also writes that if there were no standard forms – "cavatinas, duets, trios, choruses, finales, etc. [...] and if you could avoid beginning with an opening chorus..." he would be quite happy. Correspondence continued between the two men for the following two months or so, including another letter from the composer of 9 April which included three pages of suggestions. But he also made concessions and expresses his happiness in what he is receiving in the way of verse.


title: Il trovatore

text: During the period to follow, in spite of his preoccupations but especially after he had begun to overcome them, Verdi had kept in touch with the librettist. In a letter around the time of his intended departure for France, he wrote encouragingly to Cammarano: "I beg you with all my soul to finish this "Trovatore" as quickly as you possibly can."


title: Il trovatore

text: There then arose the question of where the opera would eventually be presented. Verdi had turned down an offer from Naples, but became concerned about the availability of his preferred Azucena, Rita Gabussi-De Bassini. She turned out not to be on the Naples roster, but expressed an interest in the possibility of Rome.


title: Il trovatore

text: Things were put on hold for several months as Verdi became preoccupied with family matters, which included the illnesses of both his mother (who died in July) and father, the estrangement from his parents with communications conducted only between lawyers, and the administration of his newly acquired property at Sant'Agata (now the Villa Verdi near his hometown of Busseto), where he had established his parents. But his relationship with his parents, albeit legally severed, as well as Strepponi's situation living with the composer in an unmarried state, continued to preoccupy him, as did the deterioration of his relationship with his father-in-law, Antonio Barezzi. Finally, in April 1851, agreement was reached with the elder Verdis on the payment of debts mutually owed and the couple were given time to resettle, leaving Sant'Agata for Verdi and Strepponi to occupy for the next fifty years.


title: Il trovatore

text: May 1851 brought an offer for a new opera from the Venice authorities, and it was followed by an agreement with the Rome Opera company to present "Trovatore" during the 1852/1853 Carnival season, specifically in January 1853.


title: Il trovatore

text: By November Verdi and Strepponi left Italy to spend the winter of 1851/52 in Paris, where he concluded an agreement with the Paris Opéra to write what became "Les vêpres siciliennes", his first grand opera, although he had adapted his earlier "I Lombardi" into "Jérusalem" for the stage. Including work on "Trovatore", other projects consumed him, but a significant event occurred in February, when the couple attended a performance of "The Lady of the Camellias" by Alexandre Dumas "fils". What followed is reported by Verdi's biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz who states that the composer revealed that, after seeing the play, he immediately began to compose music for what would later become "La traviata".


title: Il trovatore

text: The couple returned to Sant'Agata by mid-March 1852 and Verdi immediately began work on "Trovatore" after a year's delay.


title: Il trovatore

text: Then, in July 1852, by way of an announcement in a theatrical journal, Verdi received news of Cammarano's death earlier that month. This was both a professional and a personal blow. The composer learned that Cammarano had completed Manrico's third-act aria, "Di quella pira" just eight days before his death, but now he turned to De Sanctis to find him another librettist. Leone Emanuele Bardare was a young poet from Naples who was beginning his career; eventually he wrote more than 15 librettos before 1880. Composer and librettist met in Rome around 20 December 1852 and Verdi began work on both "Trovatore" and "La traviata".


title: Il trovatore

text: His main aim, having changed his mind about the distribution of characters in the opera, was to enhance the role of Leonora, thus making it "a two-women opera" and he communicated many of these ideas ahead of time via letters to De Sanctis over several months. Leonora now was to have a cantabile for the Miserere as well as retaining "Tacea la Notte" in act 1 with its cabaletta. Changes were also made to Azucena's "Stride la vampa" and to the Count's lines. Taking into account the last-minute requirements of the censor and the consequent changes, overall, the revisions and changes enhanced the opera, and the result was that it was a critical and a popular success.


title: Il trovatore

text: The opera's immense popularity – albeit a popular success rather than a critical one – came from some 229 productions worldwide in the three years following its premiere on 19 January 1853, and is illustrated by the fact that "in Naples, for example, where the opera in its first three years had eleven stagings in six theaters, the performances totalled 190".


title: Il trovatore

text: First given in Paris in Italian on 23 December 1854 by the Théâtre-Italien at the Salle Ventadour, the cast included Lodovico Graziani as Manrico and Adelaide Borghi-Mamo as Azucena.


title: Il trovatore

text: "Il trovatore" was first performed in the US by the Max Maretzek Italian Opera Company on 2 May 1855 at the then-recently opened Academy of Music in New York. The cast included Balbina Steffenone as Leonora, Pasquale Brignoli as Manrico, Felicita Vestvali as Azucena, and Alessandro Amodio as the Count di Luna. The work's UK premiere took place on 10 May 1855 at Covent Garden in London, with Jenny Bürde-Ney as Leonora, Enrico Tamberlick as Manrico, Pauline Viardot as Azucena and Francesco Graziani as the Conte di Luna.


title: Il trovatore

text: As the 19th century proceeded there was a decline in interest, but "Il trovatore" saw a revival of interest after Toscanini's 1902 revivals. From its performance at the Met on 26 October 1883 the opera has been a staple of its repertoire.


title: Il trovatore

text: Today, almost all performances use the Italian version and it is one of the world's most frequently performed operas.


title: Il trovatore

text: After the successful presentation of the opera in Italian in Paris, François-Louis Crosnier, director of l'Opéra de Paris, proposed that Verdi revise his opera for the Paris audience as a grand opera, which would include a ballet, to be presented on the stage of the major Paris house. While Verdi was in Paris with Giuseppina Strepponi from late July 1855, working on the completion of "Aroldo" and beginning to prepare a libretto with Piave for what would become "Simon Boccanegra", he encountered some legal difficulties in dealing with Toribio Calzado, the impresario of the Théâtre des Italiens, and, with his contacts with the Opėra, agreed to prepare a French version of "Trovatore" on 22 September 1855.


title: Il trovatore

text: A translation of Cammarano's libretto was made by librettist Émilien Pacini under the title of "Le trouvère" and it was first performed at La Monnaie in Brussels on 20 May 1856. There followed the production at the Paris Opera's Salle Le Peletier on 12 January 1857 after which Verdi returned to Italy. Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie attended the latter performance.


title: Il trovatore

text: For the French premiere, Verdi made some changes to the score of "Le trouvère" including the addition of music for the ballet in act 3 which followed the soldiers' chorus, where gypsies danced to entertain them. The quality of Verdi's ballet music has been noted by scholar Charles Osborne: "He could have been the Tchaikovsky of Italian ballet" he states, continuing to praise it as "perfect ballet music". In addition, he describes the unusual practice of Verdi having woven in themes from the gypsy chorus of act 2, ballet music for opera rarely connecting with the themes of the work. Several other revisions focused on Azucena's music, including an extended version of the finale of act 4, to accommodate the role's singer Adelaide Borghi-Mamo. Some of these changes have even been used in modern performances in Italian.


title: Il trovatore

text: In 1990 Tulsa Opera presented the first staging of "Le trouvère" in the United States using a new critical edition by musicologist, conductor, and Verdi scholar David Lawton. Recorded live for broadcast on NPR, Lawton conducted the premiere with Margaret Jane Wray as Leonore, Craig Sirianni as Manrique, Greer Grimsley as Le Comte de Luna, Barbara Conrad as Azucena, and the Tulsa Philharmonic. This version was published by Ricordi and the University of Chicago Press in 2001. An updated version of this critical edition by Lawton was published by Ricordi in 2018, and given its premiere at the Festival Verdi in Parma that same year.


title: Il trovatore

text: Rarely given in French, it was presented as part of the 1998 Festival della Valle d'Itria and in 2002 "Le trouvère" appeared as part of the Sarasota Opera's "Verdi Cycle" of all the composer's work.


title: Il trovatore

text: Ferrando, the captain of the guards, orders his men to keep watch while Count di Luna wanders restlessly beneath the windows of Leonora, lady-in-waiting to the Princess. Di Luna loves Leonora and is jealous of his successful rival, a troubadour whose identity he does not know. In order to keep the guards awake, Ferrando narrates the history of the count (Racconto: / "The good Count di Luna lived happily, the father of two sons"): many years ago, a gypsy was wrongfully accused of having bewitched the youngest of the di Luna children; the child had fallen sick, and for this the gypsy had been burnt alive as a witch, her protests of innocence ignored. Dying, she had commanded her daughter Azucena to avenge her, which she did by abducting the baby. Although the burnt bones of a child were found in the ashes of the pyre, the father refused to believe his son's death. Dying, the father commanded his firstborn, the new Count di Luna, to seek Azucena.


title: Il trovatore

text: Leonora confesses her love for the Troubadour to her confidante, Ines (Cavatina: "Tacea la notte placida" / "The peaceful night lay silent"... "Di tale amor" / "A love that words can scarcely describe"), in which she tells how she fell in love with a mystery knight, victor at a tournament: lost track of him when a civil war broke out: then encountered him again, in disguise as a wandering troubadour who sang beneath her window. When they have gone, Count di Luna enters, intending to pay court to Leonora himself, but hears the voice of his rival, in the distance: ("Deserto sulla terra" / "Alone upon this earth"). Leonora in the darkness briefly mistakes the count for her lover, until the Troubadour himself enters the garden, and she rushes to his arms. The Count challenges his rival to reveal his true identity, which he does: Manrico, a knight now outlawed and under death sentence for his allegiance to a rival prince. Manrico in turn challenges him to call the guards, but the Count regards this encounter as a personal rather than political matter, and challenges Manrico instead to a duel over their common love. Leonora tries to intervene, but cannot stop them from fighting (Trio: "Di geloso amor sprezzato" / "The fire of jealous love" ).


title: Il trovatore

text: The gypsies sing the "Anvil Chorus": "Vedi le fosche notturne" / "See! The endless sky casts off her sombre nightly garb...". Azucena, the daughter of the Gypsy burnt by the count, is still haunted by her duty to avenge her mother (Canzone: "Stride la vampa" / "The flames are roaring!"). The Gypsies break camp while Azucena confesses to Manrico that after stealing the di Luna baby she had intended to burn the count's little son along with her mother, but overwhelmed by the screams and the gruesome scene of her mother's execution, she became confused and threw her own child into the flames instead (Racconto: "Condotta ell'era in ceppi" / "They dragged her in bonds").


title: Il trovatore

text: Manrico realises that he is not the son of Azucena, but loves her as if she were indeed his mother, as she has always been faithful and loving to him - and, indeed, saved his life only recently, discovering him left for dead on a battlefield after being caught in ambush. Manrico tells Azucena that he defeated di Luna in their earlier duel, but was held back from killing him by a mysterious power (Duet: "Mal reggendo" / "He was helpless under my savage attack"): and Azucena reproaches him for having stayed his hand then, especially since it was the Count's forces that defeated him in the subsequent battle of Pelilla. A messenger arrives and reports that Manrico's allies have taken Castle Castellor, which Manrico is ordered to hold in the name of his prince: and also that Leonora, who believes Manrico dead, is about to enter a convent and take the veil that night. Although Azucena tries to prevent him from leaving in his weak state ("Ferma! Son io che parlo a te!" / "I must talk to you"), Manrico rushes away to prevent her from carrying out this intent.


title: Il trovatore

text: Di Luna and his attendants intend to abduct Leonora and the Count sings of his love for her (Aria: "Il balen del suo sorriso" / "The light of her smile" ... "Per me ora fatale" / "Fatal hour of my life"). Leonora and the nuns appear in procession, but Manrico prevents di Luna from carrying out his plans and takes Leonora away with him, although once again leaving the Count behind unharmed, as the soldiers on both sides back down from bloodshed, the Count being held back by his own men.


title: Il trovatore

text: Di Luna and his army are attacking the fortress Castellor where Manrico has taken refuge with Leonora (Chorus: "Or co' dadi ma fra poco" / "Now we play at dice"). Ferrando drags in Azucena, who has been captured wandering near the camp. When she hears di Luna's name, Azucena's reactions arouse suspicion and Ferrando recognizes her as the supposed murderer of the count's brother. Azucena cries out to her son Manrico to rescue her and the count realizes that he has the means to flush his enemy out of the fortress. He orders his men to build a pyre and burn Azucena before the walls.


title: Il trovatore

text: Inside the castle, Manrico and Leonora are preparing to be married. She is frightened; the battle with di Luna is imminent and Manrico's forces are outnumbered. He assures her of his love (Aria: "Ah sì, ben mio, coll'essere" / "Ah, yes, my love, in being yours"), even in the face of death. When news of Azucena's capture reaches him, he summons his men and desperately prepares to attack (Cabaletta: "Di quella pira l'orrendo foco" / "The horrid flames of that pyre"). Leonora faints.


title: Il trovatore

text: Manrico has failed to free Azucena and has been imprisoned himself. Leonora attempts to free him (Aria: "D'amor sull'ali rosee" / "On the rosy wings of love"; Chorus & Duet: "Miserere" / "Lord, thy mercy on this soul") by begging di Luna for mercy and offers herself in place of her lover. She promises to give herself to the count, but secretly swallows poison from her ring in order to die before di Luna can possess her (Duet: "Mira, d'acerbe lagrime" / "See the bitter tears I shed").


title: Il trovatore

text: Manrico and Azucena are awaiting their execution. Manrico attempts to soothe Azucena, whose mind wanders to happier days in the mountains (Duet: "Ai nostri monti ritorneremo" / "Again to our mountains we shall return"). At last the gypsy slumbers. Leonora comes to Manrico and tells him that he is saved, begging him to escape. When he discovers she cannot accompany him, he refuses to leave his prison. He believes Leonora has betrayed him until he realizes that she has taken poison to remain true to him. As she dies in agony in Manrico's arms she confesses that she prefers to die with him than to marry another (Trio: "Prima che d'altri vivere" / "Rather than live as another's"). The count has heard Leonora's last words and orders Manrico's execution. Azucena awakens and tries to stop di Luna. Once she finds out Manrico is dead, she cries: "Egli era tuo fratello! Sei vendicata, o madre." / "He was your brother ... You are avenged, oh mother!"


title: Il trovatore

text: Today, most opera scholars recognize the expressive musical qualities of Verdi's writing. However, musicologist Roger Parker notes that "the extreme formalism of the musical language has been seen as serving to concentrate and define the various stages of the drama, above all channeling them into those key confrontations that mark its inexorable progress".


title: Il trovatore

text: Here he, like many other writers, notes the elements of musical form (then often described as "closed forms") which characterize the opera and make it appear to be something of a return to the language of earlier times, "the veritable apotheosis of "bel canto" with its demands for vocal beauty, agility and range," notes Charles Osborne. Thus, the cantabile-cabaletta two-part arias, the use of the chorus, etc., which Verdi had originally asked Cammarano to ignore, are evident. But Verdi wanted something else: "the freer the forms he presents me with, the better I shall do," he wrote to the librettist's friend in March 1851. It was not what he received from his librettist, but he certainly demonstrated his total mastery over this style. Osborne's take on "'Il trovatore" is that "it is as though Verdi had decided to do something which he had been perfecting over the years, and to do it so beautifully that he need never to do it again. Formally, it is a step backward after "Rigoletto"".


title: Il trovatore

text: Budden describes one of the musical qualities as the relationship between the "consistent dramatic impetus" of the action being caused by the "propulsive quality" of the music which produces a "sense of continuous forward motion". Parker describes it as "sheer musical energy apparent in all the numbers". And Budden gives many examples which show Verdi as "the equal of Bellini" as a melodist.


title: Il trovatore

text: Verdi also clearly recognizes the importance of the role of Azucena. Remembering that the composer's initial suggestion to Cammarano was that he wanted to name the opera after her, Budden notes that this character "is the first of a glorious line" and he names Ulrica (from "Ballo"), Eboli (from "Don Carlos"), and Amneris (from "Aida") as followers in the same vocal range and with the same expressive and distinct qualities which separate them from the other female role in the opera in which they feature. He quotes from a letter which Verdi wrote to Marianna Barbieri-Nini, the soprano who was due to sing the Leonora in Venice after the premiere, and who expressed reservations about her music. Here, Verdi emphasizes the importance of the role of Azucena:


title: Il trovatore

text: From this position, Budden comments on the distinct differences in an era where vocal registers were less defined and which extend into Leonora's and Azucena's music "where greater verbal projection of the lower voice [can be] turned to advantage" and where "the polarity between the two female roles [extends] into every field of comparison." He then sums up the musical relationship which exists between the two female characters, the men having simply been defined as being representative of their own voice types, something evident and very striking in Verdi's significant use of voice types in "Ernani" of 1844. Regarding Leonora, Budden describes her music as "mov[ing] in long phrases most characterized by a soaring 'aspiring' quality" whereas "Azucena's melodies evolve in short, often commonplace phrases based on the repetition of short rhythmic patterns".