Quantile regression is a type of regression analysis used in statistics and econometrics.  Whereas the method of least squares estimates the conditional mean of the response variable across values of the predictor variables, quantile regression estimates the conditional median (or other quantiles) of the response variable. Quantile regression is an extension of linear regression used when the conditions of linear regression are not met.

Advantages and applications

One advantage of quantile regression relative to ordinary least squares regression is that the quantile regression estimates are more robust against outliers in the response measurements. However, the main attraction of quantile regression goes beyond this and is advantageous when conditional quantile functions are of interest.  Different measures of central tendency and statistical dispersion can be used to more comprehensively analyze the relationship between variables.

In ecology, quantile regression has been proposed and used as a way to discover more useful predictive relationships between variables in cases where there is no relationship or only a weak relationship between the means of such variables.  The need for and success of quantile regression in ecology has been attributed to the complexity of interactions between different factors leading to data with unequal variation of one variable for different ranges of another variable.

Another application of quantile regression is in the areas of growth charts, where percentile curves are commonly used to screen for abnormal growth.

History
The idea of estimating a median regression slope, a major theorem about minimizing sum of the absolute deviances and a geometrical algorithm for constructing median regression was proposed in 1760 by Ruđer Josip Bošković, a Jesuit Catholic priest from Dubrovnik. He was interested in the ellipticity of the earth, building on Isaac Newton's suggestion that its rotation could cause it to bulge at the equator with a corresponding flattening at the poles. He finally produced the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature. More importantly for quantile regression, he was able to develop the first evidence of the least absolute criterion and preceded the least squares introduced by Legendre in 1805 by fifty years.

Other thinkers began building upon Bošković's idea such as Pierre-Simon Laplace, who developed the so-called "methode de situation." This led to Francis Edgeworth's plural median - a geometric approach to median regression - and is recognized as the precursor of the simplex method. The works of Bošković, Laplace, and Edgeworth were recognized as a prelude to Roger Koenker's contributions to quantile regression.

Median regression computations for larger data sets are quite tedious compared to the least squares method, for which reason it has historically generated a lack of popularity among statisticians, until the widespread adoption of computers in the latter part of the 20th century.

Quantiles
Quantile regression expresses the conditional quantiles of a dependent variable as a linear function of the explanatory variables. Crucial to the practicality of quantile regression is that the quantiles can be expressed as the solution of a minimization problem, as we will show in this section before discussing conditional quantiles in the next section.

Quantile of a random variable

Let  be a real-valued random variable with cumulative distribution function . The th quantile of Y is given by

where

Define the loss function as , where  is an indicator function.
A specific quantile can be found by minimizing the expected loss of  with respect to :():

This can be shown by computing the derivative of the expected loss with respect to  via an application of the Leibniz integral rule, setting it to 0, and letting  be the solution of

This equation reduces to

and then to

If the solution  is not unique, then we have to take the smallest such solution to obtain
the th quantile of the random variable Y.

Example
Let  be a discrete random variable that takes values  with  with equal probabilities. The task is to find the median of Y, and hence the value  is chosen. Then the expected loss of  is

Since  is a constant, it can be taken out of the expected loss function (this is only true if ). Then, at u=3,

Suppose that u is increased by 1 unit. Then the expected loss will be changed by  on changing u to 4. If,  u=5, the expected loss is

and any change in u will increase the expected loss. Thus u=5 is the median. The Table below shows the expected loss (divided by ) for different values of u.

Intuition
Consider  and let q be an initial guess for . The expected loss evaluated at q is

In order to minimize the expected loss, we move the value of q a little bit to see whether the expected loss will rise or fall.
Suppose we increase q by 1 unit. Then the change of expected loss would be

The first term of the equation is  and second term of the equation is . Therefore, the change of expected loss function is negative if and only if , that is if and only if q is smaller than the median. Similarly, if we reduce q by 1 unit, the change of expected loss function is negative if and only if q is larger than the median.

In order to minimize the expected loss function, we would increase (decrease) L(q) if q is smaller (larger) than the median, until q reaches the median. The idea behind the minimization is to count the number of points (weighted with the density) that are larger or smaller than q and then move q to a point where q is larger than % of the points.

Sample quantile
The  sample quantile can be obtained by using an importance sampling estimate and solving the following minimization problem

,
where the function  is the tilted absolute value function. The intuition is the same as for the population quantile.

Conditional quantile and quantile regression
The th conditional quantile of  given  is the th quantile of the
Conditional probability distribution of  given ,
.
We use a capital  to denote the conditional quantile to indicate that it is a random variable.

In quantile regression for the th quantile we make the assumption that the th conditional quantile is given as a linear function of the explanatory variables:
.
Given the distribution function of ,   can be obtained by solving

Solving the sample analog gives the estimator of .

Note that when , the loss function  is proportional to the absolute value function, and thus median regression is the same as
linear regression by least absolute deviations.

Computation of estimates for regression parameters
The mathematical forms arising from quantile regression are distinct from those arising in the method of least squares.  The method of least squares leads to a consideration of problems in an inner product space, involving projection onto subspaces, and thus the problem of minimizing the squared errors can be reduced to a problem in numerical linear algebra. Quantile regression does not have this structure, and instead the minimization problem can be reformulated as a linear programming problem

where
 ,

Simplex methods  or interior point methods can be applied to solve the linear programming problem.

Asymptotic properties

For , under some regularity conditions,  is asymptotically normal:

where
 and

Direct estimation of the asymptotic variance-covariance matrix is not always satisfactory. Inference for quantile regression parameters can be made with the regression rank-score tests or with the bootstrap methods.

Equivariance

See invariant estimator for background on invariance or see equivariance.

Scale equivariance

For any  and

Shift equivariance
For any  and

Equivariance to reparameterization of design
Let  be any  nonsingular matrix and

Invariance to monotone transformations
If  is a nondecreasing function on , the following invariance property applies:

Example (1):

If  and , then . The mean regression does not have the same property since

Interpretation of

The linear model   mis-specifies the true systematic relation   when  is nonlinear. However,  minimizes a weighted distanced to  among linear models. Furthermore, the slope parameters  of the linear model can be interpreted as weighted averages of the derivatives  so that  can be used for causal inference. Specifically, the hypothesis  for all  implies the hypothesis , which can be tested using the estimator  and its limit distribution.

Bayesian methods for quantile regression

Because quantile regression does not normally assume a parametric likelihood for the conditional distributions of Y|X, the Bayesian methods work with a working likelihood. A convenient choice is the asymmetric Laplacian likelihood, because the mode of the resulting posterior under a flat prior is the usual quantile regression estimates. The posterior inference, however, must be interpreted with care.  Yang, Wang and He provided a posterior variance adjustment for valid inference. In addition,
Yang and He showed that one can have asymptotically valid posterior inference if the working likelihood is chosen to be the empirical likelihood.

Machine learning methods for quantile regression
Beyond simple linear regression, there are several machine learning methods that can be extended to quantile regression. A switch from the squared error to the tilted absolute value loss function allows gradient descent-based learning algorithms to learn a specified quantile instead of the mean. It means that we can apply all neural network and deep learning algorithms to quantile regression, which is then referred to as nonparametric quantile regression.
Tree-based learning algorithms are also available for quantile regression (see, e.g., Quantile Regression Forests, as a simple generalization of Random Forests).

Censored quantile regression

If the response variable is subject to censoring, the conditional mean is not identifiable without additional distributional assumptions, but the conditional quantile is often identifiable. For recent work on censored quantile regression, see: Portnoy
and Wang and Wang

Example (2):

Let  and . Then . This is the censored quantile regression model: estimated values can be obtained without making any distributional assumptions, but at the cost of computational difficulty, some of which can be avoided by using a simple three step censored quantile regression procedure as an approximation.

For random censoring on the response variables, the censored quantile regression of Portnoy (2003) provides consistent estimates of all identifiable quantile functions based on reweighting each censored point appropriately.

Censored quantile regression has close links to survival analysis.

Heteroscedastic Errors
The quantile regression loss needs to be adapted in the presence of heteroscedastic errors in order to be efficient.

Goodness of Fit
The goodness of fit for quantile regression for the  quantile can be defined as:

where  is the sum of squares of the conditional quantile, while  is the sum of squares of the unconditional quantile.

Implementations
Numerous statistical software packages include implementations of quantile regression:
 Matlab function quantreg
 gretl has the quantreg command.
 R offers several packages that implement quantile regression, most notably quantreg by Roger Koenker, but also gbm, quantregForest, qrnn and qgam
 Python, via Scikit-garden and statsmodels
 SAS through proc quantreg (ver. 9.2) and proc quantselect (ver. 9.3).
 Stata, via the qreg command.
 Vowpal Wabbit, via --loss_function quantile.
 Mathematica package QuantileRegression.m hosted at the MathematicaForPrediction project at GitHub.
 Wolfram Language function QuantileRegression hosted at Wolfram Function Repository.

See also
Least-absolute-deviations regression
Conformal prediction

Literature

References

Regression analysis

Quantile regression


Hans Koschnick (2 April 1929 in Bremen – 21 April 2016 in Bremen) was a German politician and elder statesman. He was a member of the SPD. He was the 4th President of the Senate and Mayor of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen from 1967 to 1985. He was the 22nd and 33rd President of the Bundesrat in 1970/71 and 1981/82. He served as a member of the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, from 1987 to 1998. Between 1994 and 1996, Koschnick was the EU administrator of Mostar.

Koschnick died from complications of pneumonia, aged 87.

References

1929 births
2016 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia
Members of the German Bundestag
Mayors of Bremen
Politicians from Bremen (state)
Politicians of the Social Democratic Party of Germany

Hans Koschnick


David J. Landau  (1920 – 1996), also known as Dudek, Janek and Jan, was a resistance fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto, Poland, in 1944. He is the author of a memoir, Caged (1999), about the wartime experiences of his compatriots.

Life
Landau was born in Warsaw in 1920, into a wealthy Polish-Jewish family. Before World War II, he worked in the family furs business. After the German invasion of Poland Landau became a member of Polish Underground. He fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and was captured. Sent to extermination camp, Landau survived by jumping from the train.

After the war, Landau left Poland through Czechoslovakia, Germany and France and finally emigrated to Australia with his wife Luba in 1947. He ran a clothing business there, before turning to real estate. He died in 1996.

In 1999, the Landau family published the first edition of his memoir, Caged, written in the memory of wartime colleagues and those who did not survive but promised themselves: 'Whoever survives owes it to us to tell the story.' His writing was encouraged by others, and the work was completed just days before his passing. The second edition of Caged was published in 2000 by Pan Macmillan in Sydney, Australia.

Some writers on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, most notably Moshe Arens, accept Landau's book uncritically and treat it as an entirely reliable and accurate account of the struggle waged by the Jewish Military Union (ŻZW) (in whose ranks Landau claims to have fought). Historians, however, have raised questions about its credibility and dispute many of the author's claims. In June 2005, in a letter to the editor of the Israel daily Haaretz, Avraham Cykiert of Mulgrave, Australia claimed to have ghost written the book and said that Landau's daughter had "doctored" his manuscript.

Reviews of Caged
Anna Punshon from Burnie Advocate wrote: "Caged is a testament to the bravery against the unimaginable evil and is one of better books I have read in a long time."

"David Landau, a Polish Jew, gives us a rare story of surviving the Holocaust. He was one of the few survivors who fought back against the Nazis. It is a story of a personal tragedy, but it's also a tale of the resistance, courage and survival, told at a relentless pace..." — Abbey's Books

Matt Condon wrote in The Sunday Herald, Sydney, on February 11, 2001: "The story of a great hero from WWII has finally emerged from the shadows."

Bibliography
David J. Landau, Caged: A Story of Jewish Resistance (Pan Macmillan Australia, 2000)

References

1920 births
1996 deaths
Polish resistance members of World War II
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising insurgents
Polish emigrants to Australia

David J. Landau


Gerald Bernard Gallagher (6 July 1912 – 27 September 1941, Gardner Island) was a British government employee, noted as the first officer-in-charge of the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, the last colonial expansion of the British Empire. Gallagher spent much of his career on Nikumaroro, an island notable for its connection to Amelia Earhart.

Background and early life
Gallagher was the son of Gerald and Edith Gallagher, and has a younger brother, Terence Hugh Gallagher. His father, Gerald Hugh Gallagher, was born in Ireland and attended the Catholic University in Dublin, becoming a doctor in 1905.

Gerald Gallagher attended Stonyhurst College, the Downing College, Cambridge, and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School. While in college, he was also active in gymnastics and rowing. After studying practical agriculture with George Butler (the father of the writer Hubert Butler) at Maiden Hall in Bennetsbridge, County Kilkenny, Ireland, he joined the Colonial Service in 1936.

The Phoenix Islands
After arriving at Banaba Island on 21 September 1937, Gallagher received additional training before being appointed deputy commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony on 3 June 1938. Sent to Ellice Islands to learn Tuvaluan he became popular with the residents, who wanted him to stay. Nevertheless, after a bout with tropical ulcers he was assigned to the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, as second-in-command to Harry Maude. In December 1938, they sailed with the first Gilbertese colonists to Manra in the Phoenix Islands, where Gallagher remained to supervise development of that island. When Maude fell ill in late 1939 and was assigned to Pitcairn Island, Gallagher was appointed officer in charge of the three atolls selected for development. He was assisted by Jack Kimo Petro, later characterized by archaeologist and historian Tom King as "a half-Tuvaluan/half Portuguese engineer and artisan of considerable skill and energy."

Gallagher's supervising role in the colony's local government was shared with leaders chosen from among the colonists. The young British official skillfully settled an early, hotly disputed debate among them by suggesting that instead of using the traditional Gilbertese boti system, each household be given a place in the maneaba, or local meeting house. The Phoenix Islands maneaba was subsequently named tabuki ni Karaka, or Gallagher's accomplishment.

Success at Manra and Orona
By late 1940 there were roughly 672 settlers on Manra and Orona, with coconuts being harvested and processed into copra. On Nikumaroro an area on the southwest side of the island had been cleared and planted, a 20,000 gallon water cistern had been installed and water wells were finally productive. Gallagher, who by now had been affectionately nicknamed "Irish" by some of the settlers, chose Nikumaroro as the colony's government centre and moved there in late September 1940.

Nikumaroro
Gallagher wished to establish Gardner Island, (later renamed Nikumaroro) as "the model island of the Phoenix." Although the gathering war interfered with shipping Gallagher and the settlers were persistent, starting work on the government station and an official rest house by manually clearing away many rocks and tree roots. The end of 1940 saw severe north-westerly gales which damaged newly built houses, coconut plantings and other facilities.

The government station was later called Karaka, after Gallagher. It featured a large, expertly levelled parade ground with a crushed white coral surface and flanked on three sides by wide roads with coral slab curbs. At the eastern side two buildings were constructed on concrete platforms with others along the north and west, including a school, village carpenter's shop, boat house, concrete dispensary and a wireless station nearby to the north (with line of sight to Ocean Island). The village was to the south, with typical homes made up of sleeping quarters and a cookhouse under thatched roofs, sometimes raised on coral blocks.

The most memorable building is said to have been the rest house, with its sweeping thatched roof and wide veranda, complete with a modern RCA console radio in a wooden cabinet (powered by large batteries). This was both Gallagher's residence and quarters for visiting officials along with other invited guests.

Death on Nikumaroro
By early 1941 the Battle of Britain had distracted London's attention far from the tiny colony. Shipping was a constant challenge and Gallagher, now certified as fluent in the colonists' Gilbertese language, travelled on the few available ships, working day and night, personally loading and unloading supplies along with distributing coast-watching personnel and equipment throughout the colony, often in secret.

On 20 September 1941, Sir Harry Luke, High Commissioner of the western Pacific, sent Gallagher a coded telegram with word he was about to be promoted  as secretary to government and reposted to Ocean Island, but Gallagher didn't reply to the polite query asking for his thoughts on this. That day he had fallen seriously ill at sea with tropical sprue, an infection sometimes aggravated by poor nutrition which interferes with the small intestine's ability to absorb nutrients, resulting in symptoms related to malnutrition.

He arrived at Nikumaroro on the 24th. Gallagher's first night back on the atoll and in the rest house seemed to bring an improvement. However, according to a witness, when Gallagher learned of his promotion the news put him at "the end of his tether." He had come to consider the Gilbertese colonists his own native people. Meanwhile, with Gallagher's permission a British doctor opened his abdomen and was shocked by the advanced state of damage he found. Gallagher's condition deteriorated rapidly and he died on 27 September 1941, at the age of 29.

Aftermath and legacy
Nikumaroro, Manra and Orona were evacuated by Her Majesty's Government in 1963. At his mother's request, Gallagher's remains were moved to Tarawa for reburial and the memorial plaque was retrieved. Although reasons cited for giving up on the struggling colony included unstable water lenses and uncertain copra markets, observers familiar with the colony's history remarked that after Gallagher's death a will or nerve to succeed seemed to vanish from the settlements. In 2001 an American archaeological team put a replica of the plaque on his grave, quite unaware it had been empty for 38 years. They were on the island because during the height of the Battle of Britain in October 1940, Gallagher, a licensed pilot, had radioed his superiors in Fiji to inform them he believed a work party of Gilbertese colonists on Nikumaroro had found a sextant box along with the skeletal remains possibly belonging to Amelia Earhart, an aviator who disappeared in 1937.

In 2007 Gallagher's long-empty 1941 grave was still visible in the overgrown ruins of the colonial government station on Nikumaroro.

See also
Nikumaroro
Phoenix Islands
Gilbert Islands
Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme
Kiribati
Amelia Earhart
Fred Noonan

References

External links
"Gallagher of Nikumaroro" by Thomas F. King, Ph.D. Tighar.org website
"The Colonization of the Phoenix Islands" by H. E. Maude Tighar.org website

1912 births
1941 deaths
People educated at Stonyhurst College
Alumni of the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital
Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge
History of Kiribati
People from the Phoenix Islands
Infectious disease deaths in Kiribati
Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme
British colonial governors and administrators in Oceania

Gerald Gallagher


122 Squadron SAAF was a South African Air Force squadron formed in 1970 to operate the South African/French Cactus surface-to-air missile systems in an air defence role. The unit was disbanded when the Cactus system was retired from service in the late 1980s.

122 Squadron was the direct sister unit of 120 Squadron and was exactly set up and operated as such.

History and deployment
In July 1964, South Africa placed a development contract with Thomson-CSF for a mobile, all-weather, low-altitude SAM system after a South African order for the Bloodhound SAM system was refused by the UK government. The South African government paid 85 per cent of the development costs of the system with the balance being paid for by France. The system was known as "Cactus" within the SAAF and "Crotale" in France. The units were operationally deployed in platoons in 1971 with each platoon consisting of one Acquisition and Co-ordination Unit (ACU) and two or three firing units, with a battery having two platoons. All Cactus air defence batteries were placed under command of 122 Squadron until the retirement of the system in the late 1980s.

Cactus Missile System Firing Unit

Cactus Missile Acquisition Unit

An Egyptian Crotale surface-air missile system, similar to that operated by 122 Squadron.

References

Squadrons of the South African Air Force
Disbanded military units and formations in Pretoria
SAAF122
Military units and formations established in 1970

122 Squadron SAAF


The Turks and Caicos National Museum is the national museum of the Turks and Caicos Islands. It is located in Guinep House on Front Street to the north of Cockburn Town on Grand Turk Island, which is also the capital of the archipelago. Established in the 1980s and opened in 1991, the museum is publicly funded as a nonprofit trust. It exhibits pre-historic Lucayan culture and records the history of the islands of the colonial era and the slave trade, all related to the sea. An arboretum is adjacent to the museum.

History
The museum is housed in one of the oldest stone structures in the island, a building called the Guinep house. The house, built prior to 1885, was named after the large guinep tree in the front yard. It was built in local limestone by a former shipwright. The structural material of the building also came from local shipwrecks, including a ship's mast, which is one of the building's main supports. The building which was earlier a lodge for some of the divers, was donated to the museum in 1990.

Displays
Ground floor
Located at the museum is the Molasses Reef Wreck, which is dated to 1505 and is considered to be the oldest shipwreck located in the Americas. It was an early Spanish ship which foundered on the rim of Caicos Island. Remnants of the ship wreck that on display are the hull and rigging, cannon, cross bows, and  personal belongings of the crew. Characterized as a "time capsule" it provides insight into the lifestyle of the early explorers.

A separate room showcases maritime displays. This includes the original lens of the Grand Turk Lighthouse, dated to 1852. There is a 3 dimensional exhibit of a coral reef. Another interesting exhibit, probably the only one of its kind, is the display of the bottles with messages (40 years' worth of messages to wash upon the shores of Grand Turk) that floated to the beaches here from all over the world, and which were collected and exhibited.

Second floor
Upstairs exhibits include the islands' history of the early settlers of the island: the Taíno people, African, North American, Bermudan, French and Latin American. There are displays on Lucayan artefacts, sisal and salt industries, Caicos postage stamps, history of the slave trade, royal events, and pottery. Visits to the island by John Glenn (the first American to orbit the Earth making the landfall on this island.), Scott Carpenter and Queen Elizabeth are commemorated here. Another important display is of the salt trade, which was the world's largest at one time, located on the island of Salt Cay. Bermudans were the first settlers on the cay in 1645, with salt production commencing in 1673 and lasting till the 1960s. Now inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the site was developed with a maze of walls and canal system, presented in the form of an exhibit in the museum.

Features
The museum contains conservation labs and an exhibition workshop. There is also a curatorial facility and both a lecture room and an area which doubles as an office and the museum's library. The oral history is a continuing information system. Exhibits are all interactive with video and audio facilitates. An arboretum is attached to museum facility. It is functional and self-guide booklets are available to guide treks marked with trail markers, which are unique as the telephone poles which were damaged during hurricane Ike have been used to fix markers. There is a gift shop which sells Turks and Caicos Islands' centric artifacts. Some of the local products of interest are sea-glass jewelry made out of glass found in the beaches, straw hats and baskets from Middle Caicos, salts and bath salts from Salt Cay. A walking tour of the Lucayan Cave is offered to explore artifacts made of wood.

The museum has launched an archaeological exploration program called the "Travadore project" which is in association with marine archaeologists. Under this project, the programme preserves the islands' shipwreck sites and prevents any treasure hunters robbing the treasures under the auspices of seeking license to dive and hunt for treasures on the islands. This project's importance is that the present settlers on the island are stated to have blood links to the people, particularly of African origin, who perished in the shipwrecks. Some of the historical finds recovered under this project are exhibits in the museum. The exhibits of the Trouvadore Shipwreck project (the Molasses Reef Wreck) is under further exploration.

References

External links
Official site

Museums in the Turks and Caicos Islands
Turks and Caicos
Museums established in 1991
1980s establishments in the Turks and Caicos Islands
Grand Turk Island
1991 establishments in British Overseas Territories
Buildings and structures in Cockburn Town

Turks and Caicos National Museum


Lance Taylor (born April 17, 1957), also known as Afrika Bambaataa (), is an American DJ, rapper, and producer. He is one of the founders of breakbeat DJing. His third single "Planet Rock" (1982) reached number 48 on the U.S. pop albums chart.

Bambaataa was born to Jamaican and Barbadian immigrants in the South Bronx, New York.

Bambaataa was a member of the Black Spades. He quickly became a warlord of one of the divisions. His job as warlord was to build ranks and expand the territory of the young Spades. He was not afraid to cross territories to build relationships with other gang members, and with other gangs. The Spades became the biggest gang in the city, both in membership and territory.

References

1957 births
Living people
Barbadian musicians
Jamaican musicians
American DJs
African-American rappers
Rappers from New York (state)
American electronic musicians
American hip hop musicians
Musicians from the Bronx
American activists
American dance musicians
21st-century American rappers
21st-century American musicians
Controversies in the United States

Afrika Bambaataa


Peyode is located near Nagercoil, a suburb of Kanyakumari in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is a southern suburb of Kanyakumari city, located on Nagercoil-Colachel SH 46. Nearby places are Rajakkamangalam, Vellichanthai and Muttom.

Demographics
As of 2001 India census, Peyode had a population of  586. Males constitute 50% of the population and females 50%. Peyode has an  average literacy rate of 73%, higher than the national average of  59.5%: male literacy is 79%, and female literacy is 67%. In Peyode, 10% of the population is under 6 years of age.

As Peyode is just about 8 km from center of Kanyakumari city  towards southern direction, it is also an easy destination spot  located at an easily reachable distance for the people of  Rajakkamangalam, Vellichanthai etc.

Attractions
The Bhadrakali Amman temple in Peyode is located at the center of the town. The 'Guru Thavasi Iyaa' clan of people lived at Peyode. Every year car festival is celebrated during May. This temple holds minute art works portraying the Tamil heritage. And the daily poojas are similar to Thirupathi. A village called Rajakkamangalam (3 kilometers away from Peyode) is also getting popular because of its natural environment, sea and agricultural lands. Agriculture is the main activity in and around Peyode. The farmers' market is held every Friday at Vellichanthai.

Climate
Peyode has a pleasant, though humid, climate for a major part of the year. The maximum temperature during the summer hovers  around 86 °F or 30 °C with moderate humidity at times. Peyode  is the only Indian town to receive both the north-east monsoon  and the south-west monsoon. It rains more often in Kanyakumari  district than in any other part of Tamil Nadu. Due to geographical conditions, the southern tip of Kanyakumari is generally 2 °C to 3 °C hotter than Peyode during the daytime, though Kanyakumari is only 20 km away.

Language
Tamil is official language in Peyode. Tamil language along with English is  used as a medium of teaching in all major schools. The Tamil  spoken here is a mix of Malayalam and Tamil, sometimes  unintelligible to the people of North Tamil Nadu. The culture is a mixture of Tamil and Malayalam culture and traditions. Hinduism, Christianity and Islam are the major religions in the town and district.

Food prepared here is also a mix of Kerala/Tamil Nadu traditions. Puttu, Appam, Idiappam are popular food items and so are rice murukku, and achu-murukku. Curries here are made with coconut and coconut oil which is now considered Kerala style cooking. Some of the festivals celebrated here are Pongal, Onam, Suchindrum "Ther Festival", Ayya Vaikunda Avataram, Deepavali, Easter, Christmas, New Year, St. Francis Xavier's feast, Bhagavathy Amman Temple festival, Ramzan (Eid ul fitr) and Bakrid (Eid ul alha).

References

External links
 Kanyakumari District Government Portal
 Kanyakumari News Portal
 Kanyakumari-info.com Everything about kanyakumari

Cities and towns in Kanyakumari district

Peyode


A jib is a triangular sail that sets ahead of the foremast of a sailing vessel. Its tack (lower leading edge) is attached to the bowsprit, to the bow, or to the deck between the bowsprit and the foremost mast. Jibs and spinnakers are the two main types of headsails on a modern boat.

Traditional vessels

Schooners typically have up to three jibs. The foremost one sets on the topmast forestay and is generally called the jib topsail. A second jib on the main forestay is called the jib. The innermost jib is called the staysail. Actually, all three sails are both jibs and staysails, in a general sense. A large square-rigged ship typically has four jibs, but could have as many as six.

From forward (fore) to the back of the boat (aft), these sails are called:
 Jib of jibs
 Spindle jib
 Flying jib
 Outer jib
 Inner jib
 Fore (topmast) staysail.

The first two were rarely used except by clipper ships in light winds. A storm jib was a small jib of heavy canvas set to a stay to help to control the ship in bad weather.

Modern vessels

Boats may be sailed using a jib alone. More commonly jib(s) make a minor direct contribution to moving the boat, compared to a mainsail. Generally, a jib's most important function is as an airfoil, increasing performance and overall stability of the mainsail.

On boats with only one jib, it is common for the clew of the jib to be further aft than the mast, meaning the jib and mainsail overlap. An overlapping jib is called a genoa jib or simply a genoa (see illustration). These are efficiently used when  reaching more broadly than a close reach. Alternatively, a boat may carry smaller jibs, to compensate aerodynamics when the mainsail is  reefed; these more rugged sails are called storm jibs or spitfires.

On a boat with two staysails the inner sail is called the staysail, and the outer (foremost) is called the jib. This combination of two staysails is called a cutter rig (or in North America a yankee pair) and a boat with one mast rigged with two staysails and a mainsail is called a cutter.

On cruising yachts, and nearly all racing sailboats, the jib needs to be worked when tacking. On these yachts, there are two sheets (ropes) attached to the clew of the jib. As the yacht comes head to wind during a tack, the active sheet is released. At the same time the other sheet (the lazy sheet) on the other side of the boat is pulled in. This sheet becomes the new active sheet until the next tack.

References

Other websites
 Beginners Guide to Sailing - An Introduction; YouTube

Sailing

Jib


François Hubert Prume (3 June 1816, Stavelot – 14 July 1849, Liège) was a Belgian violinist and composer.

Prume was Professor of Violin at the Royal Conservatory of Liège at the age of seventeen years, where his pupils included Hubert Léonard, and his own nephew, Frantz Jehin-Prume.  His many concert tours brought him to capitals throughout Europe, during which he performed occasionally with Franz Liszt.

He received the honorary title of "Virtuoso of the Duke of Gotha".  However, his career ended prematurely with his death from cholera at the age of 33.  He was buried in Liège at the Cimetière de Robermont.  The great hall of the former Abbey of Stavelot in his hometown was named in his memory.

Major works
Concertino for Violin and Orchestra, op. 4
Le Petit Savoyard for Violin and Orchestra

External links

1816 births
1849 deaths
People from Stavelot
Deaths from cholera
Belgian classical violinists
Belgian classical composers
Belgian male classical composers
Romantic composers
Infectious disease deaths in Belgium
Academic staff of the Royal Conservatory of Liège
19th-century classical composers
19th-century classical violinists
Male classical violinists
19th-century Belgian male musicians

François Prume


The Volkswagen Passat (B1) is a large family car produced by Volkswagen in West Germany from 1973 to 1981.

B1 in Europe
The original Volkswagen Passat was launched in 1973. The body types offered originally were two- and four-door fastback sedans (that were discontinued in 1981). These were joined in January 1975 by identically profiled three- and five-door hatchback versions. Externally all four shared a modern design, styled by the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. In essence, the first Passat was a fastback version of the mechanically identical Audi 80 sedan, introduced a year earlier. While the Audi 80 was nominated Car of the Year by the European motor press in 1973, they considered the Passat a facelifted version of the Audi and thus ineligible for the 1974 competition. The Passat became Wheels magazine's Car of the Year for 1974, however. A five-door station wagon/estate was introduced in 1974; the same car was available with Audi badging in many markets.

The Passat was one of the most modern European family cars at the time and was intended as a replacement for the aging Volkswagen Type 3 and Type 4. The platform serving it and the Audi 80 was named B1. In Europe, the Passat was equipped with either two rectangular, two round  units, or quadruple round  headlights depending on specification.

The Passat originally used the four-cylinder OHC 1.3 L () and 1.5 L (with either 75 or 85 PS, 55 or 63 kW or 74 or 84 hp) petrol engines developed by Audi and also used in the Audi 80 -longitudinally mounted with front-wheel drive, in Audi tradition, with either a four-speed manual transmission or three-speed automatic. It had a MacPherson strut front suspension with a solid axle/coil spring setup at the rear.

The SOHC 1.5 was enlarged to 1.6 L in August 1975 with unchanged power ratings and slightly higher torque ratings. In July 1978 the Passat Diesel became available, equipped with the VW Golf's  1.5 L Diesel, followed in February 1979 (at the AutoRAI) by the Passat GLI with a fuel-injected version of the 1.6 L engine.

The whole range received a facelift in summer 1977 (model year 1978 - launched during 1978 outside of Europe), featuring an interior upgrade including a new dashboard and subtly revised styling including repositioned indicators and depending on model, either four round or two rectangular headlights. The objective, according to the manufacturer, was to differentiate the VW version from the mechanically similar Audi 80. Inside was a restyled dashboard in the style of the Golf, with the radio and heating controls now mounted centrally, one above the other, in a single unit alongside the principal dials. Engine mountings, the gearbox, and the exhaust system were modified in order to reduce interior noise, and comfort was also improved by changes to the springing and shock absorbers. The car's wheels were increased in size, and at the back, there was a stronger anti-roll bar. Right-hand-drive versions retained the original dashboard.

Export markets

North America

In North America, the car was called the Volkswagen Dasher. The three- and five-door hatchback and a station wagon model were launched in North America for and during the 1974 model year. Sole available engine was a carburetted 1.5 L inline-four developing  (or  in 1975), supplanted from model year 1976 by a Bosch fuel-injected 1.6 L four with . North American cars were equipped with single DOT standard headlights.

In 1978 the Dasher received a facelift along the lines of the European Passat, with quad sealed beam headlights and big polyurethane covered bumpers. The trim was also upgraded and the ride softened. 1979 saw the introduction of the 1.5 L diesel engine, which produced 48 PS (35 kW) in the 1130 kg (2500 lb) car. This version was not available as an Audi. 0–100 km/h time for the Diesel was 19.4 seconds, 6.2 seconds slower than the gasoline (petrol) engine. All gasoline engines were dropped for North America in 1981 in preparation for the next generation.

Australia

In Australia, the Passat was Wheels magazine's Car of the Year in 1974 and the car was assembled locally (CKD) from 1974 until 1977. It went on sale in February 1974, as a 2-door 1300 and a four-door 1500 (also available as a wagon beginning in May 1974). The smaller engine produces , while the bigger one offered . An automatic transmission was available on the larger engine, which was joined by a  two-door 1500 TS version in May. The Passat immediately outsold the Beetle in the Australian market, although the T2 Transporter still sold more than Volkswagen's entire passenger car lineup. In 1976 Nissan took over Volkswagen's Australian operations and kept assembling the entire lineup, including the Passat. The two-door models were discontinued, with the LS sedan and wagon now equipped with a 1.6-liter engine. Nissan assembly only lasted until March 1977, when the entire range became fully imported.

The fully imported 1977 Passat GLS had a  1588 cc engine and was originally only available as a two- or four-door sedan, at a sizable cost increase compared to the previous year. In spite of promises to keep up existing sales volumes, Passat volumes dropped by more than 70 percent. Sales dropped by another 70 percent in 1978, to 356 cars. In February 1979 the 1977 facelift model finally arrived, also heralding the introduction of the five-door hatchback bodywork, accompanied by the wagon. The 1.5 L diesel arrived in December 1979; sales in 1979 continued to freefall and only 90 cars were delivered. Originally available with inline-four petrol engines only the comparably successful 1.5 L diesel remained after late 1980. Sales tripled in 1980 and crept up to 287 in 1981, the last year new Volkswagen passenger cars were imported to Australia. The diesel model was available as a wagon or five-door hatchback (called "sedan"). Another 80 examples of the 1981 Passat Diesel were sold from existing stock in 1982.

South Africa
In South Africa the Passat was sold with two- or four-door saloon bodywork, as well as the five-door Variant model. The two-door was only marketed as the upscale "LS Coupé", near the top of the price range. Equipment levels were L, LS, and later the LS de luxe. 1.3 or 1.6 L engines were available. For 1977 the five-door hatchback version arrived, badged "Passat LX." Some other light modifications were also carried out for 1977, slight improvements to the ventilation system, more equipment, and new hubcaps for the LS and LX versions. As in South America, the facelift model received the Audi 1980's front-end treatment. This facelift appeared in August 1978 and also included a variety of noise reduction modifications and suspension improvements, including wider wheels.

B1 in Brazil

In Brazil, the Passat B1 was produced from 1974 until 1988, originally with the 1.5-liter gasoline engine. A 1.6 was added with the 1976 introduction of the sportier TS 1.6 version, which received twin headlights. Since the Audi 80 was not marketed in Brazil, its front-end treatment was applied to the Passat in a facelift for 1979. Originally only available as a two or four-door fastback sedan, a three-door hatchback option was added in July 1976. During its long life cycle many improvements from the B2 platform were introduced, like its 1.6 and 1.8-liter engines and a five-speed gearbox. A second, Brazil-specific face-lift in 1983 brought quadruple rectangular headlights. The sporting TS 1.6 was later upgraded with a bigger engine, as the Passat GTS 1.8 Pointer. For export only Volkswagen's 1.6 L diesel four-cylinder engine was also installed.

As a part of an overall export push by Volkswagen do Brasil (VWB), 170,000 "Passat LSE" were also built between 1983 and 1988 specifically for export to Iraq. These cars received various upgrades to suit Iraqi conditions, such as a protection plate for the engine, a stronger radiator, and standard air conditioning, and were bartered for oil which was transferred to Petrobras. As Petrobras' oil reserves grew larger than necessary, VWB found themselves with a large stock of Iraqi-spec cars that they were unable to export. In July 1986 local sales of these leftovers began. Despite being fitted with the old 72 PS 1.6 L MD270 engine and a four-speed transmission rather than the more powerful AP600 and the five-speed unit used in current Brazilian cars, the LSE was an unexpected success in the Brazilian market.

The Passat represented a break with Volkswagen do Brasil's rear-engined, air-cooled traditions. It did well on introduction, being a much more modern car than the rest of the VWB lineup as well as the Ford Corcel, its closest competitor. After the introduction of the B2 Santana in 1984, however, the Passat began to show its age. The Passat continued to be produced until 1988, by which time a total of 676,819 Passats had been built in Brazil.

Technical Data

References

Passat B1
Cars introduced in 1973

1980s cars
Italdesign vehicles
Station wagons
Cars of Brazil

Volkswagen Passat (B1)


Admiral Sir John Colpoys,  (c. 1742 – 4 April 1821) was an officer of the British Royal Navy who served in three wars but is most notable for being one of the catalysts of the Spithead Mutiny in 1797 after ordering his marines to fire on a deputation of mutinous sailors. Although this event resulted in his removal from active duty, Colpoys was a capable administrator who remained heavily involved in staff duties ashore during the Napoleonic Wars and was later a Lord of the Admiralty, Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath (later a Knight Grand Cross) and Governor of Greenwich Naval Hospital.

Early career
Colpoys was the son of John Colpoys, a Dublin attorney and Registrar to Chief Justice William Yorke.  His mother was a Miss Madden whose mother was Anne, daughter of Edward Singleton, an alderman of Drogheda in Ireland.  Singleton's son, Henry, was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland from 1740 to 1753, while his granddaughter Charity, daughter of his son Rowland, was the wife of William Yorke, who succeeded Henry Singleton as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland in 1753.  Nothing is known of Colpoys' birth or childhood, except that he was born in approximately 1742. He is believed to have entered the Royal Navy in 1756 at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War and certainly served in the Siege of Louisbourg in 1758 and the Capture of Martinique four years later. His service in these campaigns was not especially notable, but they were to be almost his only experience of action with the enemy. While serving at Martinique, Colpoys was promoted to lieutenant and in 1770 received his first command, the small frigate HMS Lynx. Promoted commander the same year, he was again promoted in 1773, becoming a post captain in command of the ship of the line HMS Northumberland.

At the outbreak of the American War of Independence, Colpoys took command of the frigate HMS Seaford, which he commanded in European waters without seeing any significant action. In 1778, shortly after leaving the frigate, Colpoys was called to an Admiralty court as a judge in the court-martial of Sir Hugh Palliser in the acrimonious aftermath of the First Battle of Ushant. As instructed, the court found Palliser innocent of any wrongdoing and Colpoys returned to sea as commander of HMS Orpheus on the North American Station. In Orpheus, Colpoys achieved his one victory at sea when, in company with HMS Roebuck, he successfully ran down and captured the small frigate USS Confederacy in 1781. His final command of the war was HMS Phoebe, a frigate with the Mediterranean Fleet that was paid off a few months after he joined her in 1783.

French Revolutionary Wars
After seven years on half-pay, Colpoys was recalled in 1790 to command the guardship HMS Hannibal at Portsmouth. With the renewal of conflict with France in 1793 in the French Revolutionary Wars, Colpoys was recalled to active service as a squadron commander under Alan Gardner in the Channel and subsequently the West Indies. In April 1794, Colpoys was promoted to rear-admiral and flew his flag in HMS London with the Channel Fleet under Lord Bridport, with his nephew Edward Griffith as his flag captain. In 1795, London was present but not engaged at the Battle of Groix, and later at the action of 10 April 1795.

Ordered to command the blockade squadron off Brest in the winter of 1796, Colpoys was driven offshore by gales and detached a squadron of frigates under Sir Edward Pellew to watch the port. On 16 December, the French attempted to escape at dusk, the Brest fleet carrying an army intended for the invasion of Ireland. Although Pellew spotted the attempt and tried to divert the French during the night, the majority of the French forces reached the Atlantic safely. Rather than pursue the French, Colpoys took his ships into Plymouth for a refit while the main body of the Channel Fleet hunted for the invasion force. The expedition was eventually foiled by a combination of disorganisation and severe gales.

Spithead Mutiny

Colpoys most notable action during his naval service occurred in 1797, after the outbreak of the Spithead Mutiny in April. Disaffected sailors in the Channel Fleet at Spithead went on strike, demanding a number of concessions before they would return to offensive operations. Although all but four ships returned to service within days following negotiations with the Admiralty, tensions were still running high. The four ships that refused to sail were all placed under Colpoys's command while the remainder of the fleet were taken to St Helens, Isle of Wight to isolate the mutinous ships. On 1 May, an order from the Admiralty arrived with the fleet ordering officers to use violent methods to break the mutiny and to arrest its ringleaders. Aware that the order would provoke a recurrence of the original mutiny, many officers attempted to stifle news of the order, but without success.

The crews at St. Helens once again rose against their officers, and Colpoys at Spithead took urgent steps to ensure the loyalty of his own crew on HMS London. The sailors were called on deck and asked to air any grievances they might have; the crew replied that they had none, and Colpoys dismissed them. Worried about the potential influence of mutineers from the fleet at St. Helens, Colpoys then attempted to isolate his crew by sealing them below decks. This infuriated the men, who demanded an audience with the admiral. Colpoys refused to allow their delegates on deck, and the crew attempted to storm the hatches. Colpoys panicked, and ordered his officers and marines to open fire on the sailors climbing out of the hatches. Although most of the marines refused the order, a number of sailors were killed before Colpoys brought an end to the gunfire.

Outnumbered by his now thoroughly mutinous crew, Colpoys was forced to surrender. Taking full responsibility for the shooting, to spare one of his officers threatened with hanging for shooting a sailor, Colpoys and his fellow officers were seized and imprisoned, while London sailed to St. Helens to join the fleet. Although the crew originally planned to try Colpoys and his officers for the shooting, they were all later released ashore. Colpoys was later explicitly named in the mutineer's demands as an officer they would refuse to serve under. Colpoys was removed from active service at this time, although this may not have been a condemnation of his actions: he had already requested to be relieved before the mutiny due to his deteriorating health.

Shore service
No longer serving at sea, Colpoys began to recover his health and was rewarded for his long service in 1798 with appointment as a Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath. Remaining in semi-retirement, Colpoys was promoted to full admiral in 1801, and recalled by the Admiralty in 1803 to be the Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth. The following year, Lord Melville specifically requested Colpoys to serve as a Lord of the Admiralty and he was also considered for the post of commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, although this was eventually awarded to Cuthbert Collingwood.

In 1805, Colpoys was awarded the honorary position of treasurer of Greenwich Hospital, and in 1816 he became governor of that institution. In the preceding year at the reformation of the orders of chivalry, Colpoys had become a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.

In 1821, Colpoys died at the Greenwich Hospital aged 79, and was buried on the site. He is listed on the south face of the Officers Monument there.

Citations

References

See also the vessels

|-

1740s births
1821 deaths
Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Royal Navy admirals
Lords of the Admiralty
Royal Navy personnel of the American Revolutionary War
Royal Navy personnel of the French Revolutionary Wars
Royal Navy personnel of the Napoleonic Wars
Royal Navy personnel of the Seven Years' War

John Colpoys


Sinicization, sinofication, sinification, or sinonization (from the prefix , 'Chinese, relating to China') is the process by which non-Chinese societies or groups are acculturated or assimilated into Chinese culture, particularly the language, societal norms, culture, and ethnic identity of the Han Chinese—the largest ethnic group of China.

Areas of influence include diet, writing, industry, education, language/lexicon, law, architectural style, politics, philosophy, religion, science and technology, value systems, and lifestyle.

The term sinicization is also often used to refer to processes or policies of acculturation or assimilation of norms from China on neighboring East Asian societies, or on minority ethnic groups within China. Evidence of this process is reflected in the histories of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam in the adoption of the Chinese writing system, which has long been a unifying feature in the Sinosphere as the vehicle for exporting Chinese culture to other Asian countries.

Assimilation
The assimilation policy is a type of Chinese nationalism aimed at strengthening the Chinese national identity (Zhonghua minzu) among the population. Proponents believe it will help to develop shared values, pride in being the country's citizen, respect and acceptance towards cultural differences among citizens of China. Critics argue that assimilation destroys ethnic diversity, language diversity, and cultural diversity. Historian James A. Millward claimed the PRC has used the concept of Sinicization as a means to obscure Han settler colonialism.

In China there are 292 non-Mandarin languages spoken by native peoples of the region. There are also a number of immigrant languages, such as Khmer, Portuguese, English, etc.

Sinicizations

Historical

Baiyue
Before sinicization, non-Chinese indigenous peoples of Southern China, collectively termed by the Chinese as Baiyue (), inhabited the coastline of China from as far north as the Yangtze River to as far south as the Gulf of Tonkin.

As early as the 11th century BC, some of the Baiyue peoples in the Yangtze River Delta started to sinicize, marked by their establishment of the Wu State. These Yue peoples, together with their southerner neighbours who formed the Yue State centuries later, are collectively termed as Yuyue peoples. Over time, the mutual contact between Baiyue peoples and Han Chinese, as well as southward spread of Han Chinese mostly as war refugees, led to the sinicization of most of the Baiyue populations that remained in Southern China, be they in the Yangtze Valley or in coastal areas from the mouth of the Yangtze to the Gulf of Tonkin. The remnants of these peoples who were not fully sinicized are now recognized officially as the ethnic minorities of the People's Republic of China.

Turkic peoples

Tuoba Wei of Northern China was Sinicized Empire of Turkic-Xianbei origin. Historical Shatuo Turks also founded 5 Sinicized dynasties in Northern China.

Descendants of Uyghurs who migrated to Taoyuan County, Hunan have largely assimilated into the Han Chinese and Hui population and practice Chinese customs, speaking varieties of Chinese as their language.

Han, Jin, and Sixteen Kingdoms period

From the late Han Dynasty to the early Jin dynasty (266–420), large numbers of non-Chinese peoples living along China's northern periphery settled in northern China. Some of these migrants such as the Xiongnu and Xianbei had been pastoralist nomads from the northern steppes. Others such as the Di and Qiang were farmers and herders from the mountains of western Sichuan of southwest China. As migrants, they lived among ethnic Chinese and were sinicized to varying degrees. Many worked as farm laborers. Some attained official positions in the court and military. The numerous tribal groups in the north and northwest who had been heavily drafted into the military then exploited the chaos to seize power by local Chinese warlords.

During Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao initiated the policy of settling Xiongnu nomads away from the frontier near Taiyuan in modern Shanxi province, where they would be less likely to rebel. The Xiongnu abandoned nomadism and the elite were educated in Chinese-Confucian literate culture. The migrant of Northern Chinese people to the south further settled China as a multi-ethnic empire.

Northern and Southern dynasties

The Northern and Southern dynasties was a period in the history of China that lasted from 386 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms period. Though an age of civil war and political chaos, it was also a time of flourishing arts and culture, advancement in technology, and the spread of Mahayana Buddhism and Daoism. The period saw large-scale migration of Han Chinese to the lands south of the Yangtze. The period came to an end with the unification of all of China proper by Emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty. During this period, the process of Sinicization accelerated among the non-Han arrivals in the north and among the indigenous people in the south. This process was also accompanied by the increasing popularity of Buddhism (introduced into China in the first century) and Daoism in both northern and southern China.

Tang dynasty
During the eighth and ninth centuries in the Tang dynasty, Chinese male soldiers moved into Guizhou (formerly romanized as Kweichow) and married native non-Chinese women, their descendants being known as Lao-han-jen (original Chinese), in contrast to new Chinese people who colonized Guizhou at later times. They still spoke an archaic dialect as of 1929. Many immigrants to Guizhou were descended from these soldiers in garrisons who married non-Chinese women.

Yuan dynasty
The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty appointed a Muslim from Bukhara, Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din Omar, as governor of Yunnan after conquering the Bai-led Dali Kingdom. Sayyid Ajall is best known among Chinese for helping sinicize the Yunnan province; the promotion of Islam, Confucianism, and Buddhism would be part of his 'civilizing mission' upon the non-Han Chinese peoples in Yunnan, who he viewed as "backward and barbarian."

He founded a "Chinese style" city called Zhongjing Cheng, where modern Kunming is today, and ordered that a Buddhist temple, two mosques, and a Confucian temple be built in the city. The latter temple, built in 1274 and doubled as a school, was the first Confucian temple ever to be built in Yunnan. By incorporating Chinese and consequently Confucian thought in the dynasty, scholars now deem Kublai Khan as an adopted Chinese citizen of Mongol ethnicity, rather than simply being mutually excluded from the definition of fellow Chinese he governed. As such, Sayyid Ajall would be the one to introduce Confucian education, rituals, and traditions into Yunnan, including Chinese social structures, funeral rituals, and marriage customs. He would go on to construct numerous Confucian temples throughout his reign.

Confucian rituals were taught to students in newly founded schools by Sichuanese scholars. The natives of Yunnan were instructed by Sayyid Ajall in such Confucian ceremonies as weddings, matchmaking, funerals, ancestor worship, and kowtow. The native leaders had their "barbarian" clothing replaced by clothing given to them by Sayyid Ajall as well. The governor was praised and described as making "the orangutans and butcherbirds become unicorns and phoenixes and their felts and furs were exchanged for gowns and caps" by He Hongzuo, the Regional Superintendent of Confucian studies.

Sayyid Ajall would also be the first to bring Islam to the area, and thus the widespread presence of Islam in Yunnan is credited to his work. Both Marco Polo and Rashid al-Din Vatvat recorded that Yunnan was heavily populated by Muslims during the Yuan Dynasty, with Rashid naming a city with all Muslim inhabitants as the "great city of Yachi." It has been suggested that Yachi was Dali City (Ta-li), which had many Hui people.

Sayyid Ajall's son Nasir al-Din became Governor of Yunnan in 1279 after his death.

Historian Jacqueline Armijo-Hussein has written on Sayyid Ajall's confucianization and sinicization policies in various papers, including in her dissertation "Sayyid 'Ajall Shams al-Din: A Muslim from Central Asia, serving the Mongols in China, and bringing 'civilization' to Yunnan" (1997); and in "The Origins of Confucian and Islamic Education in Southwest China: Yunnan in the Yuan Period" (n.d.) and "The Sinicization and Confucianization in Chinese and Western Historiography of a Muslim from Bukhara Serving Under the Mongols in China" (1989).

Ming dynasty

During the Ming conquest of Yunnan Chinese military soldiers were settled in Yunnan, and many married the native women.

Qing dynasty
The rulers of the Qing dynasty were ethnic Manchus who adopted the norms of the Mandate of Heaven to justify their rule. The "orthodox" historical view emphasized the power of Han Chinese to "sinicize" their conquerors, although more recent research such as the New Qing History school revealed Manchu rulers were savvy in their manipulation of their subjects and from the 1630s through at least the 18th century, the emperors developed a sense of Manchu identity and used Central Asian models of rule as much as Confucian ones. There is also evidence of sinicization, however. For example, Manchus originally had their own separate style of naming from the Han Chinese, but eventually adopted Han Chinese naming practices.

Manchu names consisted of more than the two or one syllable Chinese names, and when phonetically transcribed into Chinese, they made no sense at all. The meaning of the names that Manchus used were also very different from the meanings of Chinese names. The Manchus also gave numbers as personal names.

Historical records report that as early as 1776, the Qianlong Emperor was shocked to see a high Manchu official, Guo'ermin, not understand what the emperor was telling him in Manchu, despite coming from the Manchu stronghold of Shengjing (now Shenyang). By the 19th century even the imperial court had lost fluency in the language. The Jiaqing Emperor (reigned 1796–1820) complained that his officials were not proficient at understanding or writing Manchu.

Eventually, the Qing royal family (the Aisin Gioro) gave their children Chinese names, which were separate from the Manchu names, and even adopted the Chinese practice of generation names, although its usage was inconsistent and error-ridden. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Manchu royal family stopped using Manchu names.

The Niohuru family of the Manchu changed their family name to Lang, which sounded like "wolf" in Chinese, since wolf in Manchu was Niohuru; thus forming a translation.

Although the Manchus replaced their Manchu names with Chinese personal names, the Manchu bannermen followed their traditional practice in typically used their first/personal name to address themselves and not their last name, while Han Chinese bannermen used their last name and first in normal Chinese style.

Usage of surnames was not traditional to the Manchu while it was to the Han Chinese.

Nguyễn dynasty (Vietnam)

The Vietnamese Nguyễn Emperor Minh Mạng sinicized ethnic minorities such as Khmers, Chams and Montagnards, claimed the legacy of Confucianism and China's Han dynasty for Vietnam. Directing his policies at the Khmers and hill tribes, Minh Mang declared that "We must hope that their barbarian habits will be subconsciously dissipated, and that they will daily become more infected by Han [Sino-Vietnamese] customs." Moreover, he would use the term Han () to refer to the Vietnamese people, and the name  (中國, the same Chinese characters as for 'China') to refer to Vietnam. Likewise, the lord Nguyễn Phúc Chu had referred to Vietnamese as Han people in 1712 when differentiating between Vietnamese and Chams.

Chinese clothing was also adopted by the Vietnamese people. Variations of them are still being used today.

Contemporary

Ma Clique
Hui Muslim General Ma Fuxiang created an assimilationist group and encouraged the integration of Muslims into Chinese society. Ma Fuxiang was a hardcore assimilationist and said that Hui should assimilate into Han.

Hong Kong and Macau

Xinjiang

The Hui Muslim 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) governed the southern region of Xinjiang in 1934–1937. The administration that was set up was colonial in nature, importing Han cooks and baths, changing the Uyghur language-only street names and signs to Chinese, as well as switching carpet patterns in state-owned carpet factories from Uyghur to Han.

Strict surveillance and mass detentions of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang re-education camps is a part of the ongoing sinicization policy by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Since 2015, it has been estimated that over a million Uyghurs have been detained in these camps. The camps were established under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping's administration with the main goal of ensuring adherence to national ideology. Critics of China's treatment of Uyghurs have accused the Chinese government of propagating a policy of sinicization in Xinjiang in the 21st century, calling this policy a cultural genocide, or ethnocide, of Uyghurs.

Taiwan
After the Republic of China took control of Taiwan from the Empire of Japan in 1945 and relocated its capital to Taipei in 1949, the intention of Chiang Kai-shek was to eventually go back to mainland China and retake control of it. Chiang believed that to retake mainland China, it would be necessary to re-Sinicize Taiwan's inhabitants who had undergone assimilation under Japanese rule. Examples of this policy included the renaming of Japanese-named streets with mainland geographical names, the use of Mandarin Chinese in schools and punishments for using other regional Chinese languages (such as the fāngyán of Hakka and Hokkien), and teaching students to revere traditional ethics, develop pan-Chinese nationalism, and view Taiwan from the perspective of China. Other reasons for the policy were to combat the Japanese influences on the culture that had occurred in the previous 50 years, and to help unite the recent immigrants from mainland China that had come to Taiwan with the KMT and among whom there was a tendency to be more loyal to one's city, country or province than to China as a nation.

The process of re-asserting non-Chinese identity, as in the case of ethnic groups in Taiwan, is sometimes known as desinicization. This is an issue in, for example, the Taiwan independence movement and Taiwan localization movements.

Tibet

The sinicization of Tibet is the change of Tibetan society to Han Chinese standards by means of state propaganda, police presence, cultural assimilation, religious persecution, immigration, population transfer, land development, land transfer, and political reform. According to the U.S. branch of the Offices of Tibet, it has been underway since the Chinese regained control of Tibet in 1951. Sources quoted by Radio Free Asia have stated that in present-day Tibet, traditional Tibetan festivals have "been turned into a platform for propaganda and political theater" where "government workers and retirees are barred from engaging in religious activities, and government workers and students in Tibetan schools are forbidden from visiting local monasteries."

Religion

In April 2016, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping declared that in order to "actively guide the adaptation of religions to socialist society, an important task is supporting China's religions' persistence in the direction of sinicization." He later reiterated this plan to the 19th Communist Party Congress saying "We will fully implement the Party's basic policy on religious affairs, insist on the sinicization of Chinese religions, and provide active guidance for religion and socialism to coexist."

Protestantism
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) of Protestant churches in China has described the Boxer Rebellion and the anti-Christian movement of 1922-27 as early efforts to sinicize Christianity.

The TSPM and China Christian Council arranged a conference in Shanghai on August 4–6, 2014, commemorating the anniversary of the TSPM. This conference included a seminar on the sinicizaton of Christianity, with Fu Xianwei, chairman of the TSPM, saying "churches in China will continue to explore the sinicization of Christianity [and] ensure Christianity takes root in the soil of Chinese culture, ethnicity, and society... To advance the sinicization of Christianity, churches will need guidance and support from government agencies in charge of religious affairs."

In 2019, TSPM chairman Xu Xiaohong made a pledge to eliminate any Western "imprint" from Chinese faith saying "[We] must recognise that Chinese churches are surnamed 'China', not 'the West'" and "No matter how much effort or time it takes, our resolution in upholding the Sinicisation of Protestantism will never change, and our determination to walk a path that is adapted to a socialist society will never waver."

Catholicism

In December 2016, the Ninth National Congress of the Chinese Catholic Representatives reaffirmed their plan for the United Front Work Department's Catholic Patriotic Association to uphold the principle of independence and self-governance, along with the promotion of sinicization.

In March 2018, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States within the Holy See's Secretariat of State, said that "two expressions or, more precisely, two principles stand out, which should interact with each other, namely "sinicization" and "inculturation." I am convinced that an important intellectual and pastoral challenge arises in an almost natural way from the bringing together of these two terms, which indicate two real visions of the world."

In June 2018, the Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church in China and the Catholic Patriotic Association issued a "Five-Year Plan on Carrying Forward the Catholic Church's Adherence to the Direction of Sinicization in Our Country". This document calls for Catholics to accept Communist party leadership, love the motherland and obey the state, as well as to embrace the state's directive to implement Chinese cultural integration within Catholicism. Churches in Hebei province and the Yibin Diocese of Sichuan province began holding training seminars immediately.

Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, in a 2019 interview with the CCP-owned Global Times newspaper, claimed that sinicization was a form of 'inculturation', which is a Catholic missionary term that refers to adopting local culture to proclaim the gospel. He cited Matteo Ricci as an example and pointed out that the Chinese leadership had promised not to undermine the doctrine and nature of each religion. He stated in the interview: "These two terms, "inculturation" and "sinicization," refer to each other without confusion and without opposition: in some ways, they can be complementary and can open avenues for dialogue on the religious and cultural level."

Islam

In 2015, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping first raised the issue of "Sinicization of Islam". In 2018, a confidential directive was issued ordering local officials to "prevent Islam from interfering with secular life and the state's functions".

Yang Faming, leader of the Islamic Association of China, said in a 2018 speech that "We must allow traditional Chinese culture to permeate Islam and jointly guard the spiritual homeland of the Chinese people." He encouraged Chinese characteristics to be present in religious ceremony, culture, and architecture.

In 2018, over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur Muslim 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".

, it was estimated that Chinese authorities may have detained one and a half million people in secretive re-education camps. The vast majority of those forcibly interned are Muslim Uyghurs but Kazakhs and other minority groups have also been included.

In September 2020, sinicization policies targeted Muslim Utsuls in the Hainan province. Restrictions included limiting the size of mosques, requiring a Communist Party member on mosque management committees, forbidding the use of Arabic words on food stalls (such as "halal"), and banning the hijab in schools and government offices.

In June 2023, CNN reported that Chinese authorities had forcibly rebuilt a number of mosques in order to eliminate traditional Islamic architecture (e.g. minarets, domes) and replace them with Chinese architecture. In July 2023, the United Front Work Department's Central Institute of Socialism developed a plan to "meld Islam with Confucianism" using the Han Kitab texts as a guide.

See also

 Sinocentrism
 De-Sinicization
 Ethnic groups in Chinese history
 East Asian cultural sphere
 Sinicization of Tibet
 Sojunghwa
 Zhonghua minzu
 Taiwanization
 Conquest dynasty
 New Qing History

 Arabization
 Russification
 Westernization
 Turkification
 Mongolization
 Vietnamization
 Japanization
 Indianisation
 Americanization
 Korean wave
 Taiwanese wave

References

External links

Sinicization vs. Manchuness (by Xiaowei Zheng).
Sinicization: at the crossing of three China regions, an ethnic minority becoming increasingly more Chinese: the Kam People, officially called Dong People (in French)/ Sinisation: à la limite de trois provinces de Chine, une minorité de plus en plus chinoise: les locuteurs kam, officiellement appelés Dong, Jean Berlie, Guy Trédaniel editor, Paris, France, published in 1998.
Sinicization of the Kam (Dong People), a China minority (in French)/ Sinisation d'une minorité de Chine, les Kam (Dong), Jean Berlie, s.n. editor, published in 1994.
Islam in China, Hui and Uyghurs: between modernization and sinicization, the study of the Hui and Uyghurs of China, Jean A. Berlie, White Lotus Press editor, Bangkok, Thailand, published in 2004. , .

Chinese culture
Chinese nationalism
Cultural assimilation
East Asian culture
Japanese language
Korean language
Politics of Taiwan

Sinicization


In organic chemistry, thiocarboxylic acids or carbothioic acids are organosulfur compounds related to carboxylic acids by replacement of one of the oxygen atoms with a sulfur atom. Two tautomers are possible: a thione form () and a thiol form (). These are sometimes also referred to as "carbothioic O-acid" and "carbothioic S-acid" respectively. Of these the thiol form is most common (e.g. thioacetic acid).

A naturally occurring thiocarboxylic acid is pyridine-2,6-dicarbothioic acid, a siderophore.

Synthesis
Thiocarboxylic acids are typically prepared by salt metathesis from the acid chloride, as in the following conversion of benzoyl chloride to thiobenzoic acid using potassium hydrosulfide according to the following idealized equation:
C6H5C(O)Cl + KSH -> C6H5C(O)SH + KCl

Reactions
At neutral pH, thiocarboxylic acids are fully ionized. Thiocarboxylic acids are about 100 times more acidic than the analogous carboxylic acids. For PhC(O)SH pKa = 2.48 vs 4.20 for PhC(O)OH.  For thioacetic acid the pKa is near 3.4 vs 4.72 for acetic acid.

Their conjugate bases, e.g. potassium thioacetate, serve as reagents for installing thiol groups via the displacement of alkyl halides to give the thioester, which in turn are susceptible to hydrolysis.

Thiocarboxylic acids react with various nitrogen functional groups, such as organic azide, nitro, and isocyanate compounds, to give amides under mild conditions. This method avoids needing a highly nucleophilic aniline or other amine to initiate an amide-forming acyl substitution, but requires synthesis and handling of the unstable thiocarboxylic acid. Unlike the Schmidt reaction or other nucleophilic-attack pathways, the reaction with an aryl or alkyl azide begins with a [3+2] cycloaddition; the resulting heterocycle expels N2 and the sulfur atom to give the monosubstituted amide.

Dithiocarboxylic acids
Dithiocarboxylic acids, with the formula , are less common than the monothio derivatives. They are about 3x more acidic than the monothiocarboxylic acids. Thus, for dithiobenzoic acid pKa = 1.92. Such compounds are commonly prepared by the reaction of carbon disulfide with a Grignard reagent:
RMgX + CS2 -> RCS2MgX
RCS2MgX + HCl -> RCS2H + MgXCl
This reaction is comparable to the formation of carboxylic acids using a Grignard reagent and carbon dioxide. Dithiocarboxylate salts readily S-alkylate to give dithiocarboxylate esters:
RCS2Na + R'Cl -> RCS2R' + NaCl

Aryldithiocarboxylic acids, e.g., dithiobenzoic acid, chlorinate to give the thioacyl chlorides.

See also
 Thioester
 Thiocarbamate
 Thiocarbonate
 Thiocarbonic acid
 Thiocarbonate

References

Organic acids
Reagents for organic chemistry
Organosulfur compounds
Functional groups

Thiocarboxylic acid