The Historical Comparison between Italy and China Emerging from Kang Youwei’s Yidali Youji

In 1904 the late Chinese Qing scholar Kang Youwei 康有为(1858-1927) extensively toured Europe. He reported what he had seen of the countries he visited in detail in his "Ouzhou shiyiguo youji 欧洲十一国游记" or “Travel notes on eleven Countries in Europe”, published for the first time in 1905. Italy was the starting point of his journey – he crossed the country from South to North, passing through Naples, Rome and Milan. He only stayed in Italy for twelve days, but wrote a lengthy diary about his time (about 76,000 characters). This section of his work is known as Yidali youji 意大利游记 “Travel notes on Italy”. Kang Youwei often used impressions left by Italian cities, monuments and people as pretexts to make comments, not only about Italy, but also about China. He did this through comparisons between the two countries. One of the most significant points of comparison is history. The comparison starts from the Ancient time and ends with the Contemporary time, it is remarkable throughout the diary. In this paper, the historical and chronological comparison between Italy and China will be presented and analysed in order to create a hypothesis about the reason behind Kang Youwei's interest in Italy, about what kind of inspiration Italian history gave him toward the salvation of China and on the role that China's past could have played in the process of its modernization.