ALESSANDRO RIZZI / GRAZIA NERI FOR TIME
	TAKING OVER: A Chinese tourist in St. Mark's Square

Posted Monday, July 31, 2006; 20:00 HKT

The table-for-five of hungry American tourists doesn't seem to notice. Ditto the Australian couple next to them, consumed in their hearty his-and-hers bowls of fisherman's zuppa. Located just 100 meters from historic St. Mark's Square, and featuring scrumptiously standard Italian fare, Trattoria di Gioia offers just the kind of flavor that for centuries has drawn travelers to Venice's serpentine itinerary. But this bustling, wood-paneled eatery is not your regular mamma's trattoria. It's not just that the waiters are no longer transplants from Naples or Palermo, but immigrants from Bangladesh and Tunisia. It's not even that the wine list includes labels from France and California. No, the truly new ingredient that escapes most out-of-town customers is the mamma behind the place. Xia Chun Lan, 50, who migrated to Italy 12 years ago from Zhejiang province in southeastern China, is one of just a handful of non-Italians to own an Italian restaurant in Venice.

Three years ago, Xia was running a Chinese restaurant in Venice when she decided to convert it into a traditional trattoria. "It was a gamble; it took guts," she says proudly over a plate of seafood linguini after the lunch-hour rush. "I was doing fine with the Chinese restaurant, but I knew the tourists want Italian." The 35,000-euro ($44,000) remodeling investment and her seven-days-a-week schedule have paid off, says Xia, who handles all the bills and business but leaves the menu to the Italian chef. "Someone just offered me a million euros for the restaurant, but I don't want to sell," she says. "Too much money is coming in."

Xia is one of a recent wave of Chinese immigrants moving for the first time into Venice's commercial mainstream, investing their savings from day-labor wages or smaller businesses typically confined to foreign goods and customers. There's Chen Lie, 21, handing over tomato and mozzarella sandwiches at the Marco Polo snack bar on Cali dei Fabri Street, or the Shanghai native serving up cappuccinos and traditional spritz cocktails, or the middle-aged man with more Cantonese and English than Italian pointing out the handcrafted quality of Tuscan handbags. From Venice, Marco Polo ventured east and discovered wealth and opportunity. Now the Chinese are doing the same in reverse.

In her busy trattoria, Xia retraces her road to success. With savings from a small textile business in China, she set out in the early 1990s for Belgium, where she hoped to start up an import-export company. When that didn't pan out, she headed to Italy, where a law had been passed to legalize a large batch of new migrants. Xia spoke no Italian and had no connections when she arrived, beginning her work in the Chinese-restaurant business. Pausing over her late lunch, she looks sternly over her reading glasses: "Everything I did," she says, "I did with my own sweat." Already mother to a young China-born adult son, Xia eventually had a daughter in her waterlogged adopted hometown five years ago. And the Italian name she gave her, Gioia (Joy), would provide the perfect touch two years later when it came time to christen her new trattoria.

This colorful Venetian detail is part of Italy's broader contemporary canvas: an Old World country losing its competitive edge; natives not reproducing; a growing pool of foreign arrivals eager to be the much-needed human resource. Economic growth was stuck at zero last year, and the national public debt is 108% of GDP, third-highest in the world. Even as ever more companies are forced to rely on foreign workers, a growing number of Italian businesses are getting outpaced by low-cost foreign competitors. Italy is particularly vulnerable because so much of its industry is focused on relatively low-tech, easily made goods, like clothes and furniture. Resentment, predictably, is rising. "I'm all for globalization," says Giuseppe Covre, a furniture producer and former mayor of the small town of Oderzo, northwest of Venice, who complains that his patented furniture parts are being copied by manufacturers in China. "But if there are rules for Europeans, there should be rules for the Chinese. They may give consumers the gift of cheap products, but it's at the expense of [our] own workers."

The influx of immigrants puts added pressure on an Italy struggling to come to terms with its place in a new world. In Venice, Chinese owners of local businesses prompt mixed reviews. Giancarlo Mersini, 66, himself a retired owner of a Venetian wine bar, was sad when his old friend sold off the neighborhood hangout in February to a Chinese family. But once he saw that the spritz was still as tart and the atmosphere at Bar Bollicine just as sweet, he did not find a new watering hole. Even the ex-owner himself comes by at least once each day for a coffee or a cocktail. "These folks do a good job, they're polite, and they keep the place clean," said Mersini. "What else should matter?"

Just a few kilometers inland from Venice, however, the attitude is different. Paolo Gobbo, Mayor of Treviso, is one of the founders of the conservative Northern League party, which garners much of its support with a strict anti-immigration stance. He sees a sinister connection between the rising fortunes of Chinese immigrants in Italy and low-cost competition from Chinese imports, and believes that Beijing is orchestrating the presence of Chinese nationals in strategic global locations. Like many in the Venice area, the 57-year-old mayor thinks the origin of the money invested in new businesses is suspect. Says Gobbo: "'Chinatown' is an organized project to install Chinese influence around the world."

It's difficult, however, to see the plots and conspiracies in the individual tales of Chinese immigrants seeking success on Italian shores. After being raised by his grandparents in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, Alex Jiang was reunited at 12 with his parents in the heart of Tuscany. Jiang's parents had emigrated a decade earlier and were working in a Chinese restaurant in the scenic Tuscan town of Arezzo, where Jiang and an Egyptian girl were the only two foreigners in the local high school. Now 23, Jiang moved last year to Venice, and in February his family bought the Bar Bollicine from its longtime owner, whose three daughters had no interest in taking it over. Besides making sure that the old-time locals were happy with the cappuccino and prosecco, Jiang also decided to serve pasta dishes and stay open until 3 a.m. to draw the tourist crowd. Business is brisk, but Jiang says that the traditional Chinese formula of putting hard work and profit first is more a characteristic of his parents' generation. "It's an old mentality," he says, sporting a smile and a white Dolce & Gabbana T shirt. "My parents live in a closed circle where there are only Chinese, and where making money is the only thing that matters. Money is important, but my friends and I are more curious about other things." Jiang likes Western dance music and the Italian football team, and eventually wants to enroll at university to study foreign languages. "I want to be more free," he says.

A taste for freedom has launched explorers and immigrants for centuries. Venice reminds us that discovering the New World—no matter which direction you take—is as much a journey into the imagination as a voyage across the seas.