Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 Globalization, Migration Flow and Culture Conflict

The global is replacing the bounded nation-state, and the creation of migratory communities is one of the consequences of globalization (Olaniyan 2003). Different ethnic cultures spread in the global migratory flows. Globalization and migratory flows feed the cultural difference. Meanwhile, the cultural conflicts embed in the territorial and group cultures. Huntington argues that in the age of globalization will result in conflict and that its primary source will be cultural, which exists beyond not only individual or group identity but as a part of a broader category of group membership (Huntington 1997). The interaction between different cultural groups inevitably leads to insurmountable differences, which can escalate to violent conflicts. The interaction mentioned above also can be seen as a combination of beliefs about the nature of human nature, of identity, and of human interaction (Montuori 1989; Bernstein 2005; Eisler 2012). On the other hand, the collaboration of the ethnic community members leads to the tribalism. Manzini manifests that the tribalism shows in which people cooperate against someone else in the name of their particular identity (Manzini and Coad 2015). Cultural conflict becomes a societal issue in the age of globalization. Misunderstandings, migratory enclaves, discriminations, and violence, can be seen as some of the forms of cultural conflicts. Thus, cross-cultural communication is needed to deal with the societal challenge.

1.2 Intercultural Dialogue Is Necessary to Ease the Conflict

Intercultural dialogue can ease the cultural conflicts and strengthen the mutual understanding. According to the definition given by the Council of Europe, intercultural dialogue is a process that includes an open and respectful exchange or interactions between individuals, groups and organizations with different cultural backgrounds or world-views. From this aspect, intercultural dialogue plays a key role as it allows people to prevent ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural divides. An intercultural dialogue can also enable individuals to move forward together, to deal with different identities constructively and democratically by shared universal values (Europe, B.C.O. 2010). In short, intercultural dialogue can contribute to a sustainable pluralistic society, understand the cultural diversity and create the co-values. Samovar regards the intercultural communication as an interactive process, which a person from one culture sends a message to be handled by one from another culture (Samovar et al. 2011). To foster the intercultural dialogue, therefore, identifying a point-cut is necessary.

This article discusses feasibility to improve intercultural dialogue through design. In the following paragraphs, the paper elaborates the possibilities to foster intercultural dialogue based on food and food culture. The OpenStreetMaps and Web crawler are adopted to investigate Chinese migrant food business in Milan and comes out with design goals to foster intercultural dialogue in such a context.

2 Food as a Point-Cut of Intercultural Dialogue

2.1 Food Provides Intercultural Dialogue a Better Mutual Understanding Precondition

This article takes food as a point-cut for intercultural dialogue as it plays an irreplaceable cultural role. Food is described as a manifestation of a nation’s culture (Lannon 1986; Anderson 2005; Montanari 2006; Rozin 2006). Kluckhohn states what people eat are partly regulated by culture. (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952). The act of eating is used to establish an identity and to define a certain group, class, or person (Fonseca 2008). The prominent role of food is noticeable as an important expression form used for the purpose of communicating something (Valli and Traill 2005). Food as a cultural symbol, which contains cultural identities, traditions, and customs can bring more communication opportunities basing on the cultural seminaries and differences.

People’s elemental needs for food made us regard food irresistible and likable, as Fox says, “we have to eat; we like to eat; eating makes us feel good” (Fox 2003). Delicacies are easy to be welcomed by people, whichever they come from. Besides, eating can be regarded as an experience that contains physical senses and mental factors, since food is always associated with emotions that embody in gustatory memories, such as nostalgia, childhood memories (Holtzman 2006; Sutton 2010; Zampollo 2013). Food also is given a social meaning that provides people a chance to sit face-to-face, conversing, smiling and communicating (Jones 2007). On the other hand, the diversity of food and food cultures could bring more opportunities for intercultural dialogue. Food represents our identities to set us apart from others by what we will (or will not) eat (Fox 2003; Brulotte 2016). The dissimilarities in food and food culture illustrate the cultural distance and difference between ethnic groups, classes, territories and countries (Jonathan 1999), and it can also bring more cross-cultural discussions so to create more occasions for communicating and share ideas (Kittler et al. 2011). Thus, taking food as a point-cut can provide intercultural dialogue a better mutual understanding precondition basing on common senses, also, it enables discussions of dissimilarities and shares different values.

2.2 Food Culture and Sustainability as a Design Issue

Food is always something that connects people together and which has the potential to inspire and engage individuals in new and exciting experience (Spence and Piqueras-Fiszman 2013). To understand the complexity and diversity of the relationship between people and food, designers and scholars start to investigate from multiple aspects, such as technology, sustainability, experience, cultural diversity, etc. Choi explores the role of Human- Computer Interaction (HCI) design in encouraging individual users to participate in creating sustainable food cultures with five core constituents: the perspective of transdisciplinary; the domains of interest of people, place, and technology; and the perspective of design (Choi and Blevis 2010). The human-food interaction design takes food as a point from which to understand people and design technology, which requests designers and researchers to pay more attention to people and the ways in which they engage with food than efficiencies and novelties new technologies may provide (Comber et al. 2014). The CHI 2012 workshop aims to ‘attend the practical and theoretical difficulties in designing for human-food interactions in everyday life’ identifying four thematic areas of food practices: health and wellbeing; sustainability; food experiences; and alternative food cultures. Similarly, exhibition ‘Food Culture: Eating by Design’ shows the links between design, food, the origins of what we eat and propose people’s complex relationship with food. Kerr, Tan, and Chua present a discussion of the methodological complexities of understanding and designing for food practices, particularly in diverse cultural contexts (Kerr et al. 2014).

To sum up, the present studies point to the methodological, disciplinary, and design complexities involved in balancing the technical with sociocultural to improve the sustainability of food for today and tomorrow that requires concerted efforts across a diverse group of stakeholders including researchers, practitioners, governments, industries, and communities within the given socio-technical context. Food as a cross-cultural communication point-cut seeks to draw attention to the questions and foster further discussions and design research.

3 Foster Intercultural Dialogue for Chinese Migrant Food Business in Milan

3.1 Overseas Chinese Community in Milan: A Cultural Enclave

Italy was not a popular immigrant country for Chinese migrants until 1990s. There were only about ten overseas Chinese in Italy before the World War I, and in the 1960s, the population increased to 800, then reached 1,000 in 1980s (Zhu 1996). At the beginning of the 1990s, the number of Chinese migrants living in Italy kept on climbing, reaching about 20,000 (Fu and Chen 2003).

Chart 1 shows the growth of the Chinese immigrant population in Italy from the year 2002 to 2015. Up to now, Chinese immigrant community is the fourth biggest community in Italy after Albania, Morocco, and Romania. 80% Chinese migrants in Italy share the same ancestral home – Zhejiang Province (which locates on the east coast of China), especially from Wenzhou city, that leads the migrants to live together for better cooperation and to ease the nostalgia. The migrants’ social network ties up people in a fixed and closed community that excludes outsiders. The migrant community tends to keep the original habit rather than cater to the native lifestyle (Smyth and French Eds. 2009; Gao 2009). The language, additionally, is another barrier that hampered migrants to communicate with Italian people (Scibetta 2013). Besides, Wenzhounese people have a strong tradition of trade that made them pay more attention to their own business, but not enough on other aspects (Fig. 1).

Chart 1.
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(Demo.istat.it 2016)

The population of overseas Chinese in Italy from 2002 to 2015

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Fig. 1.
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(picture from Google)

Photos of Via Paolo Sarpi took in the 1950s and now

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To sum up, Chinese migrants in Italy has formed a huge but closed community due to language barriers, business cooperation, and the same ancestral home, which is considered by natives as a ‘secret’ ‘quiet’ and ‘exclusive’ community that calls for more openness and mutual understandings. Moreover, the overseas Chinese community has adapted to the Italian economy. However, the cultural adaptation still needs to be improved. Also, the increasing population of Chinese migrants and the expanding migratory enclave lead to rapid change in the local environment, while the native residents cannot accept, and the lack of communication escalated the cultural conflict. Hence, intercultural dialogue is desiderated to improve between Chinese migrants and the host society.

3.2 The Breakthrough Point: Chinese Restaurants in Milan

This article takes Chinese food business in Milan, especially migratory restaurants, as the point-cut for improving intercultural dialogue as it provides across-cultural context that Chinese migrants and Italian customers interact in. Besides, running restaurants is one of the most traditional and important Chinese migratory businesses. In this context, stereotypes are embodied in vividly, for instance, Chinese restaurants are widely considered as cheap, poor quality and low-end, additionally, there are food taboos that some Chinese food is regarded as non-edible by Italians.

Dealing with the stereotypes of Chinese restaurants can not only benefit to migrants’ business and Italian customers’ experiences but also contribute to Chinese migrants and Italians understand each other better basing on food culture. On the other hand, food enables a foundation of better mutual understanding and different value sharing towards to transform stereotypes.

4 Chinese Migrant Food Business in Milan

4.1 Mapping the Context

The research adopts two digital methods to map the context of Chinese migrant food business in Milan. The OpenStreetMaps (OMS) took place in the first phase. According to the user rating and information provided by Google, TripAdvisor, and Huarenjie.com, the map pinned 274 restaurants which are owned by Chinese. As shown in Fig. 2, there are eight colors of pins sorted by the user ratings online and the type of restaurant, which are: Chinese restaurant with grade lower than 3.5; Chinese restaurant with grade between 3.6~4.5; Chinese restaurant with grade higher than 4.6; Japanese restaurant with grade lower than 3.5; Japanese restaurant with grade between 3.6~4.5; Japanese restaurant with grade higher than 4.6; Italian restaurant; and restaurant does not have grade online. It can be seen that the amount of the Japanese restaurant overweighs the number of Chinese restaurants. Besides, many Chinese restaurants which lack customer feedback are spread centrally in Chinatown. Besides, there are only 11 restaurants that offer traditional Chinese cuisine and have won good ratings. Overseas Chinese’s restaurant business has reached a considerable scale in Milan. However, it does not represent authentic Chinese cuisine and Chinese food culture.

Fig. 2.
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Restaurants owned by Chinese in Milan City

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4.2 Extracting Keywords

To understand what do customers, especially Italian customers think about these restaurants, the Web crawler took place in the second phase and extracted 6,332 feedbacks from above mentioned websites. Table 1 lists 60 high-frequency keywords (which have been translated into English in this article) generated through the web crawler, and the most frequently mentioned words are: Chinese, tasty, good, price, and service.

Table 1. Extracted keywords and the frequencies
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The article also adopts the word cloud tools to present the result more apparent. As shown in Fig 3, most customers left positive comments, such as tasty, good, and fast. It also shows customers’ preferences like dinner, fish, and spicy, and highlights customers’ concerns, for example, service, quality, environment, and atmosphere. However, there are several words which are irrelative with Chinese cuisine, but also be frequently used: Japanese, sushi, and pizza. According to the first phase investigation, more than half of restaurants owned by Chinese in Milan are not the typical Chinese restaurant, and the food these restaurants offered are mixed, such as Japanese dishes, Asian fusion, and Italian pizza. Also, there are also some negative feedbacks like ‘bad’, ‘disappoint’, ‘terrible’ and ‘poor quality’, which expresses there are some aspects are not satisfying.

Fig. 3.
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The word cloud of high-frequency keywords

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To sum up, the food business of Chinese migrants has reached a considerable scale in Milan from both quantitative and acceptable viewpoints, meanwhile, there are some unsatisfying aspects due to the lack of cross-cultural communication, for instance, there is a gap between the service and product quality provided by Chinese restaurateurs and perceived by Italian customers. Also, some misunderstandings and stereotypes lead to dissatisfaction, such as the comment ‘typical Chinese style’ usually connects with ‘cheap’ which is similar to the cliché of Chinese products: cheap but have poor quality. On the other hand, Chinese restaurateurs have not realized the value of their culture. The number of non-Chinese restaurants is much more than typical Chinese restaurants, as the restaurateurs pay more attention to gaining profit by selling low-cost food, but not attaching cultural value in their business. Another reason is Chinese food business was pummeled by people’s scare during SARS. Thus, many Chinese restaurateurs had to cut off their business with Chinese identity (Eleonora 2009). Hence, overseas Chinese food business is an appropriate point-cut of intercultural dialogue, not only because of the prerequisites that it is relatively accepted by Italian but also because there are demands of cross-cultural communication.

5 Design Goals

Aiming at fostering intercultural dialogue between Chinese migrants and local citizens in Milan, the design should first take place in dealing with the Chinese migratory community’s problem, such as language barrier, quality improving, the closeness of the social network, so to improve the community’s public image. Meanwhile, the design also can be helpful to enrich Italian people’s knowledge about Chinese migrants and Chinese culture, towards to dispose of misunderstandings and stereotypes. In the light of investigation mentioned above, there are four aspects that design can intervene in:

  1. (a)

    Information sharing: since communication is an interactive process that creates shared meaning by sending, transmitting, or giving information to others (Carey 2002; Stajcic 2013), design can bring more interactions and more ways of interaction in the process of communication. Besides, design can help to overcome the communication barriers by taking food as the non-verbal language between Chinese migrant restauranteurs and Italian customers. Thus, through design for information sharing, Chinese restauranteurs will better meet customers ‘needs and Italian customers’ will perceive product and service quality better.

  2. (b)

    Participatory knowledge production: design can foster the participatory knowledge production based on food in which Chinese migrants, Italian customers, and other actors can dialogue, cooperate, conflict, and compromise equally. The participatory process endows actors with changeful roles, for instance, the Chinese restauranteur is not only a provider who offers product and service, but also a listener of his customers, a speaker of his identity, a learner of the host culture, an innovator of migratory food business, a contributor of the intercultural dialogue, etc. The new knowledge produced in such a participatory process can help Chinese migrants to cater their business to Italian customers, on the other hand, it can also enrich Italian people’s knowledge about Chinese migrants and Chinese culture, so to deal with negative stereotypes in the cross-cultural context.

  3. (c)

    Co-create value: food culture is not static nor isolated, but keeps changing and evolving with the environment. Specifically, Chinese food in Milan needs to keep pace with the local customers’ demands and adapt to the culture of the host society. Design can enable Chinese migrants and Italian hosts to the co-create value of Chinese cuisine in the context of Milan. The empathy coincides with the co-create value so that the Chinese migrant community and Italian host society can be bridged.

  4. (d)

    Scale out from individuals to communities: the innovation of Chinese migrant food business can contribute to Chinese migrants’ public image, and help them to gain more business opportunities. The innovation can first take place in the Chinese food business, and influence to other migratory aspects, such as retailing, wholesale, manufactory, import-export, etc., then scale out to the overseas Chinese communities and towards to a broader intercultural dialogue.

6 Conclusion

In summary, intercultural dialogue is significant to cope with culture conflicts in the age of globalization. Food for its communicational and cultural attributes can be regard as a point-cut for fostering intercultural dialogue. This paper focuses on the cross-cultural context of Milan and two digital methods are conducted to capture Chinese migrants’ food business in Milan and to extract meanings from customers’ online feedbacks so to explore customers’ viewpoints and stereotypes in this context. The result shows that the Chinese food business has achieved a considerable scale in Milan and the food provided by Chinese restaurants are widely accepted. However, the restauranteurs are not aware enough the cultural value of Chinese food and there are some stereotypes impeded the cross-cultural communication, thus, it calls for the efforts from both migrants and Italian hosts. The paper proposes four design goals according to the investigation. In the light of design goals, the further design practices can take place in the three aspects:service design supporting information sharing; participatory design for knowledge co-production and co-create value; and design for social innovation.

This paper provides a reference to improve migrant community’s public image and enrich the knowledge of the host society so to bridge the cultural gap towards to the sustainable pluralistic society. Hence it provides a base for design activities aimed at a better reciprocal knowledge and appreciation between native and migrant communities sharing the same territory. It also shows the possibility to enable individuals to move forward together, to deal with different identities, to share values basing on intercultural dialogue as a potential of cultural, social and economic growth in urban environments.