LuminosityItalia

Photos by Fabrizio Radaelli

BY MARIELLA RADAELLI LuminosityItalia.com As communities, business leaders and chambers of commerce continue to bridge the economies and cultures of China and Italy, one entrepreneur has shown what individual initiative can do. The festival is underway at Viale Sicilia through the holiday season. Photo: Fabrizio Radaelli Wen Long from Sichuan province has brought the first edition of the Chinese Lantern Festival to Monza. It opened on Oct. 1 and will continue to shine at Viale Sicilia throughout the holiday season. Wen said he fell in love with Italian culture when he was a kid. “After watching the movie Vacanze Romane, I realized that there was something magical about your culture,” he said at the Dec.18 Italy-China Exchange and Cooperation meeting in Monza, held at the offices of Confartigianato, Viale Stucchi 64. “In addition, historic characters such as Marco Polo and the Jesuit Matteo Ricci permeated my childhood,” he said. Local business leaders noted that exce...

“When you meet a man who combines the impetuosity of a Norman, the fantasy of a Latin and the manual ability of a Levantine — while hiding the naive and disarming curiosity of an eternal child behind the grim face of a curly blond Calabrese brigand — maybe then you have known Michele Sangineto.” — Gabriele Abate, engineer By MARIELLA RADAELLI LuminosityItalia.com Michele and the viola organista he built based on the design of Leonardo da Vinci. Master luthier Michele Sangineto was born in Albidona in the province of Cosenza in 1944. His small hometown in the Calabria region of southern Italy was founded on the ruins of the ancient Grecian city Leutarnia. There Michele began to study art and later earned an art diploma in creative woodworking in the nearby town of Castrovillari. In the early 1970s Michele moved to Monza, a medieval city outside of Milan, where he began his exploration into the art of lutherie and the science of organology. Driven by a natural curiosity an...

BY MARIELLA RADAELLI Luminosityitalia.com Smart family controlled businesses are the fabric of Italian economy. Ten were awarded the “Di Padre in Figlio- il gusto di fare impresa” prize on Nov 28 at the Palazzo Mezzanotte at Piazza Affari in Milan. Now in its sixth year, the honor is given to entrepreneurs in at least the second generation of a family business that has a registered office in Italy and revenues of more than 10 million euros. Run by N+1, Borsa Italiana, Banca Albertini SYZ S.p.A. and Deloitte, among the others, and supported by Milan and Monza Chamber of Commerce, the awards are well respected nationally as a celebration of individual and collective entrepreneurship that demonstrates how family businesses turn visions into reality. From almost 150 entries, an independent judging panel of business leaders narrowed the field to 45 finalists and finally 10 were awarded. But all this year’s finalists were notable for their distinctive character and passion as well as q...

“We don’t need help with English-language content – my cousin’s friend already did it.” The friend studied English for six years in the Italian school system. Her work is good enough, the potential client reasoned. But is it? The hard truth is: No it isn’t. Many quality businesses reach a point where they begin to look overseas for even more clients and consumers. Not surprisingly, their gaze often settles on the U.S., the wealthiest country in the world and the largest market. After years of hard work making refined products, smaller Italian companies often look to exports, not only to increase sales but also to show their vision on the global stage. Yet as they reach out, they entrust their crucial English-language website and other online content – along with their dream – to a friend, family member or Italian-speaking agency. But another hard truth is that even the most keen and able writer in a foreign language is rarely good enough. Today’s content has to cut through the all th...

By Chaoyang Creative Works Staff report Milan tourism and business activity surged in September and early October as packed crowds at the Milan Expo continue to surprise critics and one of the world’s biggest industrial machinery fairs drew to close on Oct. 10. The city hit an all-time visitor record in September with 910,990 arrivals, fueled largely by the expo, trade shows and fashion week. At the Expo: Milan set an all-time visitor record in September. At the sprawling, modernistic Rho Fiera convention center, some 1,600 exhibitors across a total of 120,000 sq m of floor space displayed the latest in automation, robotics and traditional machinery at EMO Milan 2015. Top exhibiting countries were Italy, Germany and Taiwan. Japanese and Korean machinery giants also showed their latest designs in car manufacturing equipment, robots and computerized production. In the five months since the opening of the Milan Expo in May, some 3.8 million tourists have visited Milan, 54 ...

Home at the winery: Luca and Chiara Ferraris with their daughter.   Quality Italian wines are among those represented at the 2015 Hong Kong International Wine & Spirits Fair, set for its eighth session at the Convention & Exhibition Centre from Nov. 5 to 7. Among them is LUCA FERRARIS AGRICOLA from Castagnole Monferrato in the Piedmont region of Italy, which will make its fifth appearance at the fair, this year highlighting three wines for distributors and importers in the Greater China region. Nurtured in an ancient wine-growing area – the village is home to the largest antique wine press in Europe – Luca Ferraris vintages reflect the deep character of the region. “We are seeking quality distributors in mainland China,” said Chiara Ferraris, sales manager of the family owned vintner. “Our wines offer tremendous value for refined enjoyment and investment.” One of the select wines on show is the winery’s BARBERA D'ASTI, which according to Wine Spectator magaz...

Chamber of Commerce panel On July 20, Mariella and I, owners of the new Chaoyang Creative Works PR and content agency in Milan, attended a meeting on business startups hosted by the Milan Chamber of Commerce. I understood little because it was in Italian, but you don’t need to speak the language to sit through two hours of Power Point presentations that contain a bewildering number of lists and requirements. The opening speaker noted that bureaucracy is one of the main barriers to startups and innovation in Italy – and that was immediately followed by presentations with a mind-numbing range of bureaucratic hurdles that must be cleared to start a new business and try to get a financing boost. One of the speakers told the sparse crowd of hopefuls that it takes six months to get a company registered, and it is even better to wait until next year. What does that do to the few young dreamers with a new idea in the audience? Are they still going to be on fire next year? ...

The Luca Ferraris Vineyard in Castagnole Monferrato in the Piedmont region of Italy has a surprising American connection The story traces back to the nineteenth century when Luca's great-grandfather Luigi Ferraris emigrated to America during the gold rush. Striking gold, he sent the money back to his wife Bruno Teresa, giving her the chance to realize her dream. After her husband passed away in 1921, she bought the house in Via al Castello that until recently housed Luca's winery. Two years later, Luca's grandfather Martino purchased II Casot, at the time nothing more than a simple rural hut in the middle of 40,000 square meters of land.  Martino planted vines and bought barrels to make wine with his own grapes in his own cellar. He started by selling his wine to wholesalers in the area, then later began to increase his business by selling larger bottles to individuals traveling back and forth to Turin every week on horseback. Today on that land is home to their  ...

Palermo Central Train Station Read Part I Part II As we stepped out of the town hall fortress, we pondered what to do until we left by overnight train. A cappuccino was certainly in order. A nearby café fit the bill, and as we relaxed from the stress of the trip and yet another government office, I noticed several older guys in aviator sunglasses – another signature fashion statement of the city – who were watching the street and their cellphones like movie-character mafiosi. I chastened myself for stereotyping, but also noted would be hard for criminals to find new career path even if they wanted to. The battle against the mafia might be on, but few are likely to retrain and become accountants, especially in a place with 30 percent unemployment. Sure gangsters must be plentiful. What else are they going to do? Reportedly they have literally moved up the food chain to bring their business acumen to supermarkets, offering to supply tomatoes you can’t refuse. After booking the over...

"Nine out of ten people here are jerks." Such is the sanitized translation of what the cab driver said as he took us to the train station in Palermo. Himself Sicilian, his actual comment was more colorful, related as it was to the human anatomy. “See what I mean,” he said with resignation as he blew the horn at a driver blocking a long line of waiting traffic. “Nine out of ten.” Our sojourn from Milan to Palermo was necessitated by yet another a crucial document in a mountain of forms, papers and seals I need to get married, help start a small company in Italy and actually do the work. Palermo was the only U.S. consular office the country that could get me in right away. I got the document as planned, so it was a success. An added bonus was the string of characters we encountered from the moment stepped off the overnight ferry from Naples. I wouldn’t call them jerks, but I would describe some as odd. It was if we were sometimes actors in an absurdist p...

I'm no snob and really don't know much about opera except it's supposed to be boring and “you have to wait until the fat lady sings” – a reference to an interminable Wagner opera that ends with a fat lady wearing horns giving the much-awaited finale. That's where the saying comes from. So it was with mixed feelings I put on my best clothes and headed for the La Scala Opera House. It's not every day you get free tickets to opening night at the world-famous venue. We had to pass through a phalanx of security – with the Milan Expo opening, an anarchist group called Black Bloc is plotting mayhem – to mingle with mighty and their mates. But I think maybe half of the dark-suited men the lobby crowd were personal bodyguards for people such as Georgio Armani and the President of the Republic. I was seated next to a Chinese guy who told me his boss from Shanghai in the row ahead was the sponsor of the season opening for Turadot, Puccini's final, unfinis...

By sheer luck, Italian national day was in the first week of my residency in Milan, so we went down to the center of the city as groups gathered to strut their stuff. As near as I could tell from the the Italian posters around town, the day marks “Liberation from Fascists and Nazis” on April 25, 1945. Sounds a damned good thing to celebrate. The first fellow we encountered was a well-dressed older man handing out small slips of paper. Apparently they outline his philosophy of life, which it seems holds that sex is the most important thing there is. I give him credit: He looked well into his 60s. My colleague Mariella declined his request to give him a business card. Then there were the pro-Palestine demonstrators, the communists, the trade unions, the mainstream parties and a whole lot more. Finally we got a glimpse of the few remaining partisans who actually fought for freedom. And speaking of freedom – what a refreshing thing to witness. After eight years in the thrall...

For many  women in China, fashion is comfort – inspirational and aspirational, it gives tangible assurance that they have made it somewhere, have gained their own identity amid an ocean of similar people. Millions of Chinese have the same first and last names, even – masses with the family name Wang or Zhou or Li. There are only about five or six last names used by the true Han Chinese. And there are more than a billion of them. Those on the Mainland have no sacred spirits to worship, no everlasting icons to give them comfort in the stark awakening from a bad dream at 3 am. Along with the all-important family, it is material things and money that give them something to hold onto. So when female friends and colleagues in China heard that I was moving to Milan they were mightily impressed. I would actually gaze upon the fountainhead itself, the actual headquarters and flagship stores of global glamour giants like Prada, Gucci, Versace. Yes, I made it to the Galleria ...

For a Colorado boy born in Denver back when it was a cowtown, it's a bit hard to believe I have taken up residency in Milan – by way of Thailand and China. It wasn't a quick trip either. I spent twelve years in Chiang Mai and eight in Beijing. After such a long time in the dusty, congested and polluted capital of China, even the airport on arrival in Milan seemed embracing. Still on a human scale, it is an easily traversed entrepot, not a city within a city, allowing easy exit out into the moderate climate of northern Italy. What struck me the first days was the light – radiant on the earth tones of the buildings in my neighborhood and backed by an azure-blue sky. It has rained frequently since, but that too was a relief after the granite-hard air of Beijing. Though the internet has decimated my traditional profession of print journalism, I know it is better to embrace change than attempt the lonely battle of denial. I never thought I would do it, but I too hav...