In 2019, when I was sixteen, I embarked on a year-long high school exchange in Brighton, UK. When I decided to go to London, one of the most famous sights to visit was, naturally, Chinatown. When I entered Chinatown, its architecture, sounds, smells, and Chinese characters scattered all around fascinated me. There, I tried some Chinese pastry and watched a dragon dance event unfold in the streets. Before leaving, I saw some people distributing Chinese-language newspapers. Despite not being able to read anything, I decided to take one, thinking: maybe, one day, I will be able to read this.
While London’s Chinatown is not sufficiently able to convey the complexity, diversity, and beauty of Chinese culture, visiting that place struck a chord in me. It made me curious about what lay outside of my worldview, inspiring me to truly challenge it. Equally importantly, after having studied some European foreign languages—which often share the same language roots and logic—I wanted to take on a much bigger challenge: learn a new language from zero.
What better language to challenge oneself with, then, if not Chinese? One year and a half later, I decided to move to Venice to major in China Studies at Ca’ Foscari University, which also led me to spend a semester studying at Nanjing Normal University. Starting from Chinese-language studying—where I pushed myself to my intellectual limits over and over—my passion for the language evolved into a broader interest in China’s foreign policy, societal trends, and the concept of China as a ‘civilisational state’—which I started to explore more thoroughly during my Master’s in International Relations at the University of Turin.
Throughout the years, having learnt and—somewhat, for European standards!—mastered Chinese has given me opportunities I could never have predicted: winning the 23rd Edition of the Italian Chinese Bridge Competition for Foreign College Students, and scoring in the top-30 in the Global Competition; giving a speech on China-Italy relations to Li Xi 李希, member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, during his November 2024 visit to Venice; working with Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po 陈茂波 and the Hong Kong delegation during the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Milan; taking PKU’s then-President Gong Qihuang 龚旗煌 and Zhejiang University’s President Ma Yanming 马琰铭 for a stroll in Turin during their visit to the University of Turin; collaborating with PKU associate professor Wang Dongmin 王东敏 to implement a Tai Chi course at a dance and arts foundation in my home region; and more experiences that I do not wish to bore the readers with!
Overall, if I can draw a lesson from this, it’s that foreign languages are never an end to themselves, but rather tools to work with, lenses to see the world through, and catalysts that can change our lives. Furthermore, when researching complex objects of study such as China and its endless nuances, I like to keep firmly in mind the saying “学无止境”, which roughly translates to “There’s always something new to learn”. This is the spirit that brought me to study in China again, as I now wish to use my language skills to understand China from Chinese debates, conferences, dialogues, events, informal chats, and everything in between. As a newly enrolled Yenching Scholar, I cannot think of a better place to set out on such an intellectual journey than PKU’s Yenching Academy.
