◼ COVID-19 / US Bloomberg Businessweek March 16, 202052
China. He’s witnessed how China’s rise in the past
20 years created opportunity and hostility in one of
Europe’s most fragile economies. As many Italians
see it, competition from China’s manufacturers
since the late 1990s contributed to the country’s
slow economic decline. At the same time, China
has been a boon for Italian exporters—from Prada
to Ferrari to hundreds of smaller companies such
as Faam. Italian consumers also spend billions of
euros on smartphones, toys, and other Chinese-
made goods.
But the animosity has been simmering, with
occasional flare-ups of anti-Chinese demonstra-
tions in cities including Prato, near Florence, and
Milan, home to large Chinese immigrant commu-
nities. The outbreak of Covid-19 helped bring the
anger into the open. Luca Zaia, governor of theVeneto region and a member of the anti-migrant
League party, said the virus spread in China
because the country lacks a culture of hygiene and
food safety compared with Europe. “We have all
seen them eat live rats or other stuff,” he said in
a TV interview, only to apologize some days later
in a letter to the Chinese ambassador in Rome.
In Monterubbiano, the Vitalis decided to
self-quarantine again, pulling their daughter from
school and avoiding social contact, even though
at the time the Italian government was imposing
no restrictions on those returning from China. No
other incident occurred, and the family joined the
local Carnevale festivities in late February. “Even
if someone doesn’t love us,” Vitali says, “most of
the town does.”
Still, the posters had shaken the family. Vitali
decided to return to Nanjing with his wife and
all three daughters in early March. He thought
the timing might be opportune for his business:
A competitor in Wuhan was struggling amid the
containment. By then, however, Italy had becomeBeginning on Feb. 15, the hospital put Zhu on
a feeding tube, a catheter and, eventually, a respi-
rator. The next few days were full of dread, and Li’s
heart sank every time the phone rang, fearing bad
news. She finally got the call at 8 a.m. on Feb. 26:
The doctors said her mother might not make it. By
the time she got to the hospital, her mother had
died, her body wrapped in plastic and cremated.
“People who die are just a number on paper,”
she says. “My grandma didn’t even make it as a
number,” because she died before testing posi-
tive for the novel coronavirus. “The worst part
is I couldn’t be there to take care of them in per-
son. I never saw my mom or even got to say
goodbye to her in her final days.” �Lulu ChenMonterubbiano, Italy
In late January entrepreneur Ermanno Vitali,
41, decided he would leave Nanjing, China, with
his Chinese wife and two of his three daughters
and return to his central Italian hometown of
Monterubbiano. The novel coronavirus was already
spreading in and beyond Wuhan, about 335 miles
from Nanjing, and the long Lunar New Year holi-
day would be a good time to sit out the outbreak in
his native land. After two weeks of quarantine at
the behest of Chinese authorities, he and his family
flew to Italy, where they would join his third daugh-
ter, who lived near Monterubbiano with Vitali’s par-
ents and attended school there.
He didn’t get the welcome he expected from
his hometown. Within days, news of the Vitalis’
return from China spread like wildfire in WhatsApp
groups and among the parents of his daughter’s
classmates. The walls, bus stops, and schools of
Monterubbiano were plastered with anonymous
messages warning the local population to stay away
from the family. “They came back secretly from
China, the Vitalis, without notifying the authori-
ties,” read the notices, which had been handwritten
and photocopied. “They are dangerous.”
“As soon as we arrived, a hunt for
‘plague-spreaders’ started,” he says, using a term
familiar to Italians from their school days. The
classic 19th century novel The Betrothed recounts
a plague in Milan in the 17th century. As conta-
gion spreads, the terrified population starts look-
ing for untori, or plague-spreaders, on whom to
vent their anger. In a memorable scene in the
book, a mob exacts summary justice on a sus-
pected untore.
Vitali, chief executive officer of the Chinese
branch of Faam, an Italian battery maker, is well
aware of the complicated feelings Italians have for▲ Zhu E’Yan, 61, and
her 86-year-old mother
died within weeks of
each other in Wuhan