Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transnational Food Mobilities, Fordham UP, 2026.

Zhang Gaoheng, Italian Dumplings and Chinese Pizzas: Transnational Food Mobilities.

New York: Fordham UP, 2026. Pp. 260.

In this  intellectually stimulating and meticulously researched study, Zhang Gaoheng charts new critical ground in the fields of global migration, cultural mobility, and Sino-Italian studies by examining one of the most emblematic—yet often stereotyped—markers of Italian identity: food. Chinese Pizzas and Italian Dumplings: Transnational Food Mobilities presents a nuanced and multi-voiced analysis that reconsiders the intersections between Italian culinary culture and global migration processes. The volume not only makes a valuable contribution to scholarship on Sino-Italian encounters, but also proposes an original methodological framework for researchers working on cultural mobility both within and beyond Italian studies.

The book opens with the proposition that food is significant because of its capacity to produce complex “food narratives” that “inform and potentially change people’s behavioral, conceptual, and cultural mappings” (p. 17). Existing scholarship has identified three principal paradigms for engaging with the cultural dimensions of food: a structuralist approach, which interprets food as a system of cultural codes and meanings; a culturalist perspective focused on subjective experience; and a Gramscian framework that emphasizes “negotiations between hegemonic, allied, and subordinate cultural groups and social classes” in relation to food (p. 10). Zhang deftly integrates these approaches to illuminate the inherently “transcultural” nature of contemporary foodscapes, shaped by the interplay of “physical movement of people and objects, sociocultural meaning making and power negotiation among competing discourses” (p. 4). On this theoretical basis, the book interrogates a range of persistent myths and material realities surrounding food production, consumption, and representation in Sino-Italian exchanges.

Chapter 1, “Chinese Migrants’ Food Entrepreneurship and Italians’ Culinary Tourism, 1962–2020,” traces the development of Chinese-run restaurants in Italy from the opening of Milan’s first Chinese restaurant in 1962 to the sector’s rapid expansion in the 1980s and 1990s. Zhang argues that Chinese cuisine—Italy’s first widely available “ethnic food”—served as a powerful cultural symbol through which to articulate both “the pains and joys of Italy’s growing multiculturalism” and a form of “culinary cosmopolitanism,” often mediated through American Chinese cuisine (p. 50). At the same time, he underscores a central tension: although “Chinese food has fundamentally changed perceptions of Italy’s globalized foodscapes,” it has remained “stubbornly ethnicized” (p. 51).

Chapter 2, “Romantic Waitresses vs. ‘Kung Food’ Workers: Gendering the Chinese Restaurant,” further explores this dynamic of othering by examining the gendered roles and sociocultural positions attributed to Chinese migrant workers in Italy’s food economy. Drawing on sources ranging from films such as Delitto al ristorante cinese (1981) and Andrea Segre’s Io sono Li (2011) to graphic narratives like Chinamen: Un secolo di cinesi a Milano (2017), Zhang identifies a persistent “restaurant-crime-migration” nexus that has historically cast Chinese eateries as spaces of exoticized danger, populated by stereotyped figures such as the “Chinamen” and cinesine. Only in recent years, he notes, have these reductive representations begun to be challenged by more nuanced portrayals.

Chapters 3 and 4, “The Chinese Who Eat Dogmeat: Racialization of Chinese Food Consumption” and “Fighting ‘Yellow Mozzarella’: Italians Safeguard Food’s Authenticity,” examine deeply embedded stereotypes linking food practices to broader processes of social inclusion and exclusion. Through analyses of popular films—from the well-known Fantozziseries to the neo-noir Mozzarella Stories—as well as a close reading of Amara Lakhous’ Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore in piazza Vittorio, Zhang demonstrates how culinary imagery has been mobilized within discourses of racialization and marginalization. He further argues that debates surrounding the preservation of “authentic” Italian food—often framed in opposition to foreign imitation or counterfeit—reflect an underlying “identity crisis” closely tied to anxieties about Italy’s economic decline (p. 106).

Chapters 5 and 6, “Pizza Hut, Fine Dining, and Trattorie: Italian Gastronomy Tourism in China” and “Slow and Fast, Sweet and Sour: Chinese Foodie Travelers in Italy,” shift attention to the representation and reception of Italian cuisine in China. Zhang shows how, in the post-Mao era, both domestic developments and the activities of Italian entrepreneurs in China have reshaped the image of Italian food in the Sinophone world. He identifies two competing narratives: one, influenced by American models, promotes a hybridized Italian-American-Chinese culinary experience that presents Italian food as adaptable and open to localization (p. 142); the other foregrounds a discourse of ‘Made in Italy’ authenticity, emphasizing tradition and culinary purity. Together, these frameworks have furnished China’s emerging middle class with the cultural tools to imagine new forms of cosmopolitan identity in a globalized, post-Mao context.

Drawing on a remarkably wide array of sources—including Chinese food critics, television programs, and digital media—Zhang offers the first comprehensive account of the reception and cultural positioning of Italian cuisine in an Asian context. He reveals an ambivalent attitude among Chinese audiences: while more sophisticated commentators celebrate the sensory qualities of Italian food and the ethos of Slow Food, they also warn against a potential “gastronationalism” rooted in rigid interpretations of local culinary traditions (p. 162). At the same time, for many middle-class tourists, encounters with Italian cuisine occur within a consumerist framework that conveys a powerful message: “by consuming Italian cuisines and lifestyle, middle-class Chinese have also become part of the worldwide middle class” (p. 178). Chapter 6 concludes with an analysis of Hou Zuxin’s 2022 film La ricetta italiana, a Chinese-Italian co-production that encapsulates the complexities of twenty-first-century foodscapes. By interweaving romantic narratives with culinary practices as experienced by Chinese travelers and second-generation Chinese Italians, the film exemplifies the construction of a “Chinese cosmopolitan self-identity” mediated through Italian food (and American popular culture, p. 189).

Taken together, Chinese Pizzas and Italian Dumplings: Transnational Food Mobilities emerges as a pioneering study demonstrating how one of the foundational elements of Italian identity—food—is being reshaped through multidirectional and often unpredictable transcultural encounters. Through its innovative methodological approach, the book makes a significant contribution to the intersecting fields of food studies and Italian studies, and it concludes by posing a compelling question: in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and following the abrupt disruption of la dolce vita for many Chinese restaurants and businesses abroad, how will these transnational foodscapes evolve?

Tommaso Pepe

University of International Business and Economics, Beijing

对外经济贸易大学, 北京