Linguist Uriel Weinreich famously noted that a language is a dialect with an army.? Drawing on the lectures and readings from our course, what is the relationship between language and diale

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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280 Transcultural Italies

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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