The general and the artist: Travel narratives in 1930s’ Italy by Cai Tingkai and Huang Juesi

Abstract

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed unprecedented mobility from China to Europe. Many Chinese travelers came to Europe to travel or study and, once home, contributed in various ways to the construction of the newly born Chinese republic (Levine 1993). During their journeys, many of them visited Italy for practical reasons – being the place to leave the continent via sea – or often under the influence of the education received in other European countries such as France, Belgium, Germany, and the UK, where the memory of the Grand Tour was still alive. The paper illustrates a research project on Italian cultural itineraries whose main purpose is to identify types of travelers and travel modes, and map cultural itineraries covered by Chinese people in Italy mainly through the analysis of Chinese travel literature written in the first half of the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the close relationship between literature and movement from a Mobility Studies perspective (Merriman & Pearce 2017), and to the variety of accounts dealing with Italy, its culture and society as perceived and narrated by this generation of Chinese travelers. The possibilities of quantitative and qualitative analysis of such a research project are then illustrated through two case studies: the accounts of the coeval journeys to Italy by the former general Cai Tingkai 蔡廷楷 (1892-1968) and by the artist Huang Juesi 黄觉寺 (1901-1988) which respectively led to the publication of the Haiwai yinxiang ji 海外印象记 (Impressions from abroad, 1935) and Ouyou zhi shi欧游之什 (European writings, 1944).