This book offers a critical analysis of global mobilities across China and Italy in history. In three periods in the twentieth century, new patterns of physical mobilities and cultural contact were established between the two countries which were either novel at the time of their emergence or impactful on subsequent periods. The first two chapters provide overviews of writings by Italians in China and by Chinese in Italy in the twentieth century. The remaining chapters cover: Republican China’s relationships with Italy and Italian Fascist colonialism in China during the 1920s–1930s; Italian travelers to China during the Cold War from the 1950s to the 1970s; migrations between China and Italy during the 2000s–2010s. In analyzing these cultural mobilities, this book opens a new line of inquiry in Chinese-Italian Cultural Studies, which has been dominated by historical study, and contributes a significant case study to the scholarship on global cultural mobilities.

Valentina Pedone is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Florence, Italy. Her academic interests lie in the languages and cultures of people of Chinese origins, inside and outside China.  She is author of A Journey to the West: Observations on the Chinese Migration to Italy (Firenze University Press). 

Gaoheng Zhang is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver). He is the author of Migration and the Media: Debating Chinese Migration to Italy, 1992–2012 (University of Toronto, 2019). He is a recipient of major grants and fellowships from American, Canadian, and European institutions.