China-Italy Mobility and Travel Writing: Sheng Cheng and Lü Bicheng's Narratives about 1920s Italy

The first decades of the 20th century were the first significant phases of mobility between Italy and China. Chinese diplomats, journalists and writers travelled and sojourned in Italy, discovering a new country and a new culture. This chapter will focus on some of the first Chinese travels in Italy in the 1920s; in particular it will be analyzed the movements of two Chinese intellectuals - Sheng Cheng (1921), and Lü Bicheng (1929) – who reached the Italian territory for different reasons and through different routes (either directly from China, or passing through other European countries or America, by ship or by train). To investigate their mobility, this chapter will examine the travel literature accounts written in that period and through the reading of this textual material, we will observe how the knowledge of Italian culture was perceived, understood, and spread throughout China.