by Suzanne Ma
1
The Bar
Never in her life had she been so determined to accomplish something. Anything, really. In China, things were easy. But here in Italy, nothing was.
She had been working at the bar for less than a week when the skin on her hands started to peel. Little bits of skin, translucent and pink, flaked off like Parmesan cheese. Then the cracks appeared. Tiny fissures ruptured at the joints and split her knuckles open. She started to bleed. Everyone told Ye Pei it was normal.
“We all go through this when we first start,” her boss said.
“You’re just not used to the work,” her mother reassured. “It will get better over time.”
Pei calculated out of the twelve hours she worked each day, her hands spent six of those hours waterlogged in soapy water. Her tasks at the bar were simple but exhausting—sweep the floors, wipe the counters and tables, wash the dishes, polish the glassware, and scrub the toilets. If the orders were simple enough, sometimes she could mix drinks and serve coffee. But she was never allowed to make cappuccinos. The boss was a Chinese woman with a belly, ruddy cheeks, and dark penciled-in eyebrows, the kind that made her look angry all the time. She insisted the cappuccino was a perfect science, one that a foolish young girl like Pei couldn’t even begin to understand. After all, the country’s “national breakfast,” drunk on an empty stomach before 11 a.m., was an art form, a ritual so ingrained in Italian culture that it would be a sin to get it wrong. One-third espresso, one-third steamed milk, and one-third foamed milk. You could lose a customer over the slightest imprecision.
“You don’t want to mess up an order,” the boss told a disheartened Pei. But to work in an Italian bar without learning how to make a cappuccino would be like working in an ice cream shop and never learning to scoop, or working at McDonald’s and never learning how to fry. Pei believed she wasn’t allowed near the cappuccino machine because once she had mastered the cappuccino, it meant that she was more employable. She could find a job elsewhere, maybe in a city or perhaps somewhere closer to her family. But as it stood, no other bar owner would hire someone incapable of brewing a proper cup. Over time, seventeen-year-old Pei came to realize that learning the art of the cappuccino was the key to her freedom.
In the bar where Pei worked, most of the customers were old men. Some liked to sip their drinks while reading the daily newspaper from Milan, peering over thick-framed glasses perched on the bridge of their big noses. Others preferred the back room where they could sit on high stools that brought them face to face with the bewitching glare of the digital slot machines. Most liked to gather around in groups, flinging down narrow playing cards on the bar’s square wooden tables in an intense game of Briscola—their spirited interjections drowned out by the constant grinding of coffee beans, punctuated by the swooshing sound of hot, pressurized water. All of the customers seemed amused to find a Chinese woman behind the bar.
“Ni hao!” they’d holler, sauntering up to the bar.
“Ciao, ciao,” Pei often replied with a smile. Her short, pageboy bob had grown into dark locks she now piled into a bun atop her head. Her bangs, trimmed neatly above her brow, framed her full face.
“Bella,” one old man loved to say, pointing directly at the girl, his finger coming dangerously close to her button nose.
“Ge-lazie,” she’d say, blushing.
And that’s when the banter came to an awkward halt, for Pei had been in Italy for all but three months. Her vocabulary was extremely limited, though she had picked up a few key words. Ti Amo, a phrase Pei liked to write in her diary every night, starting each entry as if she were penning a love letter to her boyfriend back home in China. Spritz, because customers often asked for this popular wine-based cocktail. Gelato, because it was the only Italian delicacy that Pei truly enjoyed eating. Grazie, because it was polite to say this to customers, though Chinese speakers often have difficulty pronouncing “r” and end up making an “l” sound instead. Thus, Grazie sounds like Ge-lazie and Roma comes out Luo-ma. And domani, because some customers liked to ask whether she would be at work the next day.
The answer to that question was always sì, because Pei worked seven days a week. Her shift started at 10:30 every morning and was supposed to end around 3 p.m., although she usually got off closer to 3:30. She had a few hours rest in between before starting work again at 7 p.m., her night shift ending at one or two in the morning or when the final straggler threw up his hands and abandoned the slots for the night. During her shift, Pei was always on her feet but she rarely stood still. When there weren’t many customers to tend to, she swept and reswept the floors. She polished the glassware. Then, she took all the liquor bottles down one by one so she could dust the shelves. She took note of the numerous shapes and sizes. There was the green, pear-shaped one with a large, rounded belly; the square and wide-bodied one that always held just a trickle of bronze fluid; and the slender-bodied one filled with what could be mistaken for water, if not for the smell of rubbing alcohol that hit Pei’s nostrils the minute she twisted off its cap. It reminded her of the potent Chinese rice liquor, baijiu. If you stood close enough to Pei while she worked, sometimes you could hear the sound of her tongue flicking the roof of her mouth: “Tttttttrrrrrrrr. Tttttttttrrrrr.” She was practicing how to roll her Rs. Within days her hands had become swollen and blistered, but it was after her first day when her feet trembled with fatigue. Her heels ached and her toes grew tender. Pei watched in awe as her body adapted and grew accustomed to the strain. The soles on her feet hardened and her calves bulged. For her labor, she was paid 500 euros a month (about $690 USD at the time) and the boss let Pei stay in a spare bedroom in her second-floor apartment just a few minutes walk from the bar.
“Can I come up and see your room?” I asked Pei one night.
“No, I don’t think Ayi would like that,” she replied, looking sorry. “I feel terrible I cannot invite you in. It’s just that . . . it’s not my home.”
“Tell me what your room looks like.”
“It’s small, but I have a bed, a desk and a dresser. It’s not bad at all,” she said. “It just isn’t home.”
When Pei wasn’t in her room, she was at work. When she wasn’t at work, she could be found in her room, where she tenderly rubbed lotion into her swollen hands. She spent late nights writing in her diary and thumbing through her Chinese-Italian dictionary, placing the thick hardcover book on her lap until her thighs turned numb. Her parents called every day to check in on her, but she could never tell them how she truly felt. She whispered through the receiver and assured them she was fine. She didn’t dare to say anything else, for the walls were thin and Ayi and her family would certainly overhear her. This wasn’t the life Pei envisioned for herself in Italy. But for a girl who came from a small mountain town in eastern China, working at this bar was a painful yet valuable opportunity she could not refuse. “I will work very hard to learn Italian and to acquire the skills necessary for running a bar. This way, Mama and Baba can have an early retirement,” Pei wrote in her diary one night. “This bar has been open for four years and now they are millionaires. How accomplished they are! I am not jealous of them because I know one day our family will be even better off. I firmly believe it!”
Never in her life had she been so determined to accomplish something. Anything, really. In China, things were easy. But here in Italy, nothing was. Pei was determined to change her family’s circumstances—to work hard, send her earnings back to her parents, and help them save enough money to one day open their own cappuccino bar. Every Chinese migrant went abroad with a similar plan in mind. Working for others was a stepping stone to becoming your own lao ban—your own boss. Pei’s resolve started in her gut, stirring her awake every morning. It propelled her out of bed and to the bar, pumping adrenaline through her veins and into her calves. It fueled her through the long days until she finally returned to her room, where the urgency remained, keeping her a
wake as she pored over the Chinese-Italian dictionary until her eyelids grew heavy and finally drooped to a close. “I am no longer in a country where everything is simple and straightforward,” she told me. “In China, I was never under any real pressure. Now I am forced to make plans for myself, to make things right for me and my family.” At seventeen years of age, Pei had taken it upon herself to earn enough money so her parents could soon retire.
Three months earlier, her priorities couldn’t have been more different. She was a high school student in China whose major preoccupation was hanging out with her new boyfriend, a quiet and gangly boy named Li Jie. He was at least a head taller than she, and Pei loved pressing her toes in the ground as she raised her face upward to see his. Though they saw each other every day in school, their time together spilled into the evenings when they roamed through town, snacking on skewers and soupy wontons and hanging out at the Internet café. Pei spent hours uploading photos to her blog, chatting online with friends, and feeding her virtual fish. She had become a cyber-entrepreneur, operating a virtual hair salon and restaurant. Li Jie preferred racing sports cars around a virtual track in online tournaments that lasted through the night. Now that Ye Pei was in Italy, she had left Li Jie and that virtual world behind in China. The town of Solesino was her bleak reality.
There are no canals here. There are no crescent-shaped bridges. No sleek, black gondolas. No glittering lagoon. Venice, the water city, is more than two hours away by train, and to catch it, you have to get on a bus and head for the next town because there is no train station in Solesino. The road into town is flanked by long parcels of land, some pea green and some wheat gold, giving way to two-story pale yellow homes topped with earthy red tiles. A tall, blue steeple marks the center of town, where there is one church, one cemetery, one nursery school, one elementary school, one junior high, one police station, one sports hall, and more than a dozen bars. At least two of the bars in town are run by Chinese families, and their presence is a sign that immigrants are here to stay. Locals say they first started noticing Chinese immigrants in Solesino about ten years ago at the weekly Sunday market. They all seemed more like nomads then, traveling in a caravan of big white vans that rumbled past the fields, sending slight tremors across the terra-cotta rooftops. Once in town, their vans fold open like a Transformer gearing up for battle: white shelves stretch out like arms and the wiry ribs of a canopy unravel over a display of colorful football jerseys, chiffon blouses, knit sweaters, and fake leather jackets. Bins overflow with polka dot socks, lacy bras, and spandex underwear, and the Chinese haggle with their customers, their dialogue limited to uno, due, tre and a lot of sign language.
“The entire street will be lined with stalls!” Pei told me one fall evening in Solesino. “There are numerous vendors, even Chinese vendors! And there are many, many things for sale.” She looked forward to the commotion and chaos every Sunday. During the week, Solesino was far too quiet and too clean for her liking. Back home in China, hawkers lined the streets, their knickknacks scattered across tattered tarps and their wicker baskets piled full of pears and yangmei—crimson, dimpled bayberries the size of a ping pong ball. But what Pei missed most was the street food. Vendors roasted sweet potatoes and chestnuts in smoldering charcoal, minced pork was tucked inside thin wonton wrappers dusted in flour, and lamb kebabs flecked with cumin and chili pepper sizzled over a smoking barbecue. Every night, smoke and steam threaded its way through Qingtian’s streets. The Sunday market in Solesino didn’t have roasted chestnuts or wonton soup or lamb kebabs, but tomatoes and artichokes were piled into pyramids and crispy French fries were scooped into paper cones. Of course, Pei would not see any of this for herself. Sundays were one of the busiest days at the bar, and she could never steal away, not even for a few minutes, to visit the market. Instead, from behind the bar, she watched the vendors drive into town and set up their stalls, and eventually her hungry eyes would follow the children who clutched oil-stained cones overflowing with fries as golden as corn.
While Pei was at work, I shopped around the market without her. One day, I found myself in front of a mobile food van selling seafood. I watched a young Italian woman pour fried fish into a tray bathed in the red glare of a heat lamp, and I noticed that the tip of her nose was kissed pink by the sun. “I just got back from Kenya,” Laura Cavaliere explained in fluent English. Laura was a globe-trotter who made every effort to learn about the outside world, either by going to those far-flung destinations herself or hosting international students at her home in Solesino. Laura and her parents recently took in a student from China, who stayed with them for ten months. Laura had a master’s degree in psychology from an Italian university. But like many young and educated Italians, she could not find a job, so she helped her parents dole out seafood at the market. Just meters away from where her van was parked, Chinese merchants were busy selling winter sweaters. I asked her what the townspeople thought of the migrants in their midst. “The Chinese are a mystery to most Italians,” Laura said. “They stay in their circles. When they go out, they never walk alone. They are always with other Chinese.” It was especially rare for the migrants to engage in long or meaningful conversations with others, Laura observed. “We have brief exchanges, but it never goes deeper than that. I think integrating is very hard for them.” For as long as Laura could remember, Bar Girasole had been owned by Italians. When the Chinese family moved in five years ago, locals worried the bar would change. It wasn’t just happening in Solesino. The Chinese seemed to be everywhere. The migrants were drawn to Italy’s textile and manufacturing industries, which provided ample employment opportunities for unskilled workers, and to the country’s frequent amnesties that gave undocumented migrants a chance to gain lawful residency. In the early 2000s, undocumented Chinese residents were estimated to represent 10 to 15 percent of the total Chinese migrant population in Italy. Experts believe that number has since dropped due to amnesties. Since 2000, the number of registered Chinese residents in Italy has swelled from approximately sixty thousand to nearly three hundred thousand in 2014.
If Pei could read the newspapers, she would have learned that the press liked to describe this influx in terrifying yet poetic ways: immigrants from the Far East are “an invading army of dragons.” Pei’s illiteracy shielded her from xenophobic headlines and editorials. For her, thumbing through her Chinese-Italian dictionary every night was already causing her head to spin. If Italian was supposed to be a romantic language, well, it certainly came with all the headaches and complexities of a true romance.
“It is so much simpler to just read and write in Chinese,” Pei muttered.
“But learning a Roman alphabet has its advantages,” I countered. “Once you know your ABCs, you can learn to read and write pretty quickly.”
“That’s not the case for me,” Pei said. “Chinese words are not just words. They are symbols. Every wisp and every stroke means something.” Tenses and conjugations were especially hard for her to grasp. In Chinese, there is no plural and verbs don’t change even if an action takes place in the past, present, or future. And Pei couldn’t help but wonder: why did objects have to be either masculine or feminine? Was it il cappuccino or lo cappuccino? Everything seemed so needlessly complicated. If Pei could read the papers, she would have learned that Italian reporters liked to call Chinatown an ethnic ghetto where workers hide in the shadows. And no doubt, she would have seen the word clandestini—a word that means illegal or undocumented, but comes loaded with so many other connotations. Criminal, terrorist, drug dealer, pimp, thief. The immigrants seldom respond to such allegations. And the journalists have fun with this, too. Speaking with the Chinese is like “having a dialogue with ghosts.” A reporter’s questions are met with “a wall of silence.” Was there a point to responding? Would it help dispel some of the rumors? The Chinese are silent for more practical reasons. Immigrants like Pei don’t have the ability to respond, and many others don’t have the time to engage in any kind of
dialogue because they are all too busy working. And so everyone agrees that the Macedonians, the Albanians, and even the Moroccans and Romanians have an easier time integrating. The Chinese don’t even try: “Few know Italian—despite having Italian residency for years. Many will soon have the right to vote, having received full Italian citizenship, making decisions for us,” a newspaper in the northern city of Brescia writes. “It doesn’t matter that they can only communicate with ideograms and have little interest in learning about the world outside their community.”
Thousands of Chinese migrants were coming to Italy every year, but they managed to remain invisible for a long time. Most found work in garment workshops that kept them out of sight and far removed from mainstream society. Newcomers like Pei, however, were changing all that. By working at a bar, she had stepped into the very heart of contemporary Italian civilization—a place where people came not only to sip their cappuccinos and down their espressos but to share life’s news with old friends. In the bar, Pei poured drinks for men who gathered to celebrate a birthday and she poured more when they came together to mourn a death. She congratulated a particularly happy man when he bought a round of drinks for his friends and tried to comfort the miserable ones who drank their sorrows away with wine. It was here in the bar where Chinese immigrants became actors on the Italian stage, no longer stagehands who hid behind the heavy curtains that cloaked the windows of a garment workshop. Every dark and bitter cup of coffee Pei brewed gave her a chance, however brief, to interact with Italians. This was how she judged them. Not by what she heard or by what she might someday read. She judged Italians by the way customers treated her, and she found herself drawn to the kindness of many strangers. Some of her customers had been to China before.