Il riflesso del leone nell’occhio del drago

The essay attempts to compose, as in a type of mosaic, an image that the city of Venice and its symbol, the Grand Canal, project through the words of Chinese travelers, writers and poets who have painted them in their works. The result is a city full of suggestive reflections, the juncture of water, land, and sky; an image made of delicate stuff: colors, music, feelings; an image woven of eloquent and ancient symbols: night and day, moon and sun, shade and light; an image that, to Chinese eyes, projects a world far away and alien, but at the same time strangely familiar, lived as a locus of the soul, a metaphor of the inner life.