Marco Polo and his travel book known in Italian as ‘il Milione’, first published at the start of the 14th century, comes to mind when relations between China and Italy are mentioned. However, there was contact between the ancient Roman empire and China well before that time as archaeology has revealed. Roman coins have been found in China, and even Vietnam, and there was a flourishing trade in Roman glassware and Chinese silk.

Marco Polo was certainly not the first European explorer to re-establish links between the two hemispheres and his accounts are not always trustworthy. For example, they do not mention the Great Wall or the former practise of female foot binding. More trustworthy are the journals of Odorico of Pordenone, in north east Italy, which are contemporary with those of Polo. A friar minor, Odorico’s mission was both religious and diplomatic and he mentions many sights and customs, including that great wall, absent in Polo’s more famous book.

Statue of Odoric at Pordenone

Italian relations with China continued through subsequent times. Anyone familiar with the museum in Fiesole’s Franciscan monastery will recognise how involved missions were with that empire. Italy even had a concession in Tianjin, the port city for Beijing which was only given up in 1947 when communist China came into power. I didn’t visit Tianjin but evidently it has fine examples of Italian art deco architecture. Moreover, it’s where diplomat Baron Edoardo Fassini-Camossi lived and brought back a musical box of Chinese melodies to his villa at Bagni di Lucca which Puccini heard and incorporated three melodies in his ‘Turandot’.

(Piazza Regina Margherita Tianjin)

Italy is back again in today’s China in a big way, especially in fashion and architecture. The old French quarter has a fine pasticcieria for example.
Italian architects like Stefano Boeri have had a big impact on the design of many buildings in the Pudong area which only twenty years was marsh and farmland.

Look at it now…..

Where will Shanghai be in another twenty year’s time I wonder.