After I became a doctoral candidate toward the end of 2003, I immediately made up my mind to take a course in Hangzhou, for I really wanted to know everything about Chinese calligraphy. I needed to take a close look at the calligraphy literature in early history of China. Such a study was not likely in Italy. And unlike some sinologists who studied Chinese calligraphy, I wanted to be an excellent calligrapher. Writing like a qualified calligrapher would help a great deal for a profound academic study of calligraphy. Only in China can an international student become a really good calligrapher. I still think so today.

Interestingly enough, it was during my second study in Hangzhou that I dismissed the previous doctoral dissertation and decided to focus on Treatise on Calligraphy by Sun Guoting (646-691), a Chinese calligrapher of the early Tang Dynasty. The work was the first important theoretical work on Chinese calligraphy, and has remained important ever since, though only part of it survived. I happened to see a copy of the treatise in a display gallery by a bus stop in Hangzhou in the early 2001 when I was taking my first course in calligraphy at China Academy of Art. I was profoundly impressed by the grandeur and elegance of the long scroll replica which is 9.06 meters long.

The second course I took was a graduate course at Zhejiang University. I studied under the guidance of Professor Chen Zhenlian, a prominent calligrapher. It was at Zhejiang University that I got really immersed in academic studies. I learned to view academic issues from historical and cultural perspectives. I made rapid progress largely because of the rich resources available at the university and because I got useful help and feedback from classmates in the same course. Among them was Yao Yuliang, now a professor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Yao and other friends directed me to take a closer look at the nuances of calligraphy, which I wouldn’t have noticed if they hadn’t guided or demonstrated to me. As I planned to write a treatise for the graduate course, I spent more than a year writing a treatise titled the Style of Treatise on Calligraphy in Chinese. In the spring of 2005, Professor Chen examined my treatise and praised me in front of all my classmates. He said the treatise was good enough for publishing with some minor amendments. I was very happy. This treatise later became the core of my doctoral dissertation. After the doctoral dissertation, I wrote a book which was centered on the graduate treatise.

I did not finish my graduate course at Zhejiang University. After weighing pros and cons of several options, I decided to give up the graduate course and go back to Italy to finish my doctoral study. As a sinologist in the west, I need to abide by an international academic perspective before I can conduct a dialogue with other sinologists. I finished my doctoral dissertation and attained a PhD degree. Now I teach at University of Naples "L'Orientale". I have kept constant contact with Chinese colleagues and friends.

Since then I have visited Hangzhou many times for taking part in academic programs and meeting friends.

In 2018, I wrote a dozen articles about my 20-year experiences in China. They were published in Calligraphy, a professional monthly founded in 1977 and based in Shanghai.

From 2007 to the second half of 2019, I held public lectures at universities and libraries across China. The interaction between the public and me at these lectures was pleasurable and eye-opening. I cherish such an experience because I think the positive response of the public means that calligraphy is more than an academic subject studied only at higher education institutions and that it is a cultural experience the public appreciate and enjoy.