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Transcultural Italies Mobility, Memory and Translation

Transnational Italian Cultures 4

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 2 0 . L i v e r p o o l U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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Contents Contents

List of Figures vii

List of Contributors xi

Introduction: Transcultural Italies 1 Charles Burdett, Loredana Polezzi and Barbara Spadaro

Part 1: Traces

1. The Transnational Biography of ‘British’ Place: Local and Global Stories in the Built Environment 23

Jennifer Burns

2. Porteña Identity and Italianità: Language, Materiality and Transcultural Memory in Valparaíso’s Italian Community 47

Naomi Wells

3. Italian Identity, Global Mediterranean: Tourism and Cultural Heritage in Post-Colonial Rhodes 75

Valerie McGuire

4. Italy and Africa: Post-War Memories of Life in Eritrea and Ethiopia 101 Charles Burdett

Part 2: Art, Objects and Artefacts

5. ‘The Path that Leads Me Home’: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Arts of Transnationalizing 127

Derek Duncan

6. Moving Objects: Memory and Material Culture 155 Margaret Hills de Zárate

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 2 0 . L i v e r p o o l U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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vi Transcultural Italies

7. Visualizing Spatialization at a Crossroads between Translation and Mobility: Italian Australian Artist Jon Cattapan’s Cityscapes 179

Eliana Maestri

8. An Exhibition about Italian Identities: Beyond Borders 207 Viviana Gravano and Giulia Grechi

Part 3: Mobilities of Memory

9. Pitigliano, Maryland? Travelling Memories and Moments of Truth 227 Barbara Spadaro

10. Misplaced Plants: Migrant Gardens and Transculturation 253 Ilaria Vanni

11. The Chinese Community in Italy, the Italian Community in China: Economic Exchanges and Cultural Difference 275

Chiara Giuliani

12. Writing the Neighbourhood: Literary Representations of Language, Space and Mobility 297

Rita Wilson

13. From Substitution to Co-presence: Translation, Memory, Trace and the Visual Practices of Diasporic Italian Artists 317

Loredana Polezzi

Index 341

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C H A P T E R E L E V E N

The Chinese Community in Italy, the Italian Community in China: Economic Exchanges and Cultural Difference

Chiara Giuliani

The Chinese Community in Italy, the Italian Community in China

The graphic novel Chinamen. Un secolo di cinesi a Milano [Chinamen. A century of Chinese people in Milan],1 tells the story of the Chinese community in Milan through images, short captions and archival documents. According to this book, one of the first Chinese men to arrive to Milan was Wu Qiankui:

Wu Qiankui era un commerciante cinese […] e commerciava statuine in pietra e tè. […] Era già stato a Brescia nel 1904 dove […] aveva conosciuto Cesare Curiel, un commerciante meneghino […]. I due si incontrarono nuovamente alla Grande Esposizione. Tra commercianti s’intendevano bene. Oltre all’amicizia condividevano una parte degli affari.2

[Wu Qiankui was a Chinese merchant […] who traded stone figurines and tea. […] He had already been in Brescia in 1904 where […] he had met Cesare Curiel, a Milanese businessman […] The two men met again at the Great Exhibition. Among businessmen they understood each other well. Beyond friendship, they had some businesses in common.]

1 Matteo Demonte and Ciaj Rocchi, Chinamen. Un secolo di cinesi a Milano (Levada di Ponte di Piave (TV): Becco Giallo, 2017). All translations of original Italian texts are my own except for Nesi’s book, for which I will use the published translated text. 2 Demonte and Rocchi. No page numbers in the first part of the volume. Indicatively pp. 3–4.

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 2 0 . L i v e r p o o l U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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276 Transcultural Italies

That was 1906, and Milan was hosting the Esposizione Internazionale [World Expo]. The presence of a Chinese representative at the Expo was considered an honour and an event in itself, to the point that Wu was welcomed by a number of personalities of the time. Beyond the curiosity linked to the exotic flair that the Chinese contingent brought, the local authorities as well as the citizens of Milan were interested in trading with them and in familiarizing themselves with the Chinese culture, so different from their own. Roughly a century after that Expo, in 2015, Milan hosted another Universal Exhibition, in which China was not just one among many countries but rather one of the protagonists. In addition to its national pavilion, the Vanke Pavilion and the China Corporate United Pavilion in the official Expo area, China was also the only country to have an annex in the city centre, called the City Pavilion, to further celebrate the relationship between the two countries.3 The Expo, a key moment in Sino-Italian diplomatic and commercial dynamics, was preceded by a tour in China during which the Italian organizers promoted the event by creating direct links with the Expo held in Shanghai in 2010. At that event Italy set up a 3,600-square-metre pavilion reproducing a typical Italian city and displaying Made in Italy products.4 These examples are indicative of two elements that characterize the relations between Italy and China so far: historic connections and the economic nature of those connections.

From the 1920s a Chinese community started to take shape in Italy, and in 2018 there were 309,110 Chinese people officially registered in the country.5 However, attitudes towards the People’s Republic of China have

3 For more information see Gatti Stefano, ed., Expo Milano 2015, Official Report (Milan: Expo 2015 Spa, 2018) <http://www.expo2015.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/ 10/OFFICI A L%20R EPORT%20EX PO%20MIL A NO%202015-PDF-ENG.pdf> [accessed 21 November 2019]; for the City Pavilion see ‘China City Pavilion’, Vudafieri Saverino Partners, 2016 <https://www.vudafierisaverino.it/projects/architecture/ china-city-pavilion> [accessed 21 November 2019]. For an analysis of the Expo 2015 see Viviana Gravano, Expo show. Milano 2015. Una scommessa interculturale persa (Milan: Mimesis, 2016). 4 ‘Il Padiglione Italia – “La città dell’uomo”’, Italia Expo Shanghai 2010 <http://www. expo2010italia.gov.it/ita/padiglione-Italia%20-citta-uomo.html> [accessed 30 July 2017]. 5 Laura Giacomello et al., eds, La comunità cinese in Italia. Rapporto annuale sulla presenza dei migranti (Rome: Ministero del lavoro e delle politiche sociali: 2018), p. 5. For more information on Sino-Italian relations in the twentieth century see Laura De Giorgi and Guido Samarani, Lontane, vicine. Le relazioni fra Cina e Italia nel Novecento (Rome: Carocci, 2011).

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277The Chinese Community in Italy, the Italian Community in China

been rather ambiguous, especially since China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. On the one hand, the Italian government and key figures in the world of finance have underlined the necessity of establishing a strong and lasting economic dialogue with China. On the other hand, the presence of a sizeable Chinese community and their businesses (be they factories, shops or restaurants) in Italy has been perceived as a problematic and dangerous element for the Italian economy and society, a perception that has contributed to the understanding of China as an economic threat.6

This chapter analyses the representations of the economic exchanges between Italy and China as articulated in a series of fictional and non- fic- tional texts about the Chinese community in Italy and the Italian community in China.7 I argue that these representations, by focusing on cultural differences, are working towards the distancing of two countries and two peoples that the global economic order has brought into a new proximity. To this end, I will consider Edoardo Nesi’s Storia della mia gente [Story of my people] and Hu Lanbo’s Petali d’orchidea [Orchid’s petals].8 I will include three texts written by Italian expats in China, namely TomcatUSA’s collection of blogposts Te la do io la Cina [I’ll give you China], Antonella Moretti’s novel Prezzemolo & cilantro. Storie di donne italiane in Cina [Parsley and cilantro. Stories of Italian women in China] and MartinoExpress’s autobiographical account Lăowài, un pratese in Cina. Diario di un expat da Chinatown all’estremo oriente [Lăowài, a Pratese man in China. Diary of an expat from Chinatown to the far East].9

On 11 December 2001 China officially became the 143rd member of the World Trade Organization, an event that Italians perceived as the

6 See, for instance, Gaoheng Zhang, Migration and the Media: Debating Chinese Migration to Italy, 1992–2012 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2019). See also Maurizio Marinelli and Giovanni Andornino, eds, Italy’s Encounters with Modern China: Imperial Dreams, Strategic Ambitions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 7 The Chinese community in Italy is a very heterogeneous group. It includes people who arrived in the 1920s and 1930s, Sino-Italians and migrants who arrived in the last few decades. For the purpose of this essay I will focus on the latter group, as it is the one considered in the novels selected. 8 Edoardo Nesi, Storia della mia gente (Milan: Bompiani, 2010); Edoardo Nesi, Story of My People, trans. by Antony Shugaar (New York: Other Press, LLC, 2013). Lanbo Hu, Petali di orchidea (Siena: Barbera, 2012). 9 MartinoExpress, Lăowài, un pratese in Cina. Diario di un expat da Chinatown all’Estremo Oriente (Florence: goWare, 2017); Antonella Moretti, Prezzemolo & cilantro: Storie di donne italiane in Cina (Liepzig: Amazon Distribution CreateSpace, 2016); TomcatUSA, Te la do io la Cina (Milan: Mursia, 2008).

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278 Transcultural Italies

official confirmation of what they already suspected: China is a powerful economic competitor.10 The case of Prato is paradigmatic to understand such a perception. As Antonella Ceccagno points out, ‘Prato is the place in Italy where fears, widespread at a national level, of being destroyed by China are compounded by fears that Chinese migrants in Prato are taking over the district.’11 In addition to the already-established historic community, since the mid-1980s the majority of Chinese migrants have settled in those areas where manufacturing was the predominant activity.12 Prato was the ideal environment, as it used to host one of the major industrial districts in Italy for garments and the production of textiles, and at the end of the last century it was experiencing a period of stagnation.13 Gradually, the growing number of Chinese migrants arriving in Prato started to be perceived as a frightening invasion. The spreading of Chinese factories and the worsening situation of Italian-owned manufactures were (and are) seen as consequential events.14 And yet, they are not. According to Paolo Martinello, former president of the BEUC (the European Consumer Organisation), the abolition of the ‘Accordo Multifibre’ [Multi Fibre Arrangement] in 1994, a treaty that, since the 1970s, obstructed imports from growing economies (including China) and facilitated those originating from other countries, was an unsettling event for Italian and European manufactures. Despite the ten-year notice before the actual ending of the agreement, not all Italian enterprises prepared properly for this and industrial districts such as Prato were heavily hit by this change.15 The resulting crisis coincided with the rising success of Chinese-owned factories in Prato, a development that was soon interpreted as the main cause of Prato’s decline.

10 ‘WTO | NEWS – WTO Ministerial Conference Approves China’s Accession – Press 252’, WTO <https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres01_e/pr252_e.htm> [accessed 28 August 2017]. 11 Antonella Ceccagno, ‘The Hidden Crisis: The Prato Industrial District and the Once Thriving Chinese Garment Industry’, Revue Européenne Des Migrations Internationales, 28 (2012), 43–65 (p. 59). 12 Antonella Ceccagno, ‘The Mobile Emplacement: Chinese Migrants in Italian Industrial Districts’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41 (2015), 1111–30 (p. 1113). 13 Stefano Adamo, ‘The Crisis of the Prato Industrial District in the Works of Edoardo Nesi: A Blend of Nostalgia and Self-Complacency’, Modern Italy, 21 (2016), 245–59 (pp. 246–47). 14 Adamo, p. 247; Ceccagno, ‘The Hidden Crisis’, p. 59. 15 Paolo Martinello, ‘“Made in Italy” tra vecchi e nuovi protezionismi’, Consumatori, diritti e mercato, 5 (2007), 64–78 (pp. 64–65).

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279The Chinese Community in Italy, the Italian Community in China

Instead of recognizing the lack of organization, as suggested by Martinello, Edoardo Nesi, author of the semi-autobiographical novel Story of My People, places the blame for the crisis on Chinese migrants. Nesi depicts the downturn of his hometown and identifies Chinese workers and businessmen as the ultimate culprits. His book, winner of the Premio Strega in 2011, is marked by rhetorical nostalgia for a prosperous industrial past, which is complemented by discriminatory and stereotypical depictions of the Chinese community. As Silvia Ross points out:

Questa strategia permette a Nesi di offrire una specie di consolazione ai suoi lettori italiani che si trovano in condizioni disagiate o che affrontano la disoccupazione, ma contemporaneamente offre loro – può darsi involon tariamente? – un Altro al quale affibbiarne le colpe (almeno in parte), un Altro che è, guarda caso, cinese.16

[This strategy allows Nesi to offer some solace to his Italian readers who find themselves in impoverished conditions or that are unemployed, while providing them – unwittingly perhaps? – with an Other to blame (at least partially), an Other who, guess what, is Chinese.]

And if, on the one hand, the Italians are depicted as the victims of a ruthless economic system, on the other Nesi hints that, by breaking the law and by relying on unfair competition, Chinese migrants have bought the Pratese stronghold of Made in Italy, turning China and its economic power into the perfect scapegoat. As explained by both Ross and Adamo, Nesi blames the Chinese and globalization, but also Italian politicians and economists who have not only allowed Chinese entrepreneurs to take possession of the Italian marketplace but have also tricked Italian businessmen into investing in China. Since China’s entry into the WTO, the attention of the Italian media has been directed towards this country and the economic opportunities it offered, encouraging Italian entrepreneurs to establish new and more solid collaborations with China. Within a few years, a number of agencies were created with the purpose of facilitating these economic exchanges. For instance, the Fondazione Italia Cina was established in 2003 by the economist and businessman Cesare Romiti to improve the image and practices of Italy’s presence in China and to support Italian

16 Silvia Ross, ‘Globalizzazione e alterità. I cinesi di Edoardo Nesi’, Narrativa nuova serie, 35/36 (2014), 143–55 (p. 145).

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businesses.17 Similarly, the association Only Italia was created from an idea of former President of the Chamber of Deputies Irene Pivetti in order to export Made in Italy products worldwide, but with a stronger focus towards China.18

Pivetti’s vision is questioned by Nesi, who strongly criticizes such enthusiastic views. Throughout the novel, the author laments that Italian economists were wrong and that globalization turned out to be a one-way process in which Chinese parties profitably invest in Italy but Italians are not able to do the same in China, at least not those who own small and medium enterprises, which, in Italy, represent the majority.19 He states:

Evidently another thing the economists didn’t know was that when you get to China with your lovely assortment of samples, on the very first day, it becomes obvious that you don’t have snowball’s chance in hell, because the Chinese don’t need you or your products – and when it comes to that, the Chinese immediately went into business with the Neapolitans, as Roberto Saviano tells us in such great detail, in his book Gomorrah – and they don’t need you or your products, which they have long since copied and are currently selling everywhere around the world, including in China, for pennies on the dollar.20

The connection Nesi makes between Chinese people and Neapolitans draws on very common stereotypes, which he legitimizes by referring to Saviano’s work Gomorrah and his reputation as a respected journalist.21 Nesi’s opinion on China is not an exception. Giorgio Prodi, in analysing the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends report, states:

The 2012 edition of this study shows a relative majority of polled Italian citizens seeing China as more of an economic threat than an opportunity

17 ‘Presentazione’, Fondazione Italia Cina <http://www.italychina.org/it/la-fondazione/ chi-siamo/presentazione-fondazione/> [accessed 13 June 2017]. The Fondazione Italia Cina, especially in more recent years, is also very keen in developing cultural and scientific collaborations between the two countries. 18 ‘Chi siamo’, Only Italia <https://www.only-italia.it/chi-siamo/> [accessed 13 July 2017]. 19 Giorgio Prodi, ‘Economic Relations between Italy and China’, in Italy’s Encounters with Modern China, ed. by Marinelli and Andornino, pp. 171–99 (p. 171). 20 Nesi, Story of My People, pp. 135–36. 21 Roberto Saviano, Gomorra (Milan: Mondadori, 2006).

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281The Chinese Community in Italy, the Italian Community in China

[…] 56 percent of Italians believe that their country and China have such different values that cooperating on international problems is impossible. Italy has rarely perceived China as a strategic partner for its business, political, and diplomatic interests.22

According to the report, the majority of Italians believe that the heart of the problem lies in the fact that China and Italy do not share the same ‘values’. This issue emerges regularly in Sino-Italian discourse, where the differences between the two countries and the two cultures are constantly highlighted. Prodi continues his analysis by identifying more practical motifs behind Italian companies’ limited success in China. In his opinion, Italy has never considered China as an equal partner not only in terms of business but also from an institutional point of view, a factor that has undoubtedly undermined Italy’s financial efforts in China, along with ‘a severe lack of coordination between the myriad institutional and private actors [that] has adversely affected their capacity to make an impact’.23 The reluctance to recognize China as an equal partner, shown in the lack of interest in creating more solid cultural and institutional exchanges,24 was also confirmed by a study on how a disregard for Chinese culture and customs has influenced the performance of Italian firms in China. According to Rubens Pauluzzo, who analysed the role played by cultural determinants in the success of Italian enterprises in the PRC:

Italian companies’ strategies in the Chinese marketplace are often charac- terised by a lack of attention towards cross cultural management themes. Due to their scarce knowledge of local cultural backgrounds and to their small scale, that often does not allow them to afford cultural training costs, Italian companies do not adequately evaluate and implement cross cultural policies and practices.25

This became clear in November 2018 when Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana posted a racist campaign to advertise The Great Show, a high-profile

22 Prodi, p. 172. 23 Prodi, p. 193. 24 See, for instance, Paolo Borzatta, ‘La strategia dell’Italia in Cina’, Agichina <http:// www.agichina24.it/blog-paolo-borzatta/notizie/la-strategia-dellrsquoitalia-in-cina> [accessed 13 July 2017]. 25 Rubens Pauluzzo, ‘How Cultural Determinants May Affect HRM: The Case of Italian Companies in China’, Research and Practice in Human Resource Management, 18 (2010), 78–95.

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fashion show to be held at Shanghai’s Expo Center on 21 November. Dolce & Gabbana had to cancel the show after being publicly accused of racism. The three short promotional videos that preceded the show were released on all social networks, including the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo, and featured a female Chinese model dressed in a red D&G garment trying to eat traditional Italian dishes (pizza, spaghetti and a Sicilian cannolo) with chopsticks, while a male voice-over directs and mocks her attempts with sexual stereotypical allusions. In addition to this, a screenshot of an Instagram conversation in which Gabbana insulted China and the Chinese people was leaked. The company tried unsuccessfully to explain this by affirming that the account was hacked, but they were forced not only to release a video of official apologies to China and its people but also to cancel the show, while models and celebrities publicly announced their withdrawal from the event and their dissociation from the brand. This had enormous consequences for the success of the Italian company in China, as boycott actions were launched on social media and supported by many Chinese retailers and department stores refusing to sell D&G items.26

In addition to compromising the advance of Italian firms in China, this inability to recognize the importance of understanding and adapting to China’s culture and customs oddly mirrors one of the accusations levelled against the Chinese community in Italy, namely that of being ‘closed’ and unwilling to embrace Italian culture.27 The results of Pauluzzo’s study mentioned above also challenge the tendency of Italian enterprises to blame Chinese people’s lack of fair play in order to provide a different reason for their failures. Throughout the book, Nesi suggests how China’s success is mainly

26 For more information on the D&G debate see Fabian Jintae Froese et al., ‘Challenges for Foreign Companies in China: Implications for Research and Practice’, Asian Business & Management, 18 (2019), 249–62 (p. 251); Stephy Chung and Oscar Holland, ‘Dolce & Gabbana Cancels China Show amid “Racist” Ad Controversy’, CNN, 2018 <https://www.cnn.com/style/article/dolce-gabbana-shanghai-controversy/index. html> [accessed 12 November 2019]; Benjamin Haas, ‘Chinese Retail Sites Drop Dolce & Gabbana amid Racist Ad Backlash’, The Guardian, 23 November 2018 <https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/23/dolce-gabbana-vanishes-from-chinese- retail-sites-amid-racist-ad-backlash> [accessed 12 November 2019]; ‘“Racist” D&G Ad: Chinese Model Says Campaign Almost Ruined Career’, BBC News, 23 January 2019 <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46968750> [accessed 12 November 2019]. 27 Roberta Raffaetà, Loretta Baldassar and Anita Harris, ‘Chinese Immigrant Youth Identities and Belonging in Prato, Italy: Exploring the Intersections between Migration and Youth Studies’, Identities, 23 (2016), 422–37 (p. 423).

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283The Chinese Community in Italy, the Italian Community in China

linked to counterfeiting, unfair competition and labour exploitation. In the chapter entitled ‘Immediately’, Nesi, invited by the police, takes part in a raid on a Chinese-owned warehouse. In addition to using vocabulary normally associated with animals throughout the narration to describe both the place and its inhabitants,28 the author affirms: ‘And yet, how are we supposed to live side by side with such widespread and glaring criminal behavior, practiced by thousands of people, all members of a single ethnic group, who show total disregard for our system of law – that is, when they are even aware of it?’29 Nesi is frustrated here by the state of the warehouse, which used to belong to an Italian businessman who, forced by the economic crisis, sold it to a Chinese entrepreneur: what was once a cog in the Pratese economic system is now managed by Chinese migrants who work and – more problematically – live there.30 Nesi’s generalization of all Chinese as a ‘single ethnic group’ that disregards Italian laws is reinforced by the description of the warehouse as the setting of inhuman dynamics of labour exploitation.

Yet if, on the one hand, the difficult work conditions and the low salaries of the Chinese migrants in Italy are denounced as disrespectful of human rights, on the other, these are among the appealing aspects that push Italian firms to open new factories in China. For instance, the protagonist of Hu Lanbo’s semi-fictional novel Petali d’orchidea decides to start a joint venture with a partner in China, taking advantage of the low cost of production: ‘Ragionai che in Italia un paio di scarpe costava circa trentamila lire di manodopera, mentre in Cina la manodopera era molto più a buon prezzo.’ [I realized that in Italy the cost of labour would be 30 thousand liras for a pair of shoes, while in China the labour would have been much cheaper].31 According to Gaoheng Zhang, in this book Hu ‘consciously addresses the flattened and stereotypical representations of the average Chinese immigrant in Italy in Cinacittà and other similar depictions’,32 among which we can certainly include Nesi’s. Equally relevant is the description provided

28 For more details on Nesi’s language see Ross, p. 149. 29 Nesi, Story of My People, p. 115. 30 Ceccagno pointed out how this housing arrangement is also a way to speed up Chinese employers’ and employees’ routes to success. Antonella Ceccagno, ‘Compressing Personal Time: Ethnicity and Gender within a Chinese Niche in Italy’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 33 (2007), 635–54 (p. 647). 31 Hu, p. 166. On gender and industry see Mark Chu, ‘Industry and Gender in Recent Representations of Sino-Italian Relations’, Modern Italy, 24 (2019), 383–99. 32 Gaoheng Zhang, ‘Contemporary Italian Novels on Chinese Immigration to Italy’, California Italian Studies, 4 (2013), 1–38 (p. 25).

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284 Transcultural Italies

by the same character of her very first experience as a businesswoman, when attempting to produce shoes in Italy and to export them to China. At the moment of collecting the merchandise from the Italian contractor she realizes that the quality is much lower than she had expected, a compli- cation that could jeopardize both her chances of selling the products and the deposit she has already paid to the factory:

Quando il cliente ricevette il primo lotto di merce mi telefonò alle tre di notte, imbestialito perché la pelle di tutte le scarpe non aveva un colore omogeneo. […] Era questa la tanto decantata qualità dei prodotti italiani? […] Andai a cercare il proprietario e gli chiesi spiegazioni. La sua risposta fu: ‘È una caratteristica della vera pelle’. ‘Allora come mai voi italiani non indossate scarpe di colori diversi?’ gli dissi.33

[When the customer received the first batch of goods, he phoned me at 3am enraged because the leather in all shoes did not have a homogeneous colour. […] Was that the highly celebrated quality of Italian products? […] I went looking for the manager and asked for explanations. His answer was: ‘It is a feature of real leather’. ‘Then why don’t you, Italians, wear shoes of different colors?’ I asked.]

The behaviour of the Italian contractor, who is trying to sell low-quality products to his Chinese customer, reiterates Italy’s unwillingness to recognize China as an equal partner. Moreover, it confirms Zhang’s statement about the author’s attempt to provide a counter narrative to a public discourse in which low quality and unreliability are part of the common description of Chinese enterprises and Made in China products when compared with the highly praised Made in Italy.

Even if Italian small and medium enterprises generally struggle to find their place in China, some did manage to successfully take advantage of this new economic opportunity. According to the Rapporto Annuale­Cina 2019 [Annual Report-China 2019], compiled by the Centro Studi per l’Impresa, Fondazione Italia Cina, at the end of 2018 there were almost 2,000 Italian enterprises in China and Hong Kong, including joint ventures and wholly foreign-owned enterprises, with exports to the value of 13.2 billion euros.34

33 Hu, pp. 163–64. 34 Fondazione Italia Cina, ‘Rapporto annuale Cina 2019’, Ministero degli Esteri, <https:// www.esteri.it/mae/resource/doc/2019/07/highlights.pdf> [accessed 12 November 2019];

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285The Chinese Community in Italy, the Italian Community in China

Additionally, as reported by the Rapporto Fondazione Migrantes [Fondazione Migrantes’s Report] in 2019, up to 9,320 Italians lived in China.35 This figure, provided by the AIRE (the official registry of Italian nationals living abroad), includes only those Italians who have officially moved their residency to China; therefore, the real number might actually be higher. In 2014 the Fondazione Migrantes released a report analysing contemporary Italian migration to China with the evocative title Sulle orme di Marco Polo. Italiani in Cina [In Marco Polo’s footsteps. Italians in China] as part of the project AMICO – Analisi della Migrazione degli Italiani in Cina Oggi [Analysis of Italian Migration in China Today].36 This volume offers an account of the Italians in China, including useful statistical information on their jobs, their backgrounds and their expectations. As well as praising Italian know-how, especially in terms of Made in Italy, food, work ethic and other elements (among which football skills are included), the report presents a derogatory view of China. The volume includes a collection of interviews with Italian expats, who emphasize their success in spite of all the challenges they are faced with. A suitable example of these attitudes is represented by the section on Daniela Nuzzaci, brand manager for Ferrero in Shanghai:

La sua è stata una terapia d’urto, che ha destabilizzato il suo staff, a cui a chiesto competenze creative, pareri sui prodotti e commenti critici: tutto quello a cui i cinesi non sono abitutati. Anche questo significa caricare di valore aggiunto il know­how italiano. […] ‘La lontananza di vedute tra me e i miei colleghi cinesi è incolmabile – dice Daniela – perché non danno valore alle cose: sperperano i soldi in cose inutili, si comportano con superficialità pensando che tutto gli sia dovuto.’ Ma nonostante ciò Daniela continua a battere il pugno sul tavolo e a pretendere un avvici- namento culturale almeno nel lavoro che forse non arriverà mai.37

[Hers was a shock therapy that destabilized her staff. She demanded creative competences, opinions and feedback on products: something

‘Info Mercati Esteri, Homepage Cina’, Ministero degli Esteri <http://www.infomercatiesteri. it/paese.php?id_paesi=122#slider-1> [accessed 12 November 2019]. 35 Fondazione Migrantes, Rapporto italiani nel mondo 2019 (Assisi (PG): Tau, 2019), p. 509. 36 Giovanna Di Vincenzo, Fabio Marcelli and M. Francesca Staiano, eds, Sulle orme di Marco Polo. Italiani in Cina (Todi (PG): Tau Editrice, 2014). 37 Di Vincenzo et al., p. 86.

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Chinese people are not used to. This too is a way of increasing the value of the Italian know-how. […] ‘The gap between my views and those of my colleagues is immense – says Daniela – because they don’t value anything: they waste money on useless things, they behave superficially thinking that they have a god-given right to everything.’ Nevertheless, Daniela keeps beating her fist on the table and requires a cultural rapprochement that, at least at work, may never arrive.]

The reference to the ‘lontanza di vedute’ [gap between views] refers back to the different values indicated by the Transatlantic Trend report as one of the determining factors in the complicated Sino-Italian exchanges. The addition of the adjective ‘incolmabile’ [immense] to describe the ways in which Chinese people differ from Italians and the impossibility of ‘un avvicinamento culturale’ [cultural rapprochement] are elements that work to reaffirm the cultural distance between the two countries – a cultural distance that can be comprehended as cultural difference, as articulated by Homi Bhabha:

[It] is a process of signification through which statements of culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate, and authorize the production of fields of force, reference, applicability, and capacity. […] The concept of cultural difference focuses on the problem of the ambivalence of cultural authority; the attempt to dominate in the name of a cultural supremacy which is itself produced only in the moment of differentiation.38

In the Sino-Italian discourse, cultural difference is used to legitimize Italian superiority, as is clear from accounts produced by Italians in China. Indeed, the increasing presence of Italians in the PRC is reflected by a limited, yet still relevant, production of texts. For instance, the collection of blogposts Te la do io la Cina provides a suggestive portrayal of the expatriates’ life in China. The volume collects all the posts that the author, TomcatUSA (the pseudonym of an Italian engineer who relocated to China), published in his blog from August 2006 to April 2008. TomcatUSA narrates his and his family’s experience in Nanjing. The posts are written with the intention of being informative of the kind of difficulties that Italians have to overcome when moving to China. All posts are narrated with a questionable ironic tone, an irony that often originates from the use of well-known stereotypes and

38 Homi K. Bhabha, ‘The Commitment to Theory’, New Formations, 5 (1988), 5–23 (pp. 18–19).

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relies on the depiction of Italians and Chinese as being too different to build an egalitarian relationship. One post in particular, from March 2007, is worth mentioning, as it clearly exemplifies Bhabha’s definition of cultural difference. Entitled Nel paese degli orbi chi ha un occhio è re [In the country of blind people those with one eye are kings], the post describes the author’s attempt to ‘think positively’ about his permanence in China:

Per tirare avanti bisogna anche trovare i lati positivi di essere in Cina. Uno di questi è che ti senti molto intelligente. Questo non perché tu lo sia veramente in senso assoluto, ma tutto dipende da con chi ti confronti. Qui in Cina il livello culturale e professionale è mediamente basso perciò qualsiasi cosa tu dica o faccia risulta di una levatura eccezionale e tutti ti ascoltano a bocca aperta anche per concetti di una banalità disarmante.39

[To carry on, one must find the positive aspects of being in China. One of these is that you feel very clever. Not because you are clever in general, but it all has to do with whom you compare yourself to. Here in China the cultural and professional level is usually low, so everything you say or do seems exceptionally intelligent and everyone listens to you in amazement even when you express dishearteningly banal ideas.]

This discriminatory portrayal of the Chinese population as culturally inferior echoes the allusions included in the report Sulle orme di Marco Polo, but it also recalls the attitude shown by the factory owner in Hu’s novel and in Nesi’s derogatory tone. It is a specific kind of racism that Étienne Balibar, drawing on Taguieff, describes as ‘a racism without races […] whose dominant theme is not biological heredity but the insurmountability of cultural differences’.40 It is a racism that puts forward colonial ideas in a globalized world, as Ania Loomba affirms:

Contemporary views of cultural difference mirror past and present geo-po- litical tensions and rivalries. Thus, it is no accident that it is Muslims who are regarded as barbaric and given to acts of violence and Asians who are seen as diligent but attached to their own rules of business and family, both modes of being which are seen as differently incommensurate with

39 TomcatUSA, p. 58. 40 Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991), p. 21.

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the Western world. […] These views not only reverberate with older colonial views […] but speak to contemporary global economic and political rivalries.41

The ways in which China and Chinese people are represented in the Italian cultural discourse – a representation that increased after the PRC’s entry into the WTO42 – reflects the stereotypical representation suggested by Loomba: a one-dimensional category of people focused on working inside Chinese factories, the success of which relied on counterfeiting, labour exploitation and, ultimately, the production of lower-quality products.43 This is also paralleled by one of the first counter-measures adopted by the US and EU after China’s entry into the WTO, which entailed the obligation of declaring the origin of textile products from outside the EU. As Martinello pointed out in 2007, this measure was useless, yet is indicative of an underlying prejudice in which the indication of a ‘not-Italian’ origin becomes synonymous with lack of quality and suggestive of an unethical and unfair process of production.44 Despite being inaccurate and meaningless for the consumer, this measure relies on an assumed perception of Italian products as being of superior quality, not on the basis of factual evidence but rather as a result of discrim- inatory preconceptions aimed at undermining rising Chinese power. This is evident, for instance, in one of TomcatUSA’s posts: ‘d’altro canto viene anche da pensare che sei finito in Cina perché in Europa eri al di sotto della media, per cui vieni retrocesso in B dove hai la possibilità di fare un campionato di vertice …’45 [On the other hand, you are tempted to think that you ended up in China because in Europe you were below average, thus you are moved back to second league where you can compete at the top].

Similar attitudes are described in the novel Prezzemolo & cilantro, whose protagonists – like the author herself – ‘la Cina non l’avevano scelta ma subita’ [did not choose China but endured it],46 as they moved to China to follow their husbands’ relocation. Following the success of her blog cuCINAnto,47

41 Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 217–18. 42 For the impact on literature see Zhang, ‘Contemporary Italian Novels’. 43 See Simona Segre Reinach, ‘China and Italy: Fast Fashion versus Prêt à Porter. Towards a New Culture of Fashion’, Fashion Theory, 9 (2005), 43–56. 44 Martinello, p. 73. 45 TomcatUSA, p. 58. 46 Moretti, Prezzemolo & cilantro, p. 29. 47 Antonella Moretti, CuCINAnto <http://www.cucinanto.com/> [accessed 18 August 2017].

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Antonella Moretti published her novel, inspired by her experience in China, in 2016. The story follows the three protagonists – Luisella (the alter-ego of the author), Emma and Astrid – and it covers a period of twelve months. It provides an insight into the lives of the Italian community in China but more specifically that of the expats’ wives. This group of women spend most of their time in the expats’ compound, attending yoga classes, chatting in a café, carefully keeping their life separate from the local population. This isolation resonates with analogous tendencies that have emerged in the discourse about the Chinese community in Italy, whose members are regularly accused of being closed and unwilling to integrate. As Raffaetà and others point out about Prato:

In the Italian context, local Pratese discourses tend to define Chinese migrants and their children as segregated and ‘closed’, uninterested and unable to assimilate into Italian culture and society. This view is supported by the predominant essentialist and reductionist conceptions of identity (including both Chinese and Italian) as fixed and unchanging.48

If in Italy Chinese migrants are blamed for being ‘segregated’ and ‘unable to assimilate into Italian culture’, in China this seems to be the norm among Italians, who see this separation as the only possible way. As clearly stated by TomcatUSA: ‘Qui in Cina gli expat rimangono un gruppo a sé stante. Vivono nei loro compound riservati, i bambini vanno alle scuole per expat, la sera a volte si va in qualche locale per expat e così via’ [Here in China the expats stay among themselves. They live in their private compound, their children go to the schools for expats, and in the evening sometimes you go to some bars for expats and so on].49

Symptomatic of this situation is the opening of the Scuola Italiana d’Ambasciata di Pechino [Italian Embassy School in Beijing] in 2015, the only Italian school in Asia and Oceania.50 According to the official webpage, the school will enable children of Italians to preserve their cultural identity.51 As also suggested by this brief online description, the

48 Raffaetà et al., p. 423. 49 TomcatUSA, p. 296. 50 ‘Pechino: prima e unica scuola paritaria in Asia e Oceania’, Scuola italiana d’ambasciata di Pechino, 2017 <http://www.scuolapechino.com/pechino-prima-e-unica- scuola-paritaria-asia-e-oceania/> [accessed 23 September 2017]. 51 ‘Pechino: prima e unica scuola paritaria in Asia e Oceania’.

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opening of the school is crucial in understanding the dynamics relating to the Italian community in China; on the one hand, it is indicative of the Italian expatriates’ intention of planning a relatively long-term stay in China, but on the other hand the nature of the school, which is accessible only to the children of Italian and foreign diplomats, suggests a more complex issue related to Italians’ attitude to separating themselves from the locals, something that noticeably recalls the stereotypical opinions on Italy’s resident Chinese community mentioned above. Furthermore, the idea of the ‘preservation of cultural identity’ reflects the issue of cultural difference and the consequential self-confinement of the expat communities in compounds. In line with this behaviour, Chinese people are therefore almost totally absent from these texts. When they appear, they are drivers, shop assistants, cleaning ladies or yoga instructors with no agency and no ability to speak. As in Moretti’s text:

Il gruppetto di italiane quel giorno pareva avercela con la Cina e tutte si sfogavano a proposito delle piccole, grandi incomprensioni quotidiane che rendevano difficile il rapporto con i cinesi. C’era quella che si lamentava di quanto male pulisse la casa l’ayi, ce n’era un’altra che rideva della scarsa professionalità dell’idraulico o dell’operaio di turno.52

[It seemed that that day the small group of Italian women was mad at China and they were venting about the small and big daily misunder- standings that undermine the relationship with the Chinese. There was one complaining about how how badly her ayi cleaned the house, another one mocking the lack of professional skills of the plumber or of any other workman.]

In the same novel, when Camilla, a young student in China for her university year abroad, joins the group, the other women are surprised about and sceptical of her passion for China and her inclination to experience what this country has to offer. She wants to live as the Chinese people live, do what they do and, ultimately, as she confesses to the other women, she would like to find a Chinese boyfriend.53 Camilla belongs to the broader and more global community of international students. The Italian government and the Confucius Institute offer Italian students many opportunities to study in

52 Moretti, Prezzemolo & cilantro, p. 171. Ayi is Chinese for cleaning lady. 53 Moretti, Prezzemolo & cilantro, p. 29.

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China.54 Conversely, a key role is played by programmes such as ‘Marco Polo’ or ‘Turandot’, which allow Chinese students to enroll in Italian universities and to take language courses.55 This phenomenon challenges the distinction between the Chinese community in Italy and Italians in China, which the majority of the sources analysed so far depicted as two clearly differentiated and separate entities, unable to communicate. In these contexts, cultural exchange and reciprocal knowledge are perceived, instead, as the starting point for a fruitful transnational dialogue. However, according to Brigadoi Cologna, international students in Italy ‘tendono a fare gruppo a sé, sia perché la scarsa competenza linguistica ne limita le relazioni con i coetanei italiani, sia perché sono rare le iniziative promosse a livello di ateneo per rafforzarne le competenze sociali e culturali’ [tend to stay among themselves, both because their scarce linguistic competence limits their relations with Italian peers and because there are not many events promoted by the university to reinforce their social and cultural awareness].56 The latter point in particular, thinking back at Prodi’s analysis mentioned at the beginning of this study, reiterates the scarce attention shown by Italian institutions towards diplomatic and cultural relations with China.57 In line with this, even Camilla’s enthusiasm is soon challenged by the difficulties she encounters when trying to relate to Chinese society, and, despite her disappointment, the rest of the group keeps pouring salt onto the wound:

Camilla sarà pure stata un’appassionata della Cina, ma restava pur sempre una viziata ragazza italiana. Vivere negli odori forti, nella confusione e nella scarsa igiene non era attraente nemmeno per lei. […] ‘Dico che non sei costretta ad integrarti completamente in una società così diversa dalla

54 See, for instance, the information regarding the scholarships for the academic year 2017/18 ‘Borse di studio MAE Cina 2017’, Universita.it, 2017 <http://www.universita.it/ borse-di-studio-mae-cina-2017/> [accessed 12 July 2017]. 55 For information on the Marco Polo project see ‘Programma Marco Polo per Studenti Cinesi’, Università di Bologna <http://www.unibo.it/it/internazionale/offerta-formativa- internazionale/programma-marco-polo> [accessed 12 July 2017]. 56 Daniele Brigadoi Cologna, ‘L’importanza crescente degli studenti universitari cinesi per la società italiana’, Orizzonte Cina, 7 (2016) <https://www.twai.it/articles/ cinesitaliani-limportanza-crescente-degli-studenti-universitari-cinesi-per-la-societa- italiana/> [accessed 24 July 2019]. 57 Brigadoi Cologna, ‘L’importanza’. For a fictional account about the Marco Polo project see Wen-Long Sun, ‘Help Me, Brother!’, in Nuove lettere persiane, ed. by Francesca Spinelli (Rome: Ediesse, 2010), pp. 43–48.

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tua. […] puoi continuare a mangiare la pizza e bere il caffè da Assunta. […] Dopotutto tu sei italiana, no? Puoi conservare la tua identità pur continuando ad amare questo paese e la sua gente!’58

[Camilla was passionate about China, for sure, but at the end of the day, she was still a spoiled Italian girl. Living surrounded by strong smells, confusion and scarce hygiene wasn’t appealing, not even for her. […] ‘I mean, you are not obliged to fully integrate in a society so different from your own. […] you can carry on eating pizza and drinking coffee at Assunta’s. […] After all you are Italian, aren’t you? You can keep your identity and carry on loving this country and its people!]

Beyond the superficial delineation of what constitutes Italian identity, this passage also reiterates the idea that, since these two cultures are so different, there is no need to fully understand one another – something that contrasts with the previously mentioned criticism about Prato’s (as well as Italy’s) Chinese community.59 The only Chinese character who – to a certain extent – is included in the group is Assunta, the owner of the Italian bar. Assunta is a Chinese returnee migrant who, after living for fifteen years in Naples with her Italian ex-husband, decided to move back to China and to open the bar in the compound, ‘uno dei pochi posti dove si poteva mangiare un vero toast all’italiana, una pasta al pomodoro ben fatta e il miglior caffè espresso, diceva Assunta, di tutta la Cina’ [one of the few places where you could eat a real Italian toastie, a well-made pasta with tomato sauce and the best espresso, according to Assunta, in all of China].60 Assunta’s relative inclusion is granted by her experiences in Italy, where she learnt to speak the language, to cook Italian food and to make coffee. This mirrors the previous depthless elaboration of Italian identity, as well as the idea that integration is possible only when Chinese characters change in order to become more Italian, even when in China.

The analysis of these two texts shows how the effort to integrate has to be undertaken always and exclusively by the Chinese side, even when in China. By speaking Italian and making espresso, Assunta is included in the narrative, but not in the group of friends – going back to the limited and superficial representation of Chinese characters discussed above, she is merely their

58 Moretti, Prezzemolo & cilantro, p. 81. 59 Raffaetà et al., p. 89. 60 Moretti, Prezzemolo & cilantro, p. 20.

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bartender. However, she is also symbolic of a portion of Chinese migrants, who after spending a period of time in Italy, return to China. According to Daniele Brigadoi Cologna, from 1994 to 2013 more than 12,000 Chinese migrants left Italy to go back to China, the majority between 2007 and 2013.61 Sulle orme di Marco Polo devotes a section to the so-called ‘cinesi di ritorno’[Chinese returnees]; interestingly, though, this mainly refers to Chinese Italians born or raised in Italy who decide to attempt a career in China and who are not necessarily ‘returning’ home. These are stories of success, yet the way this phenomenon is described by the authors of the analysis highlights a clear exclusionary attitude:

Di certo un ruolo chiave nell’incontro delle differenti culture e abitudini nella gestione del lavoro e degli affari è ricoperto da coloro che fondono in sé entrambe le culture, quindi dai cinesi figli di immigrati di prima generazione, che sono cresciuti in Italia e si sentono integrati nel Paese, senza dimenticare la propria originaria appartenenza.62

[Clearly, in the encounter of different cultures and customs of work and business, a key role is played by those who combine both cultures in themselves. They are Chinese, children of first-generation immigrant parents, born and raised in Italy, who feel they are integrated in Italy, but do not forget their original belonging.]

In the few pages dedicated to this topic, the two young men interviewed are never defined as Italiani, not even Italo­Cinesi; they are not ‘integrati’ [integrated] but ‘si sentono integrati’ [they feel they are integrated]. This is confirmed by the analysis carried out by Raffaetà, Baldassar and Harris on Chinese youth in Prato: ‘These young people are constantly reminded that they are not Italian, both through everyday experiences in public spaces and through the formal legislation of the state, which does not assure them citizenship, even if born in Italy.’63 According to the same analysis, as there is no space in the ‘Italian national imaginary for hybridized belongings, young

61 Daniele Brigadoi Cologna, ‘L’eterno mito del ritorno a casa: I cinesi d’oltremare che lasciano il “sogno italiano” per quello cinese’, Orizzonte Cina, 5 (2014) <https://www. twai.it/articles/cinesitaliani-leterno-mito-del-ritorno-a-casa-i-cinesi-doltremare-che- lasciano-il-sogno-italiano-per-quello-cinese/> [accessed 24 July 2017]. 62 Di Vincenzo et al., p. 89. 63 Raffaetà et al., pp. 426–31.

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Chinese come to perceive themselves as “different” from Italians’.64 Their mobility across the two countries and the advantage of embodying both cultures is often underestimated and ignored in the effort to reiterate the rhetoric of cultural differences.65

In conclusion, it is emblematic that, at times, the expression ‘distretto parallelo’ [parallel district] is used to refer to the industrial area in Prato that hosts Chinese-owned factories. It is a definition that to a certain extent can also be used to describe the relationship between the two countries. According to one of the protagonists of Prezzemolo & cilantro, the reason for this is to be found, once again, in cultural differences: ‘L’espatriato medio non capirà mai la Cina’ fece ad un certo punto Silvia ‘né tantomeno cosa passa per la testa dei cinesi. È una società troppo diversa, hanno una storia troppo complicata!’ [‘“The average expat will never understand China”, said Silvia at some point, “nor what is going on inside the Chinese mind. Their society is too different, their story too complicated!”’].66

If, on the one hand, the economic situation opens new opportunities for both countries, on the other the cultural representations of both communities suggest that both China and Italy’s resident Chinese community are still perceived as unavoidably culturally distant. However, the sources analysed in this chapter also suggest that in reality it is not just a question of cultural distance, but rather of the reluctance to look at and understand that distance and, most importantly, to look beyond it.

In April 2017 the architect and blogger MartinoExpress published a book on his experience in China entitled Lăowài, un pratese in Cina. Diario di un expat da Chinatown all’estremo oriente.67 He describes how his life in China is marked by difficulties and wonders, which lead him to a better understanding of himself and of his home city, Prato. It is precisely his Pratese background that makes him question what it means to be a foreigner, creating a productive dialogue between him, as an Italian in China, and the Chinese community, those people that he had so far perceived as foreigners. His experience in China is full of encounters with other expats and with Chinese people, who

64 Raffaetà et al., p. 427. 65 For more information on the presence of second-generation Chinese Italians see the association Associna: ‘Associna | Associazione Di Seconde Generazioni Italo­Cinesi’ <http://www.associna.com/it/> [accessed 12 July 2017]. 66 Moretti, Prezzemolo & cilantro, p. 57. 67 For his blog see MartinoExpress, MartinoExpress – Un pratese in Cina (e dintorni) <http://www.martinoexpress.it/> [accessed 18 September 2017].

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often work with and for him, but who nonetheless are also behind ‘inaspettati momenti di bellezza e a gesti di umanità’[unexpected moments of beauty and signs of humanity]. MartinoExpress’s book ends with a collection of his favorite memories, which are not all positive (indeed, he struggled to adjust to the new society), but which, unlike the observations of TomcatUSA, include both other expats and his Chinese friends and colleagues. MartinoExpress’s account, by looking at Chinese society with curiosity, provides an additional indication of how the emphasis on differences is hindering not only the two countries’ economic exchanges but the human ones as well. As he points out:

Al di là del fatto che c’è chi continua a dirmi che i cinesi agiscono sempre per un tornaconto e che dovrei essere più diffidente, scafato o disilluso, o banalmente che la mia stessa esperienza mi insegni come i rapporti di lavoro sono innanzitutto rapporti di lavoro […] questi momenti hanno cominciato a servire a me, e soltanto a me, per capire che piuttosto che stare a guardare la differenza e a mettere sempre l’accento su quello che manca ci si può anche sorprendere inaspettatamente contenti o stranamente completi facendo la strada che si fa e perseguendola fino in fondo. […] perché non si tratta di sforzarsi a guardare a ogni costo il positivo, quanto di sforzarsi a guardare punto e basta.68

[Beyond the fact that there are those who keep on telling me that the Chinese always act in their own interests and that I should be more sceptical, shrewd or disillusioned, or simply that my work experience should teach me that work relations are first and foremost work relations […] these moments are helpful to me, and only to me, to understand that instead of continuing to focus on difference and emphasizing what’s missing we could also be surprised by being unexpectedly happy or weirdly complete continuing on this path until the end. […] because it is not about making the effort to look for the positive at all costs, but rather making the effort to look, that’s it.]

68 MartinoExpress, Lăowài, p. 62.

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