Chinese Espresso: how migration from China changed the face of Italian bars

Author and anthropologist Grazia Ting Deng recounts foaming milk, Occidentalist fantasies, and the socio-economic journey that has brought Chinese-run coffee bars to prominence in Italy

Lampoon in conversation with Grazia Ting Deng, author of Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy

In Milan, if you go to a pasticceria in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, customers will undoubtably be greeted by an Italian hostess waiting, not only to bring them a brioche, but to give them a taste of the dolce vita. But go to a bar in Porta Venezia’s queer neighborhood, pay bills at a local tobacco shop, or find the one bar in Milan that still sells a five euro spritz in 2025 and the truth of a more complex, racially-diverse Italy rears its head.

In her 2024 book, Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy, author and anthropologist Grazia Ting Deng follows an inquiry into the Chinese-run coffee bars that have become a central part of contemporary Italy. In 2014, her research led her to Bologna where she followed several families who had migrated from China to set up cafes in and around the historic Italian city. In her text, she reveals the histories, motivations, and quotidian lives of these ‘convivial bricoleurs:’ a term Deng uses to fondly refer to these Chinese entrepreneurs and how they foster a social space within their bars.

Tiramisu at the Embassy: Deng on studying Italian in China

Annalise June Kamegawa: You’re currently based at Brandeis University, but you grew up in China and completed your doctoral studies in Hong Kong. As readers of your book will discover, you’re also fluent in Italian. What first drew you to Italian language and culture?

Grazia Ting Deng: “I always say I was very young and curious when I made the decision to major in Italian studies. I had some assumptions and imaginations about ‘the West’. So, I decided to learn this foreign language alongside its culture: football, fashion, all those stereotypical elements.”

AJK: Why focus on Italian versus another Western language?

GTD: “I learned English in middle school and high school. I grew up in China in the 1990s – it was different from what it is now.  I’m not from a big city like Shanghai or Beijing. My schools didn’t have the best language education, in terms of having native speakers as teachers. I just learned English for the national exam. 

So, why Italian? It’s also related to China’s national exam system. Among the plans they create each year, you can make some choices for yourself. I talk about historical contingencies in my book [Chinese Espresso]. This is also my case. Learning Italian just happened in that historical moment.  It was me- acting as an individual, a student, a teenager -wanting to go to a big city for college and experience the bigger world. That’s how everything started.” 

AJK: How were your first Italian classes in university? Were you with native Italian speakers when you were learning? 

GTD: “I studied in Beijing.  We had one Italian language teacher from Rome and all the other teachers were Chinese. My university had the first Italian language major in China. It went back to 1950s. By that point, the total number of people who had studied Italian [at the college level] in China was probably within a few hundred. I’m talking about since the very beginning [of Italian studies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)].

We weren’t many, so we were quite special. That also meant we had quite a nice community. In my first year, our teacher organized a lot of like cultural activities with the Italian embassy in China.  We were invited to the ‘Ufficio Culturale’, or Cultural Office [the official office of Italy’s Ambassy], and that’s where I had my first experience with tiramisu!”

An accordion player and a first glimpse into the world of the Italian bar

AJK: Aside from coffee, what was one of the first cultural shocks you experienced when you first visited to Italy?

GTD: “This is a really beautiful episode I have never shared before. I was living in a dorm in Trento [as an exchange student] in the city center, quite close to the Duomo. It was in an alley, and I was on the second floor. Every morning, when I woke up, there were two things that made me feel really good: they were part of my romanticized Italian experience. 

First, my bed was facing towards the window. From outside, I could see the blue sky and the Alps, often covered with snow. It was a really beautiful thing.

The other thing that made it even more romantic was that I could often hear the music of a ‘fisarmonica,’ the accordion. Every single day, there was a very old guy standing on the street corner playing the accordion. I was often woken up by him.  Sometimes, when I walked to the Duomo or to the library and I had a coin, I would give him something like a euro.

Then, there was one time where I suddenly noticed that he was not playing his music, but sitting outside of the bar, just like the many retired men there.  I was very shocked because, for me, going to a coffee house in China is an urban, middle-class thing to do. You need to have some money to enjoy your life in these places.  But he was someone who was doing street performances and asking for money.

But in Italy, I noticed people coming from all different backgrounds, sitting at bars — the Italian version of coffee houses— under the sunshine, enjoying life. That was quite shocking for me in the beginning. I realized that the bars in Italy are for everyone. It’s an integral part of the life there: a cultural cornerstone.”

‘Ganjue’ as a research methodology in Chinese-run bars

AJK: In Chinese Espresso, you describe how your research involved working in the Chinese-owned coffee shops that were the subject of your inquiry. You write about making a cappuccino saying, “when I showed one regular, he teased me, saying, “You’re good at making foamless cappuccino!” Letai encouraged me to practice more until I could “get a ganjue [feel] for it by yourself… To ‘get a ganjue for it by yourself’ is a knowledge-production process in which sensory perception is mobilized as a form of labor.”(Deng, 125-126) This approach echoes the familial, informal way coffee-making skills are traditionally passed down in these bars. What was something you found difficult about making coffee? And something that you were maybe particularly good at? 

GTD: “For me, making espresso was really easy.  You just follow those steps that everyone can do, even at home.

A cappuccino was quite difficult for me in the beginning. I didn’t have that ‘ganjue,’ so I didn’t know when the milk was ready. Also, making latte art is difficult.” 

AJK: I never get latte art when I’m in a bar here in Italy. 

GTD: “I wrote this in the book – it’s not a standard thing.  I’m not sure if native Italians just don’t care about it at all, but I don’t believe it’s a tradition to make latte art in a typical bar in Italy.  When you go to the bars run by Chinese people, very often they will give you some art. Not to everyone, but often.”

AJK: Did you come to have a favorite customer during your field research?

GTD: “Well, there is one particular man, but he’s not exactly a customer. He was both the customer and a collaborator of the bar.  Before retirement, he was a wine dealer.  The Chinese family who ran that bar used to have a Chinese restaurant so they already knew this guy for his wines. 

When the family started this bar, they didn’t have Italian citizenship yet, so they decided to collaborate with this Italian guy. They used his name to register the ‘tabaccheria’, the in-store tobacco sales, alongside the coffee bar. In the end, the bar is registered under the family’s name and the tabaccheria attached to the bar counter is registered under the Italian guy’s name, but it’s all operated under one roof by the family.

It wasn’t the most by-the-book thing to do, but the Italian guy was almost always in the bar. He lived just on the other side of the street. He also went to that bar every single afternoon to play cards. I also often saw him sell tobacco behind the bar counter and help deal with paperwork for the Chinese family. He was always around both as a customer and a friend. Whenever the police or local authorities came around, the Italian guy was at the bar so there were never any problems. 

He went to the owner’s son’s wedding.  I was invited and he was also there. He even cried. Spending every single day together at the bar, he saw the owner’s two sons grow up. It was a very solid, intercultural relationship.

They do these favors for each other because it’s a favor among friends. It’s ‘I trust you, you trust me, so we are in it together.’ On the very local level, I actually see a lot of this type of solidarity between the local people and the immigrant families. This is very different from the hostility expressed in the larger society, or at least what’s shown in the media.”

Migrating from China to Europe, choosing “made in Italy”

AJK: In your book you write about a Chinese barista saying, “she discovered that ‘not all laowai [Italians] are rich’ and ‘not all are good people.’ Several Chinese baristas I talked to also shared their earlier positive expectations and imaginary of a developed Europe with only respectable white Westerners. They gave up all such illusions once they got involved in the coffee bar business. A civilized, developed, and affluent Western country with only well-educated and respectable white Westerners turned out to be an Occidentalist fantasy.” (Deng, 179).

Beyond the promise of economic mobility in Italy, what do you think are the cultural reasons for coming?  Why choose Italy?

GTD: “I don’t think any of these economic migrants went to Italy because they admire Italian culture. Starting from the eighties, Europe became an imagined land of opportunity for many Chinese people from the southern Zhejiang province, on the southeast coast of China, looking to migrate.  They didn’t make distinctions between say Italy, France, or Germany. It didn’t matter which country: the idea was Europe. You go to Europe to get rich quickly. 

And then it’s all dependent on their connections.  So, if you have connections in Paris, France, then you probably go to Paris. Likewise, if you have friends or families in Italy, then you go to Italy.  Very often, they have relatives and friends in many places, so they go to a place where it is easiest to get [legal] documents. 

Of course, in the first groups of migrants, many arrived without documents and then they had to find a way to legalize their status. They don’t want to stay undocumented because the idea was always to bring their family to Europe and run a small business: it was a family plan.”

“Every few years in Italy, from the eighties up until the early 2000s, there was an amnesty offer.  So even if they came undocumented, they had the expectation of ‘okay, after a few years, there will be the possibility to legalize my documents. Therefore, Italy is a good place to go.’ 

Nevertheless, even with amnesty, if they can’t find a job, they won’t stay.  But Italy has this “Made in Italy” mode of production. There are small families, companies, and workshops. Very often, these systems are quite informal. There were many opportunities for unreported work. Chinese immigrants were attracted by this manufacturing industry.”

Who can afford to be an artisan? Performing artisanship in contemporary society

AJK: You have touched on the shifting roles of artisanship and labor in Italy and how migrants contribute to the fashion, design, and food industries. Racially speaking, who makes the product often influences how we view it. You write, “as Pierre Bourdieu has suggested, taste is a social weapon in the defense of social hierarchies, excluding outsiders who do not, or supposedly do not, have access to the cultural capital of a given social group.” (Deng, 115). How do you see globalization affecting our conception of what is “artisanal.”  Do you think the prominence of Chinese labor will disrupt this or do you think it will reinforce this? 

GTD: “This is hard. If we think about artisanship, like in a pre-capitalist society, artisans usually have small shops. Then they pass down their skills to apprentices who are, very often, their children, adopted sons, or an apprentice they take on. They teach that way and it’s on a very small scale.

Today, we can still see this, but less and less. So, how do we define artisanship?

Nowadays, when we think about artisans, we think about something like Armani. In a typical commercial from a “Made in Italy” brand, there are certain images: it’s a hand making fabric; it’s on leather; it’s a highly specialized skill that is very beautiful. But if we think about the past, many artisans were actually like blacksmiths. Dirty, right?  These were marginalized people who lacked social respect.

I remember when I was a child, there were still people around with small shops. Maybe they repaired watches or made your keys, but now, this has been replaced by machines. Artisans, in the traditional sense, have largely disappeared.

As a result, “artisanship” now often becomes connected to the big brands who have branded their artisanal traditions. They create an image of very specialty, independent jobs. There is a very clear global hierarchy of value.  Who is considered an artisan?  Who is not?  Whose labor deserves to be preserved and whose is not? This is actually the focus of the book, Evicted from Eternity.  It speaks about Monti, a neighborhood close to the Colosseum in Rome. It was an old, working-class neighborhood with a lot of small, artisanal shops.

This is what I see: there is a hierarchy of how people think about the value of labor. It became: how to do artisanship; how do you brand your artisanship; and then how to perform artisanship.  Not everyone has the cultural capital to do this.  And then often, it’s those big, transnational companies and brands that have the access, resource, and cultural capital to promote what they define as artisanship.” 

AJK: In your book, you discuss a trend among the recent generation of Chinese children raised in Italy. These young people now wish to return to China, as its economy has become stronger than Italy’s.

GD: “There are definitely some who went back to China. It’s an idea available to them, but not everyone is able to do so, especially those who grew up in Italy, as they are kind of scared. 

Many are curious about China, but they are not able to move there because they consider China as changing too fast. Even their parents sometimes say, ‘because our kids grew up here [in Italy] they can’t compete in China. Nowadays, it’s too competitive there.’ But China is always something that’s been there as a root: as an imagined root. 

But nowadays, one difference is they consider speaking Mandarin Chinese is a must.  Everyone.  This is partly because China is becoming economically powerful, and speaking Mandarin Chinese becomes an advantage. Considering that many of the Chinese living in Italy are also becoming more economically powerful, Chinese parents there thus tend to send their children back to China for summer schools or a few years of their primary education. Some of them even send their children back to China for college or some kind of higher degree.  This is a change.  

For those who grew up in Italy in the eighties, I don’t know anyone who received a Mandarin education when they were kids.  But nowadays, Chinese children in Italy all learn, and are very often fluent, in Chinese.”

AJK: My last question: when you go to get a coffee, what do you look for in a coffee bar? 

GTD: “I look for the quality of the coffee. Now, I know that good espresso has to have the essence layer.  The oil.  In the US, there’s one thing that I really notice: with espresso, the baristas are so slow. In Italy, it only takes 30 seconds!  Why do you take so long to make a coffee?” 

Grazia Deng

Grazie Deng is a lecturer in anthropology at Brandeis University. Her 2024 book, Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy, was published and distributed by Princeton University Press and now shortlisted for the 2024 Gourmand Book Awards, Coffee Category. She has also worked as an Italian-Chinese translator, working on contemporary literature and Italian books for children. 

Quoted excerpts come from Grazia Ting Deng’s book, Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy (Princeton University Press, 2024). They are used with permission from Princeton University Press.

Annalise June Kamegawa