Feature: More Italians want to deepen Chinese knowledge

More and more Italians are learning Chinese and more about Chinese culture to participate in the country's economic success story.

Tommaso Ferruccio Camponeschi, 26, left this week for Beijing, where he is set to take part in an event organized at the Italian Institute of Culture in the Chinese capital to promote synergies between Italian and Chinese next-generations startups and investors.

"After studying Chinese language and culture at Sapienza University in Rome, I worked for some time in marketing, but I realized that I needed to go deeper into the China's economy," Camponeschi told Xinhua over the phone shortly before taking off from the Rome international airport to Beijing.

He decided to join the masters' program in Global Management for China at Ca' Foscari University of Venice.

The result was a startup association that Camponeschi founded for "matching the Sino-Italian startup ecosystem," for example by supporting Chinese investors in micro-funding Italian early-stage startups, bridging qualified investors and top-tier startups, and facilitating the exchange of innovative talents between China and Europe.

Camponeschi named his startup association "Tech SiLu" after the ancient silk road "that our ancestors used for trading and exchanging cultures and that we want to reinvent for moving innovative projects," he said.

"China is the right country for those who have an entrepreneurial spirit. Its economy has entered what experts refer to as the new normal, and I am confident of its great opportunities," he said.

Luisa Serra, 28, said she decided to learn Chinese just for economic purposes. "I was born in the northern Piedmont region, an area where many companies have commercial ties with China, and so I wanted to become an interpreter for those companies," she said.

"But when I decided to study Chinese language and culture, my family did not agree so that I had to struggle and work to pay the university," she said. As China's economic growth made the headlines, her parents applaud she was so "forward-looking."

After attending the Confucius Institute at the University of Milan, Serra had the opportunity to spend some months in China with a scholarship. "I realized since the beginning that China would be my future. But I am also aware that many Italians even today do not have a right idea of China and of the many opportunities offered by its high-quality products and global leadership," she said.

Serra, who is finishing her course of study at the University of Milan, said after cultivating a passion for Chinese culture, she is now thinking about becoming a translator of Chinese literature rather than a business interpreter.

Elisabetta Minonne, once a Chinese language student in Venice and today a Chinese language teacher in Milan, believes that culture can be an extraordinary instrument for China to pursue a higher stage of development.

"China has already achieved economic and political leadership on the world stage, and could do the same with culture to build its soft power like the United States did in the 1950s," she said.

Minonne teaches Chinese language and culture at the Alessandro Manzoni high school in Milan. "The most beautiful thing for me is to transfer my knowledge of this extraordinary country to young generations. China has changed my life forever," she pointed out.

"Since I went to Beijing for the first time when I was a student in the year 2000, my way of being has been influenced somehow by the Chinese mentality and philosophy. Just to mention an example, I tend to favor a collective well-being, and in conflict situations to pursue win-win dialogue," she said. Endit