Crossing the Distance, Connecting with People

Hello everyone, my name is Ale, I’m from Italy, and I’m a writer.

The three names you see on the screen are all me.

Ale is my nickname.

Yali (亚历) is the Chinese name my teacher gave me.

Alessandro is the name my parents gave me—it means “protector of humankind.”

So don’t underestimate Italian parents; they, too, know how to load expectations onto the next generation.

Today, I want to try to answer a question that has given me a headache for many years:

“Why did you come to China?”

I really wish I could just say, “I don’t know. One day I woke up, and there I was—riding a shared bike on Huaihai Middle Road, getting fined by a traffic cop.”

That answer would be easier.

But if I’m honest, the story starts much earlier—back in the summer of 2014, in Nanjing.

The Global Village

I was 20, studying media in Rome, working part-time as a sports journalist.

That summer I had the chance to go to China to cover the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing.

I only had seven days there, and my work was simple—writing event reports.

But I had a strong motivation to finish early each day: I wanted to go outside and talk to people.

I wanted to test a belief—or maybe an obsession—of mine:

that people everywhere are pursuing happiness in their own ways, and despite cultural differences, we can understand one another.

I didn’t know why this idea comforted me so much, but it gave me hope.

So in Nanjing, after work I wandered around the Olympic Village chatting with volunteers.

There were 20,000 volunteers—over 100,000 had applied.

Most were language students from Nanjing or Shanghai.

They cherished the chance to talk with young athletes from over 200 countries.

The world, it seemed, was right in front of them—and when they graduated, they wanted to go see it.

Because of their green uniforms, they were called “Little Green Limes.”

Our conversations were simple—mostly “ni hao,” “xiexie”—but they filled me with optimism.

On the flight back to Rome, I thought:

China is a country eager to connect with the world, part of the global village, and in the future, we’ll come even closer together.

Two years later, I really did move to China.

I studied Chinese for a year in Beijing, planning to apply to film school.

Originally I was going to join an international English-taught program for foreigners,

but then I met a French guy named Lino, and we started competing—hard.

He memorized idioms every day; I could barely order food in the cafeteria.

He even posted entire PDFs of major speeches in our WeChat group, challenging us to translate them into English.

Then one day he said he was going to do his master’s degree in Chinese.

Could I lose to a Frenchman? Of course not.

So I also applied in Chinese.

He went to the animation department; I went to directing.

And… both of us became “the only foreigners” in our classes—with a beautiful future ahead.

When we were still in the language program, Lino once said:

“It’s ironic. You learn a language to communicate with people, but end up spending all your time locked in your room.”

But graduate school changed that.

Finally, we could collaborate with classmates, join film crews, act in scenes.

In the crew, national boundaries blurred, replaced by real production roles.

Foreigners could be “camera instructors,” or nameless assistants.

We had achieved John Lennon’s “Imagine” utopia—“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

Our crew felt like that…

Except Lennon forgot to mention: the prerequisite for utopia is working eighteen hours straight, finishing when the director says so, and submitting your taxi receipts for reimbursement.

Foreigners and “Our Own People”

Those were harmonious times—but not necessarily equal ones.

I remember Chinese classmates visiting our dorms and saying,

“Oh my god, you foreigners live such refined lives!”

They lived six to a room in bunk beds; we lived two to a room, with TVs.

A physical and psychological divide.

Even the admission process was different.

When I took the entrance exam, Chinese students had to compete just to get an interview;

foreigners, no matter the written score, automatically qualified.

Chinese students had traveled a harder road, so in the student film crews, they were indeed more capable.

It was the same outside school.

Behind the camera—lights, production, directing—were mostly Chinese.

Foreigners were usually in front of the camera, acting or modeling.

Lower entry, higher pay—why not? 🤷‍♂️

In smaller Chinese towns you can still see old ads with foreign faces—especially for clothes.

Now, many brands hire foreigners because they want to “go global”—phones, electronics, etc.

Once, I was sent from Beijing to Shanghai for a phone commercial,

because they said they couldn’t find anyone there “with my kind of hair.”

So this Chinese vs. foreign mindset is everywhere.

It’s so normalized we barely notice, but it shapes everything.

That’s why, when foreigners embrace Chinese culture, it feels “novel”—we dress them in Tang suits at Spring Festival and hand them calligraphy brushes.

Honestly, my six years in China are partly a product of that curiosity.

Sometimes I benefited from it; other times, it held me back.

When I try to connect with people, my foreignness is like a shell I can’t shed.

People can’t see behind it, and our conversations are limited.

Typical exchange with a taxi driver:

“Where are you from?”

“Italy.”

“Is the Eiffel Tower there?”

“That’s France.”

“Italian soccer?”

“Yes.”

“Ronaldo!”

“That’s Brazil.”

“Do you eat spicy food?”

“A little.”

“How much is housing per square meter?”

Once, I moved into a new apartment. As I walked out of the elevator, a few locals chatting nearby went silent.

After I passed, I heard one girl whisper, “I’m just really scared of foreigners.”

I pretended not to hear and went out to eat.

Coming back later, I ran into them again in the elevator.

I looked at her and said,

“No need to be afraid～”

You might think, so what, strangers anyway.

But I once met another “foreigner” who was actually born in Beijing, spoke fluent Beijing dialect.

If even he couldn’t fully “fit in,” then who could?

He told me that at parties, people still said that famous line:

“You foreigners just don’t understand.”

I found that depressing.

No matter how long you live here, or how much you learn,

people still see your foreign face first—you can never quite be “one of us.”

Then again, being “one of us” has its complications.

Once in Beijing, a not-very-close Chinese friend invited me to dinner.

He brought his wife—Italian—and their child.

We chatted about life, work, parenting.

Then he turned to me and asked, “So, Ale, how old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

He nodded seriously: “Ah, time to think about marriage. Time to settle down.”

At that moment I thought, being one of us has its downsides too.

The World Divided

After 2020, though, even that felt minor.

The pandemic made the world seem farther apart.

I spent all three years of it in China.

Chinese friends studying in Milan told me that on the metro, locals stepped back from them, covering their mouths and noses.

And in Shanghai, I felt the same—people would rather stand than sit next to me.

Sometimes, before getting off, I’d show them my green health code.

In 2021 I spent six months filming in a small northern county.

There were over a hundred foreign extras staying in one hotel.

You can imagine—suddenly a town full of foreigners, while TV kept broadcasting terrifying footage of outbreaks abroad.

Locals panicked. They called the police.

I never knew what they said, but they called.

Eventually, the film crew got nervous too and “solved” the issue:

they posted guards at the hotel doors so we wouldn’t go out.

We began sneaking through the back door.

When things improved, I’d stroll the town, maybe see a movie.

Once a young woman stopped me: “Sorry—”

She looked nervous but polite—at least she didn’t call the police.

She asked, “Why are so many foreigners here?”

I said, “We’re shooting a film—will be here for a few months.”

She said, “Oh, okay,” and left.

I thought: My dream isn’t as high as John Lennon’s.

If people can simply talk, ask questions, explain—that’s enough.

Once, sitting in a McDonald’s there, I stumbled upon an old file—

my 2014 article about the Nanjing Youth Olympic volunteers—

and I cried in front of my laptop.

I realized that the world my twenty-year-old self had imagined… hadn’t come true.

During that lonely time, writing became my comfort.

When the campus was closed and I had no friends around,

I’d chat with the cleaning lady about cutting vegetables or train tickets to Zhengzhou.

Before the pandemic, I might not have remembered those conversations,

but then, they gave me calm and companionship.

I began recording them in Chinese, posting them on Douban as diary entries.

Because everyone was isolated, many resonated with those small daily fragments.

Some didn’t even know I was foreign; I never posted my photo.

We connected purely through words.

One reader from Henan saw I’d mentioned her hometown and mailed me a whole box of spicy snacks.

Finding Connection Again

In 2021 I moved to Shanghai and started a writing club at my apartment.

Every Wednesday night, 10–20 people gathered to share their work and feedback.

When the crowd grew too big, I worried the neighbors would think we were running a pyramid scheme.

It wasn’t professional—no competition, just a space to be heard.

Some members said they felt seen for the first time.

One quiet office worker read a 3,000-word story aloud and said he felt happy.

People joked: “A Chinese writing club… started by an Italian?”

But in the club, those surface differences—education, job, social class, even nationality—disappeared.

No one introduced themselves; their words spoke for them.

For once, we could lay down our labels and see each other’s hearts.

Later, through my Douban writing, I met my girlfriend Liu Shui.

It was the summer of 2022.

After two hard months in locked-down Shanghai, I went to Hainan to relax.

You might say I was dreaming—but I wasn’t the only one.

Liu Shui was a reader of my diary.

She saw from my IP that I was also in Hainan and left a comment:

“I’ve been in a little town near Wenchang for a month—so peaceful—you should come.”

I said sure, why not.

A few days later, cases started rising where I was.

My Shanghai reflexes kicked in—I packed before thinking.

At the train station I still didn’t know my destination, so I thought,

Why not that town she mentioned?

I bought a ticket, messaged her, “I’ll be there in an hour.”

The town was indeed quiet and virus-free.

I planned to stay ten days—stayed nearly a month.

We had a simple life: dim sum at the teahouse, electric bike rides to the sea.

In those days, that simplicity felt like the greatest luxury—and the greatest happiness.

When I was leaving, Liu Shui said:

“Come visit me in Chengdu. Or not—but better if you do.”

Crossing the Distance

By the time I signed the book contract, the pandemic had just ended.

And yes—I did go to Chengdu.

Then we both decided to travel.

I’d write my book; she’d finish her thesis.

So we went to Thailand “to relax”… and ended up traveling for a year and a half through six or seven countries, returning to China only last month.

Not long ago, in Indonesia, I met a Palestinian woman named Heba in the elevator.

She was doing a PhD in gender studies.

Later, Liu Shui and I had coffee with her.

Heba told us how she’d tried to help her parents escape Gaza—

$10,000 per person to reach safety in Egypt.

She and her sister scraped the money together.

Before they escaped, she often lost contact for days,

checking bombing maps online to guess if her parents’ neighborhood had been hit.

She spoke, too, of friends who never made it out.

I listened closely—but I could feel her defensiveness toward me.

Because I was Italian, she feared I supported Israel.

She kept asking my stance, barely looked at me,

spoke mainly with Liu Shui,

and even criticized Western hypocrisy—

“People who save animals and talk feminism, but ignore Gazans’ lives.”

I left that café dejected.

I had come hoping to connect with someone new,

yet my identity again stood in the way.

That day, my faith in human connection wavered.

But two weeks later, we ran into Heba again in another city.

She messaged first: “Want to meet up?”

Liu Shui said, “Let’s go. If it goes badly, we can always leave.”

I’m glad we went.

That night, over pizza, Heba was a different person—

cheerful, teasing me:

“Ale, if I hadn’t talked to you first in that elevator, you never would’ve said hi.”

She never mentioned politics again.

I wondered why.

Was it her mood? Her boyfriend’s presence?

Then I realized—it was trust.

She’d confirmed that I wouldn’t deny her pain,

and that small trust allowed warmth to flow.

We ended the night laughing.

I wrote about her in my column “Essays by Ale.”

Liu Shui edits it.

Over the past year I’ve used it to record the people we meet on the road:

Zong Mei, who taught herself tailoring after her Yunnanese parents fled to Thailand in the 1950s;

Eric, an American who refused the draft in the 1970s and chose meditation instead;

and Arthem, a young Russian exiled by the war.

When we returned to China recently, we held a reader meetup in Guangzhou.

One reader said these stories gave her strength—

the sense that no matter how much despair we face,

humans can still change their lives.

I was moved.

During a year of travel, often unable to speak local languages,

I’d sometimes felt lonely, uncertain.

But that night I understood:

these journeys had meaning.

Perhaps it was the same meaning I’d felt ten years ago in Nanjing,

the one that first brought me to China—

To cross the distance, and connect with people.

Thank you.