I Eat the Most Chinese Food in Italy
Originally posted 12/1/22
I find myself reaching for Chinese food more than during my school year in Hong Kong, more than the years I grew up in an Asian-American suburb, and even more than when I visited extended family in China during summer breaks. Whether it’s trekking an hour to Via Paolo Sarpi — Chinatown — or hunkering down to replicate dishes my mom cooks at home, I find myself missing Chinese food more than I ever have before. What can’t be replicated, though, is the distinct smell of Chinese supermarkets, surrounded by rows of nostalgic snacks, cheery music, and muted chatter in a familiar language. While I am fortunate to have the opportunity to live internationally for school, and most days I am incredibly happy to be in Europe, my time here has exposed me to the less glamorous side of living in a region less accepting of racial diversity. After years of taking for granted living in various Asian communities, I often feel pieces of my heritage missing from Europe’s white homogeneity.
The cocktail of emotions surrounding what it means to lack whiteness in Europe has been shaken to its core since I left California. Yet even during my second year studying in Milan, Italy, I still feel hesitant that my experience is one that I can deliver with resounding conclusions and a detached tone. Given the personal nature of this essay, I continue to feel the unspoken responsibility to filter myself from the potent emotions behind the words. Sieving my anger may make it more comfortable for white readers and passing unequivocal messages may make it easier to digest, but doing so also removes what defines my very experience as an Asian-American in Italy. Writing and exposing my honest illustration to scrutiny, then, is the cathartic response that justifies the friction I feel with living in Europe.
I grew up in an extremely Asian neighborhood east of Los Angeles; my graduating year had an approximate ~60% Asian demographic. This translates to neighborhoods populated by people who looked like me, Chinese restaurants that dot the highways, and the embracing of a distinct Asian-American culture. I speak English with my Chinese-speaking friends, yet going out for boba/bubble tea is always implicitly understood. There, I possess personhood. Among peers who share an unspoken context with me, I already speak the same language. Because I never experienced conflict between my cultural and ethnic identity, I could settle into the other aspects of my personality that give me individuality. Given the unique makeup of my suburb, I feel even more at odds with how distant my identity is in Italy.
In Italy, I am confronted with this distinct sense of otherness. Before I am Angela, I am Asian. Complete strangers yell greetings in all sorts of Asian languages in front of the Duomo — or maybe to stay with current events they’ll mutter “coronavirus” when I’m walking alone. In cities too polite to sling slurs, I receive lingering looks that I feel sensitive labeling it as being othered, but too perplexed to call it anything else. Explicit racism is easy for us to pass moral judgements on, and thus, find support for; it is often microaggressions that I find to be an uphill battle to explain. For example, if a stranger holds up a box of mochi and asks if I like it (I am the only Asian person in the store), is my subsequent irritation warranted or should I indulge these interactions because the intent and delivery was friendly? Do I get to own the familiar discomfort of walking into a room as the only person of color? Or do I tell myself — as some acquaintances have done before — that because I am in Europe, in Italy, microaggressions are understandable, unchangeable, and inevitable because this continent is less diverse?
Am I to give what we consider as racism in America a different name when I’m living somewhere else?
Milan actually has one of the largest Chinese populations in Italy. To my initial disbelief, there are around 300,000 Chinese people, the third largest community of foreign nationals, living in Italy (1). Northern Italy has one of the oldest and largest communities in all of the country, with more than 13% of retail companies in the city owned by the Chinese community (2). Yet in addition to being derided by both peers and figures in popular media, these enclaves lack representation in government and corporate leadership positions; a wave that quickly contorted into explicit racism with the onset of COVID-19. When the pandemic hit Italy in 2020, the Chinese population was exposed to xenophobia, violence, and job losses. Public reports of harassment and violence were rampant, including Qian Zhang, 26, who told Il Giornale di Vicenza that he was attacked with a bottle and told he was not allowed to enter a petrol station because, “You’re Chinese, you have coronavirus” (4). In addition to my own run-ins while I was in Milan during the tail-end of COVID measures last school year, university friends in the Chinese-Italian community would recount how they would get spat on, screamed at, and assaulted.
There are far more complexities related to race in Europe beyond my dimension of perspective. In addition to being Chinese, I’m also Chinese-American — some may argue that it's this distinct difference in culture that tends to feel alienating, yet, my white American friends don’t experience the same level of friction. If anything, my proximity to western culture almost makes integration smoother. That’s because whiteness is the default here. Not American-ness, but whiteness. I also acknowledge that my experience of race in Europe is singular to being Chinese-American, and Italian racism often runs even deeper for other minorities who don't share the same level of proximity to such whiteness. And though I am grateful for my community growing up in America, it is burdened with its own set of racial issues, and being white ultimately still feels like the “default” in America; Asian friends who grew up in whiter neighborhoods often echo this sense of otherness. Furthermore, though I was comfortable in the Asian bubble, that is not at all to speak for the comfort and inclusion of other denominations of POC living in my suburb.
This paper may have been borne of emotional stirrings rather than matter-of-fact search for truth, but a year after beginning this draft, I want to validate that this lack of belonging is something present and tangible. I want to validate others with whom I’ve had conversations about how our personal relationship with race manifests so boldly here. And anger does not misrepresent, but rather fleshes out, the truth. Personal investment brings color to the reason I miss my heritage and identity.
And why I eat the most Chinese food in Italy.
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