I am a "Chinese senior sommelier with only a primary school diploma". Before graduating from junior high school, I immigrated to Italy with my parents in the millennium, and tang poetry and Song poetry were not well understood, so I wanted to take Aristotle and Dante. My education was relatively Westernized, but that didn't affect my love of Chinese culture.
Under the influence of my father, my Chinese reading and writing have not fallen. I remember that the first time I earned money was the "manuscript fee": at that time, the overseas Chinese media was not as rich as it is today, a newspaper was the most intimate concern between overseas Chinese and hometown, and each page had to be read several times and then looked forward to the postman to send the next issue on time, of course, the subscription fee was not cheap. There are several columns in the newspaper for a long-term call for papers, "contribution fee" is a quarterly free newspaper, after the success of the first submission, I kept writing in a different way, and never paid for the newspaper again. Until my father became the editor-in-chief of a Chinese-language media, I changed from paid writing to "volunteer labor", but instead of being unwilling, I wanted to thank him for giving me such a platform, so that Chinese writing became not only a channel for me to express my emotions, but also a source of motivation for me to continuously understand Chinese culture.
Since immigrating to Italy at the age of fourteen, my first return to work has been a turning point in my "return". In 2014, because of my work, I temporarily moved to Beijing. It was one of the happiest days I can remember: maybe I wasn't a competent employee, but I must have been a curious student, and during my 8 months in the capital, I spent every day in the classrooms of various famous teachers, from calligraphy to Chinese flower arrangement, from tea art to guqin, as long as there was a class about traditional Chinese culture, I basically clocked in. Now that I think about it, I was actually very superficial at that time, thinking that wearing a beautiful cheongsam, fiddling with tea cups, and writing a few brush words was to understand Chinese culture. Showing off more than essence, obsessing over appearances without understanding the essence behind them. However, there are still gains, looking at a thousand swords and then recognizing the instrument, isn't learning starting from imitating appearances? I found my own preferences in the experience, such as playing the piano, which can make people poor and alone without feeling bored, which is my profound experience during the epidemic.
In the summer of 2020, he participated in the online guqin concert held by the Zhejiang Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese at his home in Italy, playing "Phoenix Seeking Phoenix"
Italy is the first country in Europe to encounter the epidemic, the Chinese are also the first group of independent spontaneous home isolation, coupled with the university where I teach has moved the course to online, in addition to participating in some epidemic-related public welfare activities, I basically do not go out. But I am a person who loves to toss, usually half the time "on the road", let me suddenly stop like this is really uncomfortable, feel that the whole person is going to be "moldy". At this time, I suddenly thought of the guqin I had brought back from Beijing a few years ago, and I began to play it, so I got to know my guqin teacher who loved Chinese classical literature. We have an online class every week, and the teacher's first sentence in the first class is: "The left hand is chanting, the right hand is light and sick, and it is generally difficult to say, and the person must be reading." So in order to play the piano well, I read the classics seriously for the first time. Reading and reading naturally quieted down. Listening to the piano music, sometimes I even feel that I can vaguely resonate with the ancients, maybe this is my deeper understanding of Chinese culture. But a deeper understanding comes from "wine."
In the spring of 2020, we participated in and coordinated China's donation of epidemic prevention materials to Italy
As mentioned at the beginning, I am a sommelier. Because of the unique conditions of living in Tuscany, after returning from Beijing, from planting, brewing to wine serving and tasting, I successively came into contact with all the wine-related neighbors in Italy, and became the only "non-Italian" master taster in the Italian Sommeliers Association, often teaching Italians to drink Italian wine. For my Asian face, some people will be unconvinced, but more often than not, it is seven points of appreciation plus three points of curiosity, not only for me, but for China, and "wine" is the best common topic. I am ashamed at this time, because I know so little about Chinese wine. This problem was not alleviated until I "returned again": at the end of October last year, I bought a one-way ticket, returned to China, and plunged into the ocean of Chinese wine, experiencing the strong impact of Chinese wine culture.
In 2018, the sommelier certificate was personally presented by the President of the Italian National Sommelier Association
The first is the difference in tasting systems and terminology. At first, I wanted to use the wine tasting system to apply it to white wine and rice wine, thinking that it was nothing more than color, aroma and balance, wasn't it all the same? But I was wrong. In wine tasting, we often use specific words to describe, such as various flower and fruit aromas, high and low acidity, tannin touch, etc. In the liquor, Teacher Zhong Jie told me that the first step of tasting is not to look at the color, but to "concentrate on the calm breath, the heart is tied to the wine", only the heart is on the wine, can have some understanding, such as the "intention" of "eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body" in the Heart Sutra is the root of enlightenment. The same is true in the tasting, some abstract adjectives will be used, such as "clean, straight, sweet", etc., in addition to some aromas that we are not too familiar with, such as "sauce aroma, cellar bottom incense, Chen xiang", etc., and even involve the description of "body feeling". This makes me sigh that even my Chinese can't accurately define the meaning of these words, so how to introduce them to foreign friends?
Autumn 2020, the fifth year of winemaking
Also, how to interpret brewing and tasting traditions is more difficult than tasting. When it comes to grape fermentation, it is nothing more than yeast and bacteria, native, added, "natural", "artificial" clouds; but in any case, its complexity is not as good as the wine we use when making liquor and rice wine, "qu" is the soul of Chinese wine. However, koji is not a pure microorganism, and koji made from different raw materials and different ways can completely change the style of wine, and even many processes cannot be explained by scientific methods. The second is the tradition of tasting: in wine culture, we pay the most attention to the combination of food and wine, and wine and dishes need to complement each other. But when I asked Wang Saishi, the author of "The History of Chinese Wine", how to accompany Chinese wine, he laughed and said that in Chinese culture, wine is not a side dish, but a pairing of people - with whom to drink what wine. At home and the elders a sip of rice wine, outside and brothers a mouthful of two pot heads... If you really want to tangle with Chinese wine pairing, you can certainly get round, but this deviates from our tradition.
In the summer of 2021, together with Mr. Ji Keliang, the former chairman of Moutai Moutai, he tasted Moutai and took a group photo in Shanghai
When it comes to tradition, I find that this is an extremely difficult gap to cross, China's territory is vast, and every region and every ethnic group has its own wine and wine culture. To understand Chinese wine means to sit at the wine table in Shandong, to go to Guangdong to drink a cup of jade ice roasted pork soaked in fat pork, to Maotai to step on a song, to Shaoxing to cut a spicy weed... Then you can slowly understand why the sauce wine brewed on both sides of the Chishui River is so different, and why the aroma of the Jianghuai school is softer than that of the Sichuan school. The more I learned, the more I felt ignorant and small, but I never had the idea of giving up, but gradually began to establish my own set of values and systems.
China has stood in the center of the world stage, our culture and ideas will surely be recognized by more people, and every overseas Chinese is a messenger of Chinese culture. I am willing to use wine culture as a carrier to weave a bond, pave a road and build a bridge by sharing my understanding of Chinese and Western wine culture.