The Journey and the Memory: 20th-century Chinese Travel notes on Italy

After the foundation of the Republic of China, many Chinese began to arrive in Europe, and Italy, as workers, students, or tourists. As a result of their mobility, some of them compiled travel books documenting their experiences. Considering Chinese travel literature produced during the twentieth century, this chapter aims at mapping Chinese travel itineraries. Mapping these travel experiences can be vital to reconstructing Chinese mobility in Italy, providing a multidimensional, multilayered, and mobile view of Chinese mobility in the peninsula during the last century. This chapter is a preliminary investigation in the belief that as more attention is focused on the traces of Chinese mobility in Italy, a clearer picture will emerge of how memory and culture combine to forge new possibilities for global exchange.