1 - Encountering, Travelling, Writing

Summary

Encounter

Sergio Ramazzotti collects beer bottle labels as travel souvenirs, as he tells his Chinese interpreter Celia, in La birra di Shaoshan: ‘“Le incollo in un libro, come in un album di fotografie. Ogni etichetta è un incontro”’ (‘I stick them in a book, like a photo album. Each label is an encounter’). He prefers beer labels to photographs because they oblige him to reconstruct the person's face and voice from memory (Birra, 60). The label represents an encounter, and the collection of labels or encounters is both the sum of the journey and the part that Ramazzotti chooses to keep as a souvenir. Throughout his journey in China Ramazzotti strives to understand the country, always searching for something, without knowing exactly what he is seeking. His frustrated encounter with China becomes an encounter with Celia instead, whom he attempts to relate back to China: ‘Celia […] era la piccola Celia ed era tutti i cinesi e forse la Cina stessa’ (79; Celia […] was little Celia and she was all the Chinese and perhaps China itself). The tension between traveller and interpreter is constant: he is alternately impressed and disappointed by her; he lectures her, she protests. He attempts to circumvent the formality of their acquaintance, but she insists on the economic basis of their relationship.