Cultural Mobilities Between China and Italy - Introduction

In this chapter, we establish the rationales and ways in which scholarship on modern and contemporary China–Italy exchanges can benefit from adopting the critical frame of cultural mobilities. By surveying current literature on Chinese migration to Italy and Italian travels in China, we contend that it often disregards how cultural narratives about physical and cultural mobilities create meanings for China–Italy encounters. We submit that this lack prevents us from fully considering the role played by mobilities in culturally mediating other China–Italy issues in socio-economic, political, cultural, and other realms. In this regard, we propose to focus on the mobility–stasis dialectic and on the phenomenon of multiple and intersecting mobilities that relevant cultural texts articulate.