Within the last twenty years the Chinese population of Prato has greatly increased to reach estimates of up to 20 thousand residents, although unofficial estimates are much higher. In 1988 there were 31 Chinese residents in Prato, 20 years later things have changed dramatically.
This is the largest Chinese community in Italy. The Prato Chinatown has been recently defined by the Washington Post one of a kind in the world. Indeed here non Asian people and Italians feel awkward, as if they were in China. Here you can find Chinese stores for any necessity. Food, home equipment and kitchen utensils, technology stores, restaurants, gambling places, and more. Some places do not even have Italian speaking personnel and some restaurants only accept Chinese customers. While the latter are of course extremes of a wide array of experiences, Chinatown in Prato is certainly an interesting reality to discover. The main artery is Via Pratese, where the largest and most furnished stores are present. Here everyday it is very hard to spot a wester face, and more often than not if you wish to buy something you need to speak some Chinese or hope a first generation Italian from Chinese parents works in the shop and comes to the rescue.
Why Prato? Well, the city has a long lived textile production history. During the centuries the city has been at the center of innovation and superior craftsmanship as far as the production of new textile materials and techniques is concerned. One example for all was the long lasting relation between the Russian Tsar court and the city. The fame of the town was world wide spread and the Chinese workers of the Zhejiang region, a very poor portion of China but with a long tradition in the textile industry, arrived in Prato to find work in the factories. Their presence was mostly filling black market jobs at the beginning. With time many grew to become entrepreneurs and started calling other Chinese people to Italy to hire them, thus creating an exponential effect. The last decade economic crisis has boosted the Chinese economy in Tuscany, as their products offered on the market have found a renewed interest due to the increasing cost of living. With time production has also improved, and if fifteen years ago “made in China” was synonym of the cheapest quality, nowadays things have changed radically.
Of course there still are many negative aspects that any integration process brings along. Some put off the newcomers capitalizing on cliches and local news reporting crime stories. The process has started nevertheless, and it is encouraging to see Italian and Chinese getting married, and the first or second generation Italians of Chinese descent embrace both cultures equally with all the difficulties that that also embodies.
A stroll in Via Pratese in Prato, Tuscany, certainly is an interesting experience to make. Whenever you are in Florence or are visiting the historic center of Prato, take an extra step towards this section of town. There you will find thousands of imported goods and foods from China, and will live a very contemporary reality of Tuscany.
Sun
28
Feb '10
The article started well and until a certain point I could agree with what I was reading, but when I arrived at the last two paragraphs I was more than just surprised:
“Some put off the newcomers capitalizing on cliches and local news reporting crime stories. The process has started nevertheless, and it is encouraging to see Italian and Chinese getting married, and the first or second generation Italians of Chinese descent embrace both cultures equally with all the difficulties that that also embodies.”
Where did you get this information from, or is it something you just made up yourself to get a good end to your story? The process has started..? What process? Of integration? This really makes me laugh. Sorry, but I live in Prato and know the problems the local citizens have with this huge chinese community. Marriages between Chinese and Italians are exceptional not to say extremely rare. Chinese marry Chinese here. There are no cliches where it concerns Prato’s chinatown and the local news does not report crime stories that concern the Chinese, they are no threat to us in the sense of crime. We have other non-Italian citizens, even European (Eastern countries) who end up in the local news because of their crimes. The Chinese are a threat because they try to colonize the city by taking over the textile industry, by creating a ghetto area near to our medieval center, by investing in new appartment buildings to lodge the people of their community, by buying or renting big lots of land where they grow their own vegetables and fruit with seeds imported from China (a lot cheaper than to import it all directly from China, considering they’re not buying from Italian grocers) and there’s absolutely no control or what soever on the treatment of the plants and the final products. Due to one of the worst crises the city’s textile industry is going through (already for years!) the people of Prato loose their jobs and get poorer and the Chinese on the contrary get richer. They know how to be competitive… and we all know what system they use for this. Rules, regulations and taxes? They just do whatever they like here. Due to EU’s soft rules about extradition, we can’t get rid of the enormous number of illegal immigrants walking around here. Having a new political wing running the city now, the police did some blitz controls in chinatown during the past few months, aiming for illegality and the persuing of EU rules within the shops or companies. Actually, yesterday I had a walk in Chinatown after at least a couple of years I hadn’t been there yet. I went with a purpose and a photocamera. Things do have changed somewhat for the better, at least considering the outside: less confusion and less dirt. But the news in the local papers about what’s going on behind those doors is still the same if not worse.
I would not reccomend to your readers to “stroll in Via Pratese”, which should be Via Pistioiese by the way. There’s nothing interesting to see, just decay of what once was a fierce town with friendly people everywhere and happy because they all had work and money to spend.
Thanks for your long and heartfelt comment!
It seems this economic crisis has gotten the better part of you, so it often happens when newcomers get to a new country. Chinese have a peculiar way of behaving. For this reason they got discriminated even in the US during the Seventeenth century when landing in California and spreading from there. Nowadays they are just as integrated and following the rules as any other citizen. Italy has yet to grow on this side, but the process will take much less that in other countries. Of course industrial cities like Prato take the brunt of the impact, I am sorry for you and the shattered pride of your city.
But do believe me if I shed words of hope as I have strolled up and down the streets of “Chinatown”, and I do recommend it to anyone. I have also seen Italians married to Chinese. More than one couple. I did also se the signs of degradation, but also a lot of young Italians of Chinese descent embracing both cultures.
I invite you to go there more often, and look deeper than the surface, talk to people there, feel them. Maybe you will think I am naive, but I also am not as obviously biased as you are.
Thank you for placing my comment and for your reply. There’s one thing I would like to point out though: the US has always been a country of newcomers, all sorts of nationalities… they came to an almost empty country and founded what we call the US today. What is it that people in the US believe to have the right to correct us all the time where it concerns our immigration problems? Cultural bagage of a bad conscience perhaps, having moved in themselves into a country belonging to the native Americans and closing them up in reservations?
I’m afraid you look upon this matter with totally different eyes than we do here. Europe is the “old continent” and some of the northern countries (Germany, Holland, Belgium) had their first newcomers in the ’60s and ’70′s when unschooled immigrants from Turkey and the Magreb were brought in to fill up the empty places in the industry or minery where the younger Europeans didn’t want to work anymore. At that time they were all given the possibility to study at college and university, paid by the State, and pretended better jobs. Even a part of the second and third generation of these immigrants still hasn’t integraded fully yet, letting their brides still come from their countries of origin, just as unschooled as their parents or grandparents were.
What has been taking place during the past 10 years, however, is the regular flow of illegal immigrants coming from all sorts of poor nations and not required by the industry, hoping to find a sort of ‘walhalla’ here, but mostly ending up in the criminal sector because there are no jobs for all of them. Only the schooled immigrants can hope for a job. Then don’t let us forget that behind this new type of immigration (hundreds of people stuffed on small boats that have to cross the Mediterrenean from f.ex. Lybia to Sicily) criminal orginsations are at work, dealing with the trade of humans!
Europe is a continent with closely built up cities and a dense population. Prato isn’t an exception and has a medieval center with a long history and beautiful buildings. In Europe we care a lot about our cultural heritage and spend loads of money in maintenance of our historical buildings. For us it’s just unacceptable that groups of immigrants who know nothing about the value of cultural heritage just colonize complete areas of the town and transform them into degraded streets or complete ghettos. And I’m not speaking of the Chinese only in this case.
Chinatown in Prato ins’t the same ‘interesting’ place anymore what it was, it has been cleaned up much during the past few months. I don’t need to go there more often, I have many Chinese living in my area too. They have spread all over town, taking over factories and houses from the Italians. There is not much of a cultural confrontation here allthough more than 20% of Prato’s population is Chinese (the legal ones). The Italians just sell their houses before they loose even more in value because of the presence of certain groups of immigrants and leave, to go live elsewhere, making it easy for immigrants to buy the houses at cheap prices and establish themselves all nicely together in ghettos.
I’m from Dutch origin and have moved into Prato in 1979, married to an Italian and fully integrated. Never had any problem with it because I spoke the language and got a good job immediately. Western Europeans can have differences in habits or customs but there’s not that enormous gap in cultural differences and level of instruction.
Sure, why should your voice not be heard? I hear your concerns, and while the facts are true I hardly agree with your conclusions. Beginning with the US (of which country I am not citizen, by the way, I just know that reality very well) you forget that the country was already very populated and had fought an independence war and a civil war when the Chinese people started landing there. So we are not talking about the Fifteenth century. And they had the same exact problems, although they had no cultural and artistic heritage whatsoever to “protect”, and all the free land they could ever wish to have. If the people in Prato feel like their city is taken over, they should look to what they have done to permit this. I believe it is just a physiological outcome. The textile crisis that started with the end of last century (certainly not initiated by the coming Chinese as much as by the harsh competition abroad and the lack of a quick response by the institutions and the private sector in Italy) pushed the private sector to abandon their leadership, selling out and abandoning the field. The Chinese people, hardworking, and surely anarchic for what concerns job regulations and rights, had already been in the area since the beginning of the Nineties, and they had had no possibility whatsoever to expand as all places were taken by the Prato entrepreneurs. When the latter left the former stepped in and of course called in many more workers like them that would not go to labor unions or require high salaries as Italians would have done. Still nowadays Chinese people are enslaved by fellow citizens in Prato living in poor conditions.
While the latter is an unacceptable condition that is being (slowly) fought, there also are enlightened Chinese entrepreneurs that comply with all rules and regulations, something unimaginable up to a few years ago.
Moreover, I refuse to take part to the philosophy that newcomers have to comply with the standards of the place they come in just because their are “guests”. They are not guests. You do not invite guests to your house and set the to work, right? No immigrant, or group of, goes anywhere forcing their habits and laws waging war. Rules must be taught to those who have a different cultures and habits. These rules to them may seem unthinkable as dumbly restrictive and hindering development (let’s just think that many Chinese workers had to be obliged to stay home on Sundays and holidays by their Italian employees, as in China they do not get that weekly holiday privilege). And most importantly, illegal immigration is the backbone of what hypocritical western countries openly condemn, but secretly foster under the table. Entrepreneurs would be unable to keep their business running when too educated westerners refuse to do certain low skilled jobs and require high salaries after years of university studies. There is a gap that the local and state government, local ingenuity, and goodwill do not fill: there you get your illegal immigration. And police forces do not help, as there is a lot of butter handing going on.
As far as why many cultures keep their traditions like a protective cocoon, it is easy to explain. The hostility they received through the centuries has strengthened their believes that they needed to protect their mind and body sheltering with all they had ever had: their culture and beliefs. So, outside their house door is the western world, but inside their homes and chest is their homeland, the only safe place to open up and relax. Children learn this instead of learning to trust the western world. The power of family values is much greater than any other. It can make you or break you for good. So reflect on your thoughts and get informed on the good things of this process, as you are not helping with your hostility.
I would like you to remember the story of a group of Italian emigrants from Southern Italy that during a night in Switzerland, where they were living and working after leaving their families in Italy, were brutally assaulted and one of them got killed. They were just walking down the street, no offense done to anyone on their part. But northern Italians also had a very frightful vision of southerners. Do you remember “No homes rented to southerners”? I am sure you do. And what about western Germany with Eastern Germans? Still today many think that Germany should not have been united, that eastern Germans are poor workers and they cannot integrate. Eventually with fast coming economic development things got better, as Italians were not the dirty ones anymore. They had become money spenders, artists, performers. Something they had always been, but the xenophobe feeling towards them covered it all up.
It takes time. Instead of blaming only Chinese people, take a hard look at your community and political and business leadership. Then try to give yourself a sincere answer. You will not be satisfied by it, and you will still need to wait many years before you can see some degree of acceptable integration. Certain cultural levels will never integrate, and that is just the beauty of this world, where all species, races, ethnicities can mix up to a certain point where they create something new but do not loose their intrinsic traits. When there is a balance there is strength.
Great written piece! You picture here very well the always changing society. It’s not the first time in history that people migrate in large numbers and alter or influence the socio-political situation or the prevailing culture of the area where they end up. Sometimes this went almost unnoticed but in other occasions even Wars were necessary. But let’s not talk about the past, when the Earth counted perhaps just some milions of inhabitants and when there was space enough for everybody.
That entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to keep their business running without laborers from abroad for low-skilled jobs is still partially true, mainly in the agricultural branch in the south of Italy because of mafia interference. But where the industry of Northern Italy is concerned there’s no gap to fill, since this is all regulated already for some years now with quotas of new legal immigrants who get their staying permit based on the market request.
I agree that you can’t make newcomers comply imediately with the standards of the place they come in if they are invited for work, but a big part of these newcomers was NOT invited. For example the thousands that came after the first few groups of Chinese people who arrived in Prato in the ’90s, and were brought into the country secretly by the Chinese mafia to whom they were obliged to “pay off their debt” first and therefore lived in harsh circumstances for years. That’s the slavery you were talking about. For us incredible for them probably nothing new. But after living for 15 or 20 years in a place you could have at least learned enough of the language to make yourself understandable and should have learned to respect the rules and regulations and then I’m referring in the first place to the fact that we Europeans pay taxes over what we earn, to the State, to the Region, to the Province and to the City. In Prato we have Chinese speaking personnel in many public institutions, just because we wanted to make it easier for them to understand.
Of course every culture has the right here to maintain their own traditions but just as you say, behind their house door. It is wrong though to teach the children only to trust what’s inside their homes and not the outside western world. They, however, don’t mind to make money out of it. How can we otherwise come to that balance you mentioned at the end. The Chinese celebrate their New Year also in Prato and it’s an event, many Italians go to see it. But you will never see a Chinese assisting an Italian cultural event. The Chinese children born in Prato are all going to Italian schools, that’s the law, whatever the nationality of the foreigner here is. We have a schooling duty that goes for all children of our citizens. My daughter had several Chinese pupils in her class and the only subject they were good at was maths, for the rest they needed a special support teacher who spoke Chinese. After 5 years of having gone to school together only one of the Chinese pupils spoke a little bit of Italian and socialized with the other children. The others didn’t. After school they always hurried home (to help the parents with the work probably). For the record, the majority of the Chinese in Prato live where they work, or work where they live, so that’s ‘home’ eitherway. The Chinese community has plans now to buy a big building in the center of town that they want to convert into a Chinese buddhist school. I’m truly hoping the Italian language and culture will be prensent among the subjects they’ll study there.
I personally have nothing against Chinese people and I’m NOT blaming only them for what is happening to our town. I was just noting some facts. I don’t have to try to give myself a sincere answer, I already knew what the answer was time ago until finally, after many years of socialist domination in our town, the citizens have chosen for another approach with the latest elections.
I have worked for 30 years in the textile industry here and know when things have started to change. The difficult competition with the far East and countries like India and Pakistan, the latter in a later stadium though, was one of the reasons why many factories had to close down. Then the Chinese even came here, first to learn and working as external laborers in their own workplaces (24/24) who could deliver the merchandise in a day or two with respect to the Italian external workers whom it took 4 or 5 days. Then, once learned how to do it properly, they started opening their own businesses. Prato had competition from both sides then, as well as from the far East as from the local Chinese factories. It would take us too far here to explain why this fenomena occurred only at a certain level of production.
Please do come and visit Prato, the small medieval center with it’s beautiful ‘duomo’ and the gorgeous hills around the town, but don’t expect to see something exciting when walking in the two ‘famous’ streets that form “Chinatown”.
Thank you ClairPhillys for letting me blow off a bit of steam here and for the interesting exchange of opinions. It’s just that after 30 years of living and working in this city that has always been so vibrant, it touches my heart to see it change so quickly. And it will never be anymore like it once was.
Sorry I could not reply sooner, I have been quite busy. As I told you in an earlier comment I do feel for what you are going through. As a citizen in the middle between the Chinese that think there is nothing wrong to go out and get it with any means (the way they are used to in China) and the local institutions that do not have a clue to how curb unfair competition and unruly usage of local resources (or do not want to) you must feel pretty bogged, powerless and angry. I do know Prato, I mean the historic center, it is wonderful and still preserves its strong identity. I know things will never be the same again, but it does not mean it will be for the worse only. I have met many children in Chinatown that did speak Italian with a thick Tuscan translating to their parents what I was asking them. They were studying behind the store counter with the book on their legs on a pretty uncomfortable chair, while the mother chopped chunks of meat, and other workers yelled some Mandarin words. I am confident their children will study in a much more appropriate environment and that they will not pursue their family business. And all will speak Italian. Rome has plenty of Chinese people that do not even understand Chinese. They are Italians and feel so. If the trend continues there will be not a strong reason for Chinese to maintain their strong presence in Prato, and the buildings will slowly and partially return to the city. I am talking about at least 10 to 20 years from now. While the Chinese flavor will never leave Prato, this is just a trait that will make all the more interesting. You are welcome to come and let off steam, or happy remarks, any time you want to!