Lilsi

A paragone con altri gruppi migranti, quello cinese in Italia è percepito, persino dai suoi stessi membri, come non incline alla produzione e al consumo di beni culturali. Ci sono alcune caratteristiche del modello migratorio cinese che possono in effetti rallentare la produzione letteraria in lingua italiana rispetto ad altri gruppi migranti, come ad esempio uno strutturato sistema di impiego interno all’enclave che consente il persistere della barriera linguistica. Ad ogni modo, se si prende in considerazione il materiale scritto da cinesi in Italia che sia 1) prodotto sia in italiano che in cinese; 2) pubblicato sia da case editrici italiane che da case editrici cinesi o dalla stampa etnica; 3) scritto sia dalla prima che dalla seconda generazione, allora ci si rende conto che già esiste una piccolo ma variegato corpus letterario sinoitaliano.
Analizzando differenti prodotti letterari (romanzi, racconti, poesie etc.) tratti da diverse fonti (collezioni di racconti, riviste, siti etc.), seguendo un approccio già usato da Yin (2000) per ricostruire la storia della letteratura sinoamericana, si descriverà lo sviluppo di questo tipo di letteratura, definendone le principali caratteristiche e sottolineando cosa condivide con materiali simili provenienti da diversi contesti migratori e cosa invece è peculiare. Nell’analizzare i materiali si cercherà poi di iniziare una riflessione sul sistema di valori del gruppo migrante cinese con specifico riferimento alla percezione che questo ha nei confronti del sistema valoriale italiano.

Patterns of language choice for the second-generation Chinese bilinguals in Italy

As the Chinese migrated community settles down in Italy, a new generation formed by individuals who where born in Italy or arrived at an early age, gradually develops a language usage that differs both from their parents and their Italian peers. The three linguistic varieties that constitute their speech repertoire, Italian, Putonghua and dialect, are selected in their daily speech according to a number of factors. One of the many aspects studied in contact linguistics, language choice, as Romaine (1984:37) points out, is in fact rule governed:  “people are constrained by the expressive resources available in the language(s) to which they have access and by the conventions which apply to their use”.
Sociolinguistics provides many means to define language choice in multilingual settings, such as domain analysis (Fishman, 1965) and network analysis (Milroy 1980). I attempt to design an overview of language choice by the Chinese second generation in Italy, taking advantage of such instruments on a corpus gathered from a 55 questions questionnaire submitted to 78 students of Chinese origin in a community school of Putonghua in Rome. The questions focus on five areas: linguistic repertoire and language dominance, language use throughout domains, social networking, ethnolinguistic group enclosure and codeswitching.
The results presented here deal mainly with repertoire and dominance. The findings show how the dominant variety in the subjects’ repertoire changes according to the point of view we adopt to consider their language use. Due to the low proficiency in Italian, specific of the first generation Chinese in Italy (Ceccagno 2002), when asked which is the very first language they learned, most of the subjects, including the Italy born, picks one of the 2 Chinese varieties. On the other hand when asked which one is the language they feel they speak more fluently, the answer for half of the respondents is Italian, while about one fourth feels they speak Italian and Chinese with the same fluency. Finally another set of questions shows how Italian is also the language used most frequently on a daily basis and that it is also the favoured choice in communicating with Chinese peers, followed by Putonghua, which is otherwise almost completely absent in the exchanges with the parents. Overall, dialect is to be considered the dominant variety in the diachronic perspective, while Italian turns to be the dominant variety when we consider fluency and frequency of usage. While dialect keeps being the favoured choice in the parental domain, Italian is the language of the school and of peer networking, where it shares the domain along with Putonghua. This way the latter appears to be the only choice that is marked both from the ethnic and the intergenerational point of view.
The description of patterns of language choice constitutes the first step for any research aimed to detect the process of language shift or maintenance that this segment of the Chinese community will undergo in the near future.

Beginning in the mid-2000s, a number of documentaries about Chinese migration to Italy have been produced both by professional directors and by amateurs, all with no Chinese background, that are mainly aimed at revealing the hidden ‘reality’ of the Chinese immigration population on one hand and, on the other hand, at discarding some of the wide spread prejudices about this group. I selected five of the professionally shot documentaries in order to analyse how they portray the Chinese migrant presence in Italy. While all of these documentaries make an important effort to present Chinese migration to Italy as a positive phenomenon, Orientalism as well as elements of cultural essentialism can still persist. My analysis focuses on the points of view that different directors adopt in depicting Chinese life in Italy, stressing if, where, and how their narratives emphasize cultural distance, otherness and essentialism.

Abstract
Chen Xi is an artist born in Beijing, who has spent part of her life in
Italy and currently lives in the UK. She is the author of a novel about
the life of a Chinese girl in Italy and a collection of postmodern fairy
tales. As both a writer and an illustrator, she uses mixed media (mostly
literature and visual art, but also performance and music) to convey
her creative expression. Since her style draws upon different cultural
traditions to shape original, fluid meanings, she can be described as
a transcultural artist and writer. This section first provides an introduction
to the artist’s life, works and style, then it offers the original
Italian translation of four chapters from her novel and an excerpt from
an illustrated story. An interview with the author closes the section.
Keywords: global Chinese literature, overseas Chinese cultures, Sinophone
literature, transcultural literature, underground comics

This paper is included in the catalogue of the art exhibition "The impossible black tulip: Investigating hybridity from Macao", curated by Livia Dubon and held in Florence in 2018. In the paper I outline the general features of the literature written by people of Chinese origin who live in Italy, focusing on the author Hu Lanbo. The paper also features an interview with Hu Lanbo, focused on her poetry. The catalogue came out on Orientalia libri publishing house. I will upload all the details in the next few days.

Il Sudest asiatico è oggi l’area in cui si concentra il più alto numero di persone di origine cinese al di fuori della
Cina continentale. Questa popolazione nel corso dei secoli ha dato vita a diverse espressioni di creolizzazione culturale,
tra cui una vivace produzione letteraria in lingua cinese. In questo articolo viene presentata la produzione
letteraria sinofona dell’odierna Tailandia. La caratterizzazione di questa produzione letteraria è formulata nella
prospettiva critica sviluppata nell’ambito dei Sinophone Studies (Shih Shu-mei, 2007).