Chinese Geography

The section contains photos taken by Chinese language students from the Department of Humanities at the University of Turin during the photography workshop led by Professor Yan Preston, titled "Yangtze: The Mythical Mother River," held in December 2023 (events section). The students explored the urban landscape of Turin in search of decorative motifs featuring a circle inscribed within a square, linked to the Chinese concept "tianyuan difang 天圆地方" (The sky is round, the earth is square). The activity led to reflections on the encounter between Eastern aesthetic culture and Turin's architecture, on the possibility of adopting new perspectives on the Chinese presence in the city, and on the dialogue between cultures. The images are accompanied by reflections from the authors of the photos themselves.

This section features photos taken by Chinese language students at the University of Turin in Spring 2024, following the event titled "China of the Chinese. The China of Memories" (Events section). Students were asked to capture the Chinese presence within the territory of Turin and to take photographs. The images are accompanied by reflections from the authors themselves on their perceptions of the Chinese presence in the city and on how this presence interacts—more or less explicitly—with their everyday reality. The development of this “photographic itinerary” has served as a starting point for reflections aimed at considering these methods of work as useful educational tools for understanding and studying the Chinese language and culture. Furthermore, the activity aimed to raise students’ awareness of how much of the world they study is present in “their” world, and to encourage them to identify moments of contact and/or contradiction between what they have learned through traditional teaching or from various sources about Chinese culture and what they experienced through the “geography through images” they created.

The section contains two interviews and a questionnaire conducted in collaboration with students from the University of Turin and the Chinese community of Turin. The activity aimed to guide students in comparing their perception of China with the "memory" preserved within the local community. The first interview, conducted by Gioia Wang and accompanied by two original videos, involves her mother and aims to explore the feelings of pride and nostalgia experienced by a member of the Chinese community in Turin. The second interview, conducted by Arianna Minutolo, is structured as an peer exchange: an open dialogue between Arianna, an Italian student with study experience in China, and her friend Cora, a Chinese student residing in Turin. The interview compares opinions and impressions regarding their respective experiences of living abroad.