Orientalismo, occidentalismo, sinologismo. La percezione dell’altro: visioni comuni sulla Cina, mode culturali, interferenze tra fine Ottocento e primo Novecento. E la Cina?

I analyse the perception, representation and transformations of the of the vision of China and its culture in Italy between the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, taking into account few works of Italian scholars, translators, writers, journalists and military officials. I will discuss how the myth of the ‘Other’ was idealized, demonized and exploited in Italy and China, contending that Italy was not able to elaborate its own original vision of China in the epoch of colonial conquests. Referring to how China perceived Western culture as 'an undistinguished Other”, symbol of modernity and progress, I argue that the its introduction and assimilation in China was a Chinese conscious and deliberate choice to carry out a specific political programme, but it had to undergo a process of reshaping and Sinification, before it could be employed to transform and renew the celestial Empire in the last years of the Imperial regime.