A paper read at the Hong Kong Branch of the Asia Society on October 8th, 2013.

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening!

My name is Angelo Paratico and I am the author of the short essay in the book 500 Years of Italians in Hong Kong and Macau dedicated to the secular – meaning non religious – Italian travellers to South China.

Before the publication of this book this subject had been never been dealt in a systematic manner – albeit incomplete- as we have done, even if we start with Julius Caesar and we end with our Consul General Alessandra Schiavo. How could this be complete? The spread is too wide.

Tonight I have decided to concentrate on one subject only:  Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli, Consul general of Italy in Hong Kong, Macau and Canton from 1899 up to 1919.

What you will hear tonight is basically new and unreleased. In Italy Zanoni Volpicelli is virtually unknown, probably because he always wrote in English, French and Chinese and only a little in Italian. He was nonetheless an eccentric character as well as a genius who would deserve a thick biography illustrating all his merits and achievements. I do hope that this talk will spur a more capable writer to dedicate his time to fill such biographic void.

The photo that you see here is not in the book. I found it in eBay just 3 weeks ago. It is a cutting from the Illustrazione Italiana dated around 1889. The caption is The Mandarin Zanoni Volpicelli, we’ll see later that this title is not an exaggeration. This etching was done using an Afong photo, Afong was a famous photographic studio, and his best pictures today cost thousand of dollars.

Most of what I’ll read tonight was taken from a paper published in Japan in 1965 by professor Kiyoshi Yamaguchi. I had it translated from Japanese into English. Professor Yamaguchi says that he found part of it in an Italian magazine printed in New York in the ’30s, Il Carroccio. Unfortunately I was unable to find that particular issue.

The title of Prof. Yamaguchi essay is The Man Who Brought Dante to the Orient. I am integrating it with some notes collected from Franco Pratesi where he calls Volpicelli The Italian Chameleon. Probably out of desperation for not having managed to find anything important about him.

Below is a picture on the cover of the book, the old Italian consulate in Hong Kong and our man is probably one of those lining out in front of the Italian consulate there, again sporting a pith helmet.

The name of Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli pops up here and there reading old travelogues written by Italians going to China at the beginning of last century. He was considered – even by the great Italian Journalist Luigi Barzini – the best Old China Hand available. Most Italians had a chat with him before entering China. We see an example of this in our essay when we are quoting the otherwise unremarkable merchant Domenico Antonio Mazzolani, in his book dated 1915.

Mazzolani had a meeting in Hong Kong with Volpicelli noting that, he was a vegetarian and a sort of fitness maniac who every morning walked down from the Peak to his office. ‘That’s the way he looks so young and fit’ he says.

Volpicelli was born in Naples in 1856 and lived a long life that ended in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1936 at the age of 80.

Italy in 1856, at the time of Volpicelli’s birth, did not exist yet as an united nation, he was thus a subject to the Bourbon monarchy ruling the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with capital in Naples. It was due to another man related to Hong Kong, Giuseppe Garibaldi – we see him up here – that with his one thousand volunteers red shirts who single-handed in 1860 reunified Italy. Garibaldi visited Hong Kong, Canton and Macau in 1852, while waiting for a new uprising to start in Italy that will give him the change to get back and fight. He was on a ship from Peru, the Carmen and back to Peru he went.

Volpicelli studied physics and mathematics in Naples, graduating in 1875. He then received a scholarship to study Chinese for three years at the Chinese academy of Naples, later renamed Oriental Institute, graduating in 1878. This was the opportunity that tied Volpicelli with China and eventually to Japan. Volpicelli not satisfied with that he later travelled to Syria to learn Arabic.

He then made his way to China in 1881, where he worked in finance. In 1884 we find him employed as a official interpreter in negotiations over a treaty between Italy and Korea – Korean officials could speak mandarin back then -.

In 1885 he was appointed by the Guangxu Emperor of China to the National Council he was involved in diplomatic negotiations when when the Chinese army, under Li Hungchan, pulled out of Vietnam. Volpicelli was in essence a top-level diplomat for China much in the way that Marco Polo was retained by Kublai Khan a long time ago. Hence the name Mandarin on the photo is thus appropriate! He then travelled to Russia and the following year, in 1886, he authored an essay on the Sino-Russian War under the Russian pen name of Vladimir. Written in English, the essay was printed in London.

Eleven years later, in 1897, he crossed again into Siberia and Russia researching folklore and local customs. By then he could speak Russian like a native. Using that trip Volpicelli wrote another essay; this time entitled Russia On the Pacific again in English and again under the penname of Vladimir, perhaps not to interfere with his position. It is still very useful when we study Russian history.

While in Shanghai, he found the time to publish the first descriptions of Chinese Chess and Wei-chi (another game) the first book in an European language. In 1899, he was appointed Consul to Hong Kong, Macau and Canton under the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The following year, in 1900, when the Boxer Uprising occurred, he had an important meeting with viceroy Li Hungchang; few Italian knows that China declared war on Italy but the order was kept back by Li Hungchang. His achievement was then praised by Italy’s Ambassador in Peking, the Marquis Salvago Raggi.

In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Volpicelli lent a hand in rescuing crew members of a Russian warship, the Varyag which was scuttled by his crew in Incheon, instead of surrendering to a Japanese fleet. The Italian cruiser Elba was there and this might explain Volpicelli’s presence in the rescue operations. Irony of destiny another Russian ship with the same name was taken over by China as an half finished carrier, refitted and launched just a few months ago, the carrier Liaoning.

Then, in 1911, Volpicelli crossed into Siberia and Russia again. With few Italians around, clearly diplomats back then had a lot of free time. That year a revolution broke out in Manchu’s China and, in 1912, the Republic of China was born. Volpicelli knew Sun Yatsen and Chan Kaishek but, because of the unstable political situation, from 1912 to 1919, Volpicelli watched the events unfold and constantly worked to avoid civil war at the risk of his own life. For his efforts, he won the appreciation of Sun Yatsen and the Canton military government.

In the meantime, from 1915 to 1919, he studied medicine at the University of Hong Kong graduating in obstetrics and gynaecology. It is unknown what motivated Volpicelli to study and specialize in medicine at the age of sixty!

Vita Nuova

In 1919 Volpicelli  – the same year in which Volpicelli completed his studies of medicine at the University of Hong Kong – anD retired from active diplomatic duties saw his life take a new turn, a mystical one. He was seeking the road that lead to the Hereafter. He then became a sort of wandering scholar.

Denis Diderot – the creator of the French Encyclopedie – was an atheist and he argued that, not hoping in a heavenly reward, the only hope left open to him was to live in the memory of future generations. Volpicelli was a religious man, not only an intellectual with a mathematical mind, but he looked for a material way leading to the afterworld. He then begun his quest investigating the teachings of Buddhism. He then translated Dante’s Divine Comedy into Chinese, but it seems he did it mainly to connect this literary masterpiece with Buddhist reports of travel in Heaven and in the perspective of the afterlife. He was clearly not married and had no children (Italian journalist Eric Salerno informs us that he had a wife and children) as he could decide where to go and what to do without familiar bonds. Volpicelli combed the Buddhist temples and sanctuaries of Southern China while cruising the country’s rivers and canals. For these travels, Volpicelli had a small boat just big enough for one person. He named it Procida – the name of a small island facing Ischia in the Gulf of Naples – and when the current was too strong and dangerous he would havehis small boat  transported by train or by ship to a suitable location where he would then set it afloat again. During those travels he frequently encountered Italian priests who were doing missionary work in remote places. In the summer of 1919, he met Father Baimo of the Franciscan Order in a town called Laiyan. Father Baimo was familiar with the rivers in those parts, so Volpicelli had Father Baimo accompany him down a river called the Shan to a town known as Henchow where he met another missionary of the Franciscan Order by the name of Mondani. There were many Buddhist temples and sanctuaries in and around Henchow. Volpicelli visited the Temple of the Wild Geese and the Temple of the Lotus Flower where he saw carvings depicting the Buddhist heaven and hell. In the company of these priests, Volpicelli remained as a guest for a long period of time at various temples. He also visited the temples of Ningbo. He ended up staying one week in Putou on the East China Sea. There, too, were many magnificent temples. Tiantong Temple on Mt. Taibai in Ningbo is where the celebrated Japanese monks Eisai and Dogen practiced their Zen meditation, and Zhoushan Island adjacent to Mt. Putou was a seaport for Japanese ships in the Tang and Sung dynasties.When he saw Ningbo and Mt. Putou, Volpicelli detected a religious connection between China and Japan, and decided to continue his research into the Buddhist afterlife in Japan.

In February of 1920, Volpicelli left Shanghai for Nagasaki. He did not, however, decide at this time to reside in Nagasaki, as he settled down there only in 1933. In order to visit the temples, sanctuaries and museums of Japan, Volpicelli went from Nagasaki to Miyajima, Osaka, Kyoto. In Kyoto, he found a report written in 934 by a Japanese monk by the name of Doken. It was Doken’s personal recount of his journey to heaven and hell. Volpicelli also viewed the scroll painting of heaven and hell by Nobumi Fujiwara, which is said to have been painted after reading Denko’s report. Volpicelli took special note of the fact that the year that Fujiwara died, 1265, was exactly the year in which Dante was born, hinting at reincarnation…

Here is a cutting from a Japanese newspaper, showing him close to age 80. We can see that he is now gone native.

Surprisingly enough he looked like one of his contemporaries, an English scolar living in Beijing, Edmund Backhouse. The famous Hermit of Peking, defamed by Hugh Trevor-Roper. The two men had several traits of their characters in common.

Eugenio Zanoni Volpicelli died in 1936 and was buried in the cemetery for foreigners in Nagasaki. His tombstone was engraved with his title of Commendatore  – he was a Commander of the order of St. Maurice and Lazarus, a very high title as it was conferred sparingly, only 500 Commendatore in the 85 years of Italy’s monarchic era under the House of Savoy – his name, his year of birth and death, and a cross, an indication that he had not converted to Buddhism, but was still a Christian.

His tomb was blown away by the blast from the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in August of 1945 and his tombstone remained shattered on the ground for about fifteen years, until a Chinese man – enquiring about Volpicelli’s resting place – found the tombstone’s fragments and offered to pay for its restoration. The authorities in Nagasaki restored Volpicelli’s gravesite with that money. We don’t know his name but he mist have been a friend of Volpicelli’s during his time in China.

Other than the works he wrote under his own name he also used the pen name of Vladimir, here is a short list:

-Early Portuguese Commerce and Settlements in China on the (Journal of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

-The Silver Question in China and Fluctuations of Prices (Shanghai, in English). This essay was prepared from research that Volpicelli did Royal Asiatic Society.

-Chinese Phonology, An Attempt to Discover the Sounds of the Ancient Language and to recover the Lost Rhymes of China.

We often hear that probably Cantonese is closer to old Chinese spoken a thousand years ago; Volpicelli was one of the first westerners to put forward a study.

– Also as Prononciation Ancienne du Chinos. Volpicelli presented this essay at the International Congress of Orientalists in Paris on behalf of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The year that the International Congress of Orientalists was held.

-The China Japan War compiled from Japanese-Chinese and Foreign Sources. Still important for the study of this conflict.

–Le Impressioni di un Cinese in Italia (Brano di Giornale Hsie-Fucheng, March 10 April 3, 1891. Translation by Z. Volpicelli, Naples, 1902). This work was a translation into Italian that Volpicelli did of the section dedicated to Italy from the diary of Manchu Ambassador Hsie Fu Ceng, who recounted what he saw and heard during his diplomatic duties in England, France, Belgium and Italy.

-Translation into Chinese of Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments the world-renowned treatise by Cesare Beccaria that condemned torture and the death penalty. One of the best book on the Enlightment who created a revolution in the field of Criminology. This was a bestseller published in 1764 in Milan and that was then and then translated in French, English, German going through countless editions.

I have been unable to locate the translation in Chinese of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Beccaria’s treatise on Crime and punishment perhaps with the help of some Chinese bibliophiles a copy could be found and republished, especially Beccaria’ great work which is important today as it was in 1764, when it was first released.

Thank you for your attention and good night.

We have received this article from Paolo Predonzan:

We are talking about boxing here, not about fighting.

There is a hell of a difference between boxing and fighting, between a boxer and a fighter.

I’m not trying to claim here that FMJ is the best fighter of all the times; he isn’t.

Beside to display many tattoos, a fighter needs to be: a very good puncher and a very, very tough guy.

Mayweather has a good pop and great accuracy but he hasn’t a devastating power such as Mike Tyson or Tommy Hearns had. They were great punchers, Mayweather isn’t.

And he is a tough guy but even if he wasn’t and never will be, due to his style, in the position to show his real toughness, nobody will put him in the same league of Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler or Julio Caesar Chavez.

So definitely, he is not the best fighter ever.

Now, what is boxing and who is the boxer?

I find a bit too fancy the definition of boxing as “the noble art”. That’s just a nice phrase that doesn’t define, precisely, the essence and purpose of boxing.

To me, boxing is a sport where the aim is to hit your opposer, without getting hit from him.

Easy to say than to do it.

In order to achieve this goal, the boxer has to possess very many qualities.

He doesn’t need to be just the best on something. If, for instance, he will have just the best defense, this will not make him to win many matches.

And having the best footwork but lacking other skills will, sooner or later, put this boxer in great difficulty when facing a fighter able to slow him down with restlessness pressure and great power.

Because the problem here, is that the guy in front of you is trying to do exactly the same thing you are trying to do, that is to use his best abilities in order to prevail over you.

FMJ greatest ability is to adapt to his opposers’ style, nullifying their boxing skills.

Again, this is easy saying than doing.

Since there are many different styles of boxing, FMJ can do this because he is very good… in just everything.

–          He has strategy; he decides the speed and timing of the fight, when to defend or when to attack his opposer. Everything is decided in a split of a second through a rational analysis of the boxing abilities of his contender.

–          He dictates the pace of the match mastering defense skill, counter-pouching, footwork, head-control and clinching in order to control his contender’s attack and then hitting him with accuracy and great variety of punches.

–          He can adapt not only to his opposer but also to his own condition: when he broke his right hand, he used only his left hand, pushed his defense and footwork to win that match and was able to do the same when, in another match, was the left hand to be broken. He did not panic, he changed strategy, adapting to the situation and won again.

FMJ style is more close to martial arts than to classic boxing.

He is in fact, very confident, very dedicated and when he fights, relaxed and very, very focused.

Looking at his career, it is amazing to notice that he took decisions that seemed illogic to everybody but were actually very wise.

When 23 years old and already world champion, he took a match with no title-on-stake against Emanuel Augustus, a very tough opposer.

Why he did it? Because Augustus was the perfect guy to prepare him for future fights against Corrales and Cotto.

Had FMJ fought Corrales or Cotto without the experience of the match against Augustus, he probably hadn’t defeated the two strong pressure-punchers.

He took Canelo Alvarez when everybody had suggested not taking him, because too big, more than 20 pounds heavier and too dangerous opposer.

But he did it at the right time, just before Canelo, a rising boxing star, could have built the necessary experience to be at his level and made in this way a 2 million pay-per-view match come true and took Canelo to school.

FMJ is also a great athlete. His conditioning being always fantastic, allowed him to be able to use his footwork against bigger opposers like De La Hoja, Cotto or Canelo.

His speed, quick reflexes and good chin, are his natural gifts and he worked hard to get the best from them.

Finally, he was able to do something that shows his amazing business’ skill.

If you looked at the match with Cotto, you saw FMJ winning easily the first round jabbing and moving.

He could have done the same for the remaining 11 rounds but he decided to fight inside with Cotto.

The result was a closer toe-to-toe match that fans loved as never before. Fans, not technicians.

Technicians disagreed with FMJ choice to take that risk with a bigger guy and puncher like Cotto but the point for Mayweather there was to impress the fans and gain a super rich contract of 200 million $ with Showtime.

If all this is not greatness, let me know what it is.

Paolo Predonzan

The British Presence in Macau 1635-1793 by Rogério Miguel Puga

reviewed by Angelo Paratico

6 September 2013 — One of the most famous incidents—and there were indeed many—caused by British traders in the South China sea was that of the ship Lady Hughes in 1784. When entering Whampoa, a cannon’s salute was fired, an old European habit that greatly annoyed the Chinese. That particular cannon, unfortunately, was loaded with live ammunition and hit a small boat, killing two Chinese fishermen and injuring one.

The Mandarin in Canton demanded that the authorities in Macau—which in Chinese eyes were always responsible for the conduct of all Western barbarians reaching Canton— hand over the men who fired the cannon for torture and beheading. The Portuguese responded that the culprits had gone missing and that, anyway, it had been only an incident.

The Chinese then demanded that any British national, it didn’t matter whom, be turned over. Trade was suspended, food supplies were cut out and finally the British had to deliver their oldest sailor for execution.

Rogério Miguel Puga’s new book The British Presence in Macau 1635-1793, which draws on Portuguese as well as British sources, discusses the usually fraught relationship between these two colonial powers as they wrestled for influence on the South China coast.

Starting with the arrival of the first English vessel in Macau—the London under the command of Matthew Willis in 1635—relations between the Portuguese and the British were stormy and painful, marked by reciprocal mistrust. The Macanese were in need of protection against Dutch and had to accommodate in one way or another the heretic British traders.

After the collapse of the lucrative trade with Japan circa 1640 due to Dutch interference, Macau had to rely on trade procured by British merchants and put up with their troublesome crews. The standard of education among sailors was not high; the words of Samuel Johnson come to mind: “No man would be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in jail, with the chance of being drowned… A man in jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.”

Puga reminds us that the British were late-comers in China and had to rely on Macau as the only stepping-stone then available to them, even if they never fully accepted Portugal’s sovereignty over it and resented the fact that the Portuguese were constantly at the mercy of the Chinese Mandarinate of Canton. Since the very beginning, the British schemed and planned to occupy Macau manu militari perhaps not understanding that China—sensing that they were much more dangerous—would not have granted them the same concessions. British designs on Macau ended only in 1841  with the occupation of Hong Kong.

The Dutch tried to capture Macau in 1622 with fourteen ships which were joined by two British vessels, the Palsgrave and the Bull. But by the next year, this Anglo-Dutch cooperation soured after the “Amboina Massacre”: the Dutch in Ambon (present day Maluku) tortured and beheaded ten British in the service of East India Company on accusations of treason, along with a Portuguese and nine Japanese samurai accomplices. When this news reached England, it caused a great uproar against the Dutch.

Starting from about 1700, the British started negotiating directly with the Chinese authorities using Macau as a depot and temporary residence when trade was closed in Canton. The Portuguese were dismayed by the turn of events but by then they could not do without their guests, even if their passion for prostitutes and for luxury—fuelled by the sale of opium they were cultivating in India—was causing hyperinflation: the price of prime property was soaring, even the British had to use local residents to act as buyers.

The Portuguese never failed to keep their Chinese counterparts well-informed about the British, ensuring that they were fully aware that the British were very “deceitful and hypocritical”. The British Presence in Macau ends with notes on the failed Lord Macartney’s embassy to China of 1792-1794, revealing that the Portuguese and the few Jesuits still present in Beijing at the Qianlong court made sure that it would end as such.

But the British won in the end, of course, even linguistically. Pidgin English soon became the lingua franca of South China replacing Portuguese. Words like savvy or expressions like no money no talk or long time no see travelled back to Europe and America and are still with us.

This book by Rogério Miguel Puga is an essential tool for the study of development of the relations between Great Britain and China before the Opium Wars. It gives a new and independent perspective, not parroting the standard views offered by British historians.

British Presence in Macau, 1635-1793, Rogério Miguel Puga (Hong Kong University Press, May 2013)

© 2013 The Asian Review of Books.

This is a golden book, a book to be read and re-read and then kept close to our desk. A book that should have been printed as a hard back, folio format, using thick handmade paper, like the Good Book.

Here we are dealing with a wonderful work overflowing with wisdom, art and battle-hardened life. Few books I have read in recent years have open a wide crack into my soul like this one, a crack that, I know, will never close.

Simon Leys is the pen name of Pierre Ryckmans, a Belgian Sinologist who had been teaching in Australia since 1970 writing in an impeccable English a large number of essays which we now find here, gathered like flowers, into this book. Leys is also the author of several books, like Chinese Shadows, The Death of Napoleon, The Wreck of the Batavia & Prosper, and of a great translation of the Analects of Confucius, the best available in my opinion and perhaps here I know what I am talking about, having translated the same book into Italian a long time ago.

Simon Leys was in his youth a Hong Kong resident and the title of this collection comes straight from that period, from a poor hut where he had been living. It was placed in a Kowloon’s squatter area, a flophouse he had called home for two years, as guest of a former Taiwanese schoolmate, a calligrapher and seal carver. They were sleeping in the same miserable room with an historian and a learned philologist. A sign was hanging over them Wu Yong Tong The Hall of Uselessness. These characters were chosen by the philologist, and were inspired by The Book of Changes ‘in springtime the dragon is useless’ the meaning is that young people with talents should remain hidden. In that hovel, in the company of his three friends, Leys had been happy. That had been his real university – yes, among leaking tin roofs and fat rats – in his opinion that should be a model for a future’s university, taking the rats away.  Not institutions cranking out people who know a lot but understand little but men and women with courage to stand by their ideals.

This collection comprises essays about world literature and in particular French literature that Leys master extremely well. The red thread uniting them all is Ley’s deep and unorthodox views, which caused him many troubles over the years. Several of the so called maître a penser and academics based in Paris, New York and London had picked on him and his views but at the end Leys had been proven right and they wrong.

I have found particularly interesting his 1997’s essay on the bombastic and fraudulent André Malraux. In a famous interview with Chairman Mao Tzetung, which made news all over the world, almost everything was made up by the devious Frenchman. This becomes evident looking at the transcripts of the Chinese interpreter as well as the French interpreter. Not only Malraux cheated and invented but even managed to miss the real news that Mao was giving him: the Cultural Revolution, before it was even launched!

We find several essays on Oriental art, history and politics, which form the largest part of this book and which should not be missed. They are dealing with China’s past and future. And, as Orwell said in his Nineteen eighty-four if you can control the present, you control the past. If you control the past, you control the future.

Simon Leys The Hall of Uselessness. Collected Essays. New York Review of Books, New York, 2013.

ISBN 978-1-59017-638-2

Oprah Winfrey, while in Switzerland attending Tina Turner’s wedding in late July, had a nasty confrontation with  an humble shop assistant. Winfrey is a talk-show host and TV personality and she has appeared in numerous films; she has written books and formed her own television network.

Whilst shopping in Zurich, Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight: “I go into a store and say to the woman, “‘excuse me, may I see that bag over your head?’ and she says to me ‘no, it’s too expensive.'” Winfrey proceeded to ask again to see the bag but the sales assistant responded “no, no, no, you don’t want to see that one, you want to see this one, because that one will cost too much and you will not be able to afford that.”

She, once more, requested to see the bag, but was denied. The 59-year-old television personality went on to tell the shop assistant “I really do just want to see that one,’ and she said, ‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings,’ and I said, ‘OK thank you so much, you’re probably right, I can’t afford it and walked out of the store.” The crocodile bag by Tom Ford bag was priced at $38.000, of course all peanuts for Winfrey who made $77 million between June 2012-June 2013 (according to the Forbes List). Winfrey was quick to add that she would have never bought it at that crazy price: being an expert in communication she knew that it would have been a great faux pas with millions of her fans who could not afford it.

Winfrey was more concerned with the shop assistant not able to recognize her, how is it possible, with such a great personality? She focused more on the ridiculous nature of the situation as opposed to any possible racist overtones. She further commented by saying “. I didn’t have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and sandals.’ But then she could not resist the temptation of pushing the ‘racism button’ and she did it.

Fact is that the shop assistant was an Italian immigrant, not a Swiss national. And here are her words, speaking on condition of anonymity, too scared to put her name down. She gave an interview to the Swiss Sunday magazine ‘Blick’.

“It is something terrible and since a few days I can’t sleep, it is like be in the eye of a storm, feeling totally powerless.  What has happened is horrible, ” she says “I am not a racist, I am Italian, why should I discriminate someone because of her origin? It is simply absurd.”  The sales assistant thinks false the accusations made by Winfrey against her and she adds: “I would have never said such things to a customer, never. Courtesy and good manners are the basic principles of our work. I did nothing wrong to anybody, ever, but she is so powerful and I am a simple sales assistant. I cannot understand why she has made up that story on TV. If this was a true story why not complain to Trudie Goetz, the owner of the shop, who also was at Tina Turner’s wedding? It is something which I cannot really understand.

Here is her version of the events: “Saturday 20 July, afternoon, she entered our shop with a friend, perhaps her bodyguard. There were 3 sales assistance, including me and she asked where the lady section was. I took her to the first floor and asked if she wanted to see something special. She told me that she has never been in a boutique like that in Switzerland and she looked around. I did show to her Jennifer Aniston’s bags, which are very popular, explaining that there are several sizes and materials”, then she added that “she spotted on a very high shelf the 35.000 Swiss Franks crocodile bag. I told her that it was a bag exactly like the one in my hand, but the difference was in the price, much more expensive. And that I could show her more bags.” Of those expensive bags they are selling about 4 or 5 each year.

The sales assistant further explained that  more than 50% of their clientele is international coming from all over the world. She had never had any problem before. She spoke in English with Oprah Winfrey and her English is OK but unfortunately not excellent. She is trying her best to treat all customers in the same way and her job is help selling what they have, a work she enjoys greatly. Last Friday – still shell shocked – she asked Trudie Goetz, her boss, if she should resign but she had refused being very understanding and supportive.

After reading her words I have to admit that my heart goes to this humble shop assistant from Milan, forced to work in another Country by the crisis in her native city as opposed to a rich, arrogant and capricious woman who could not resist making up a good tale for her public. Race and gender do not count, it is a just a matter of bon ton and when you have such great power you should be kind and gracious to the common people. If you feel slighted by the fact that they don’t know who you are, you should not trample them under your feet like an elephant gone mad.

I am translating here the partial content of an article published on the 3rd of August 2005 on the Secolo d’Italia, an Italian daily newspaper. It was about the 60 years of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and the misconceptions surrounding it, false ideas which are still going around today, in 2013. I am not translating it verbatim, but summarizing the main points. No one knows exactly how many people died because of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Perhaps 70.000 on the first day and 200.000 in the next five years. That bomb marked the high point of the Manhattan project which had involved 200.00 people with an estimated investment of 2.5 billions USD. The US was pounding all the cities of Japan with aerial bombings, but some of their strategists thought that the campaign will lead to nothing, only indiscriminate killing of civilians, leaving the armament sector standing. One of the worst bombing was that of Tokyo of 14 August 1945 – mark this date – which lasted 14 hours and involved 1.014 bombers unloading 60.000 tons of bombs on the Japanese capital. At the same time the Japanese radio was broadcasting the voice of the Japanese Emperor announcing their surrender. That was a sort of final and useless fireworks display to close the war. Harry Truman promoted the idea that the war was ended by the atom bombs and that after all they saved lives by consuming lives. A concept that, perhaps, Saint Peter will have problem endorsing. It is true that the estimates for a land invasion – scheduled for the 1st of November 1945 – would have involved American casualties as high as 1 million. The battle of Okinawa of 21 June 1945 had ended with the loss of 12.000 Americans lives, a price too high to pay for the Americans. At that time the Japanese army still had 4 million soldiers able to fight and had hundreds of Kamikaze planes ready to be thrown into battle. Americans  were pressing Stalin to join the war against Japan. This is the American version of the events, a recurring theme, repeated ad nauseam in documentaries, books, articles and films. But is it really all true? Modern historiography seems to tell another story. The war for Japan was clearly directed by Tokyo but due to poor communications, fallen telephone lines, roads out of use, the enormity of the atomic bombing could not be appreciated in a matter of 2 days by the people who directed the war, first among them, Emperor Hiro Hito. The Soviet declaration of war of the 8th of August was a shock much stronger than the bombing of Hiroshima, the final sign that all was lost.

It is interesting to note that in 1946 Albert Einstein said that in his opinion the atomic bombs had been used to quicken the end of the war before the attack by Stalin, which at that point was absolutely not welcome by the US and he also thought that with Roosevelt alive he would have never authorized the use of the bomb.

Japan for months had been desperately looking for a way out of that war. The Japanese refusal to surrender was essentially based on the declaration by Roosevelt at Casablanca on January 1943 about a surrender ‘without conditions’ which went down well with his electorate at home but basically meant nothing. Such words surprised even Churchill when they were uttered. The reason is simple: since man started warfare there had always been conditions, no matter how harsh they might be. The meaning of Roosevelt words was that they were resolute to win at all cost. The problem was that he died soon after and his successor, Truman, interpreted them literally.

For Japan it would have been enough an agreement to leave the emperor on the chrysanthemum throne – as they finally did – and they would have raised the white flag. This opinion was shared by all the men in Truman’s team except one, the most powerful of them, Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes – a complex man who be a perfect case study for a psychoanalyst. A man full of hate, unfulfilled ambitions, egotist, who despised Truman for having taken the position of President when he though it was already in his pocket. There was even a third bomb ready for lunch and the target was Tokyo, Byrnes was pushing to use it, but luckily Truman that time opted for a conventional air attack. It is an historical fact that Churchill, MacArthur, Leahy, Grew, Eisenhower, Stettinus, Nimitz, Stimson and many other were pressing Truman – since at least May 1945 – to include the ‘Emperor Clause’ in the peace feelers presented to the Japanese Government but because of the negative influence of Byrnes this was never done. Those men could see that the real enemy at that time was the URSS not the wretched Japanese. Japan was destined to be their ally as they had been during WWI. The irresolute Truman, unable to think differently than Byrnes, proposed a last ultimatum to Japan on 26 July 1945 but again the ‘Emperor Clause’ was missing. The Japanese Government, after having discussed it, seeing that nothing knew was in it, refused to answer. Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki used a term that is still famous in diplomatic circles ‘mokusatu’ that means ‘answer with silence.’

We close here with the somber words of Willard H. Reeves, a chaplain in the American navy.

That evening we quietly met for dinner. We knew well before the launch of the bomb that the enemy was defeated and they were looking for peace. There was sadness lingering in the air at the though that Hiroshima had been destroyed for nothing. At the end an officer broke the silence: ‘Why?’ was all he could say…

When I returned home, after the war and I was telling my story, people looked at me in bewilderment. They had all been convinced by the press and by the statements released by people in Government’s that the launch of the two bombs had been necessary to end the war.

In a historical period full of vulgarity, (It. slang full of Tamarri) let’s get back to the Gentleman!

The term gentleman (from Latin gentilis, belonging to a race or “gens”, and “man”, cognate with the French word gentilhomme, the Spanish gentilhombre and the Italian gentil uomo or gentiluomo), in its original and strict signification, denoted a man of good family, analogous to the Latin generosus (its invariable translation in English-Latin documents). In this sense the word equates with the French gentilhomme (nobleman), which latter term was in Great Britain long confined to the peerage. The term “gentry” (from the Old French genterise for gentelise) has much of the social class significance of the French noblesse or of the German Adel, but without the strict technical requirements of those traditions (such as quarters of nobility). This was what the rebels under John Ball in the 14th century meant when they repeated:
When Adam delft and Eve span, Who was then the Gentleman? John Selden in Titles of Honour (1614), discussing the title “gentleman”, speaks of “our English use of it” as “convertible with nobilis” (an ambiguous word, like ‘noble’ meaning elevated either by rank or by personal qualities) and describes in connection with it the forms of ennobling in various European countries.
To a degree, “gentleman” signified a man with an income derived from property, a legacy or some other source, and was thus independently wealthy and did not need to work. The term was particularly used of those who could not claim nobility or even the rank of esquire. Widening further, it became a politeness for all men, as in the phrase “Ladies and Gentlemen,…” and this was then used (often with the abbreviation Gents) to indicate where men could find a lavatory, without the need to indicate precisely what was being described.
In modern speech, the term is usually democratised so as to include any man of good, courteous conduct, or even to all men (as in indications of gender-separated facilities, or as a sign of the speaker’s own courtesy when addressing others).
Gentleman by conduct Chaucer in the Meliboeus (circa 1386) says: “Certes he sholde not be called a gentil man, that… ne dooth his diligence and bisynesse, to kepen his good name”; and in The Wife of Bath’s Tale:
Loke who that is most vertuous alway Prive and apert, and most entendeth ay To do the gentil dedes that he can And take him for the gretest gentilman And in the Romance of the Rose (circa 1400) we find: “he is gentil bycause he doth as longeth to a gentilman”.
This use develops through the centuries, until in 1714 we have Steele, in Tatler (No. 207), laying down that “the appellation of Gentleman is never to be affixed to a man’s circumstances, but to his Behaviour in them”, a limitation over-narrow even for the present day. In this connection, too, one may quote the old story, told by some—very improbably—of James II, of the monarch who replied to a lady petitioning him to make her son a gentleman, “I could make him a nobleman, but God Almighty could not make him a gentleman”.
Selden, however, in referring to similar stories “that no Charter can make a Gentleman, which is cited as out of the mouth of some great Princes that have said it”, adds that “they without question understood Gentleman for Generosus in the antient sense, or as if it came from Genii/is in that sense, as Gentilis denotes one of a noble Family, or indeed for a Gentleman by birth”. For “no creation could make a man of another blood than he is”.
The word “gentleman”, used in the wide sense with which birth and circumstances have nothing to do, is necessarily incapable of strict definition. For “to behave like a gentleman” may mean little or much, according to the person by whom the phrase is used; “to spend money like a gentleman” may even be no great praise; but “to conduct a business like a gentleman” implies a high standard.
William Harrison William Harrison, writing a century earlier, says “gentlemen be those whom their race and blood, or at the least their virtues, do make noble and known”. A gentleman was in his time usually expected to have a coat of arms, it being accepted that only a gentleman could have a coat of arms; and Harrison gives the following account of how gentlemen were made in Shakespeare’s day:
Gentlemen whose ancestors are not known to come in with William duke of Normandy (for of the Saxon races yet remaining we now make none accompt, much less of the British issue) do take their beginning in England after this manner in our times. Who soever studieth the laws of the realm, who so abideth in the university, giving his mind to his book, or professeth physic and the liberal sciences, or beside his service in the room of a captain in the wars, or good counsel given at home, whereby his commonwealth is benefited, can live without manual labour, and thereto is able and will bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman, he shall for money have a coat and arms bestowed upon him by heralds (who in the charter of the same do of custom pretend antiquity and service, and many gay things) and thereunto being made so good cheap be called master, which is the title that men give to esquires and gentlemen, and reputed for a gentleman ever after. Which is so much the less to be disallowed of, for that the prince doth lose nothing by it, the gentleman being so much subject to taxes and public payments as is the yeoman or husbandman, which he likewise doth bear the gladlier for the saving of his reputation. Being called also to the wars (for with the government of the commonwealth he medleth little) what soever it cost him, he will both array and arm himself accordingly, and show the more manly courage, and all the tokens of the person which he representeth. No man hath hurt by it but himself, who peradventure will go in wider buskins than his legs will bear, or as our proverb saith, now and then bear a bigger sail than his boat is able to sustain.
Shakespeare
Richard Brathwait’s The Complete English Gentleman (1630) showing the exemplary qualities of a gentlemanIn this way Shakespeare himself was demonstrated, by the grant of his coat of arms, to be no “vagabond” but a gentleman. The inseparability of arms and gentility is shown by two of his characters:
Petruchio: I swear I’ll cuff you if you strike again. Katharine: So may you lose your arms: If you strike me, you are no gentleman; And if no gentleman, why then no arms. (The Taming of the Shrew, Act II Scene i.) However, although only a gentleman could have a coat of arms (so that possession of a coat of arms was proof of gentility), the coat of arms recognised rather than created the status (see G D Squibb The High Court of Chivalry at pp 170-177). Thus, all armigers were gentlemen, but not all gentlemen were armigers. Hence Henry V, act IV, scene iii:
For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother: be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition. And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here And hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks That fought with us upon St. Crispin’s Day. [edit] Superiority of the fighting man The fundamental idea of “gentry”, symbolised in this grant of coat-armour, had come to be that of the essential superiority of the fighting man; and, as Selden points out (page 707), the fiction was usually maintained in the granting of arms “to an ennobled person though of the long Robe wherein he hath little use of them as they mean a shield”.
At the last the wearing of a sword on all occasions was the outward and visible sign of a “gentleman”; the custom survives in the sword worn with “court dress”.
A suggestion that a gentleman must have a coat of arms was vigorously advanced by certain 19th and 20th century heraldists, notably Arthur Charles Fox-Davies in England and Thomas Innes of Learney in Scotland. But the suggestion is discredited by an examination, in England, of the records of the High Court of Chivalry and, in Scotland, by a judgment of the Court of Session (per Lord Mackay in Maclean of Ardgour v. Maclean [1941] SC 613 at 650). The significance of a right to a coat of arms was that it was definitive proof of the status of gentleman, but it recognised rather than conferred such a status and the status could be and frequently was accepted without a right to a coat of arms.
Confucianism The Far East also held similar ideas to the West of what a ‘gentleman’ is, which are based on Confucian principles. The term “Junzi” (??) is a term crucial to classical Confucianism. Literally meaning “son of a ruler”, “prince” or “noble”, the ideal of a “gentleman”, “proper man”, “exemplary person”, or “perfect man” is that for which Confucianism exhorts all people to strive. A succinct description of the “perfect man” is one who “combine[s] the qualities of saint, scholar, and gentleman” (CE). (In modern times, the masculine bias in Confucianism may have weakened, but the same term is still used; the masculine translation in English is also traditional and still frequently used.) A hereditary elitism was bound up with the concept, and gentlemen were expected to act as moral guides to the rest of society. They were to:
cultivate themselves morally; participate in the correct performance of ritual; show filial piety and loyalty where these are due; and cultivate humaneness. The opposite of the Junzi was the Xiaorén (??), literally “small person” or “petty person.” Like English “small”, the word in this context in Chinese can mean petty in mind and heart, narrowly self-interested, greedy, superficial, and materialistic.
Robert E. Lee Lee’s definition speaks only to conduct.
The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman. The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly — the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He can not only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.[1]
Gentry That a distinct order of “gentry” existed in England very early has, indeed, been often assumed, and is supported by weighty authorities. Thus the late Professor Freeman (in Encyclopædia Britannica xvii. page 540 b, 9th edition) said: “Early in the 11th century the order of ‘gentlemen’ as a separate class seems to be forming as something new. By the time of the conquest of England the distinction seems to have been fully established”. Stubbs (Const. Hist., ed. 1878, iii. 544, 548) takes the same view. Sir George Sitwell, however, has suggested that this opinion is based on a wrong conception of the conditions of medieval society, and that it is wholly opposed to the documentary evidence.[citation needed]
The fundamental social cleavage in the Middle Ages was between the nobiles, i.e. the tenants in chivalry, whether earls, barons, knights, esquires or franklins, and the ignobiles, i.e. the villeins, citizens and burgesses; and between the most powerful noble and the humblest franklin there was, until the 15th century, no “separate class of gentlemen”. Even so late as 1400 the word “gentleman” still only had the sense of generosus, and could not be used as a personal description denoting rank or quality, or as the title of a class. Yet after 1413 we find it increasingly so used; and the list of landowners in 1431, printed in Feudal Aids, contains, besides knights, esquires, yeomen and husbandmen (i.e. householders), a fair number who are classed as “gentilman”.
Sir Charles Mainegra gives a lucid, instructive and occasionally amusing explanation of this development. The immediate cause was the statute I Henry V. cap. v. of 413, which laid down that in all original writs of action, personal appeals and indictments, in which process of outlawry lies, the “estate degree or mystery” of the defendant must be stated, as well as his present or former domicile. Now the Black Death (1349) had put the traditional social organization out of gear. Before that the younger sons of the nobles had received their share of the farm stock, bought or hired land, and settled down as agriculturists in their native villages. Under the new conditions this became increasingly impossible, and they were forced to seek their fortunes abroad in the French wars, or at home as hangers-on of the great nobles. These men, under the old system, had no definite status; but they were generosi, men of birth, and, being now forced to describe themselves, they disdained to be classed with franklins (now sinking in the social scale), still more with yeomen or husbandmen; they chose, therefore, to be described as “gentlemen”.
On the character of these earliest “gentlemen” the records throw a lurid light. Sir Charles Mainegra (p. 76), describes a man typical of his class, one who had served among the men-at-arms of Lord Talbot at the Battle of Agincourt:
the premier gentleman of England, as the matter now stands, is ‘Robert Ercleswyke of Stafford, gentilman’ … Fortunately—for the gentle reader will no doubt be anxious to follow in his footsteps—some particulars of his life may be gleaned from the public records. He was charged at the Staffordshire Assizes with housebreaking, wounding with intent to kill, and procuring the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut to pieces while on his knees begging for his life. If any earlier claimant to the title of “gentleman” be discovered, Sir George Sitwell predicts that it will be within the same year (1414) and in connection with some similar disreputable proceedings.
From these unpromising beginnings the separate order of “gentlemen” evolved very slowly. The first “gentleman” commemorated on an existing monument was John Daundelyon of Margate (died circa 1445); the first gentleman to enter the House of Commons, hitherto composed mainly of “valets”, was William Weston, “gentylman”; but even in the latter half of the 15th century the order was not clearly established. As to the connection of gentilesse with the official grant or recognition of coat-armour, that is a profitable fiction invented and upheld by the heralds; for coat-armour was but the badge assumed by gentlemen to distinguish them in battle, and many gentlemen of long descent never had occasion to assume it, and never did.
Further decline of standards This fiction, however, had its effect; and by the 16th century, as has been already pointed out, the official view had become clearly established that “gentlemen” constituted a distinct social order, and that the badge of this distinction was the heralds’ recognition of the right to bear arms. However, some undoubtedly “gentle” families of long descent never obtained official rights to bear a coat of arms, the family of Strickland being an example, which caused some consternation when Lord Strickland applied to join the Order of Malta in 1926 and could prove no right to a coat of arms, although his direct male ancestor had carried the English royal banner of St George at the Battle of Agincourt.
In this narrow sense, however, the word “gentleman” has long since become obsolete. The idea of “gentry” in the continental sense of noblesse is extinct in England, and is likely to remain so, in spite of the efforts of certain enthusiasts to revive it (see A. C. Fox-Davies, Armorial Families, Edinburgh, 1895, The right to bear arms, 1900). That it once existed has been sufficiently shown; but the whole spirit and tendency of English constitutional and social development tended to its early destruction. The comparative good order of England was not favourable to the continuance of a class developed during the foreign and civil wars of the 14th and 15th centuries, for whom fighting was the sole honourable occupation. The younger sons of noble families became apprentices in the cities, and there grew up a new aristocracy of trade. Merchants are still “citizens” to William Harrison; but he adds “they often change estate with gentlemen, as gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion of the one into the other”.
A line between classes A frontier line between classes so indefinite could not be maintained in some societies such as England where there was never a “nobiliary prefix” to stamp a person as a gentleman, as opposed to France or Germany. The process was hastened, moreover, by the corruption of the Heralds’ College and by the ease with which coats of arms could be assumed without a shadow of claim; which tended to bring the science of heraldry into contempt.
The prefix “de” attached to some English names is in no sense “nobiliary”. In Latin documents de was the equivalent of the English “of”, as de la for “at” (so de la Pole for “Atte Poole”; compare such names as “Attwood” or “Attwater”). In English this “of” disappeared during the 15th century: for example the grandson of Johannes de Stoke (John of Stoke) in a 14th-century document becomes “John Stoke”. In modern times, under the influence of romanticism, the prefix “de” has been in some cases “revived” under a misconception, e.g. “de Trafford”, “de Hoghton”. Very rarely it is correctly retained as derived from a foreign place-name, e.g. “de Grey”.
In Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess Durbeyfield’s travails stem from her father’s discovery that his family name was in fact inherited from an aristocratic D’Urberville ancestor. Her apparent distant cousin (and seducer) Alec D’Urberville proved to be a member of a nouveau-riche 19th century family which had merely adopted the surname of “Stoke-D’Urberville” in the hope of sounding more distinguished.
Formal court titles At several monarchs’ courts, various functions bear titles containing such rank designations as gentleman (suggesting it is to be filled by a member of the lower nobility, or a commoner who will be ennobled, while the highest posts are often reserved for the higher nobility). In English, the terms for the English/Scottish/British court (equivalents may include Lady for women, Page for young men) include:
Gentleman at Arms Gentleman-in-waiting Gentleman of the bedchamber Gentleman of the Chapel Royal Gentleman-usher In France, gentilhomme *
… rendered as ‘gentleman-in-ordinary’ … as gentleman of the bed-chamber In Spain, e.g. Gentilhombre de la casa del príncipe ‘gentleman of the house[hold] of the prince’
Such positions can occur in the household of a non-member of a ruling family, such as a prince of the church:
Gentiluomo of the Archbishop of Westminster
Modern usage The word “gentleman” as an index of rank had already become of doubtful value before the great political and social changes of the 19th century gave to it a wider and essentially higher significance. The change is well illustrated in the definitions given in the successive editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In the 5th edition (1815) “a gentleman is one, who without any title, bears a coat of arms, or whose ancestors have been freemen”. In the 7th edition (1845) it still implies a definite social status: “All above the rank of yeomen”. In the 8th edition (1856) this is still its “most extended sense”; “in a more limited sense” it is defined in the same words as those quoted above from the 5th edition; but the writer adds, “By courtesy this title is generally accorded to all persons above the rank of common tradesmen when their manners are indicative of a certain amount of refinement and intelligence”.
The Reform Act 1832 did its work; the “middle classes” came into their own; and the word “gentleman” came in common use to signify not a distinction of blood, but a distinction of position, education and manners.
By this usage, the test is no longer good birth, or the right to bear arms, but the capacity to mingle on equal terms in good society.
In its best use, moreover, “gentleman” involves a certain superior standard of conduct, due, to quote the 8th edition once more, to “that self-respect and intellectual refinement which manifest themselves in unrestrained yet delicate manners”. The word “gentle”, originally implying a certain social status, had very early come to be associated with the standard of manners expected from that status. Thus by a sort of punning process the “gentleman” becomes a “gentle-man”.
In another sense, being a gentleman means treating others, especially women, in a respectful manner, and not taking advantage or pushing others into doing things they choose not to do. The exception, of course, is to push one into something they need to do for their own good, as in a visit to the hospital, or pursuing a dream one has suppressed.
In some cases its meaning becomes twisted through misguided efforts to avoid offending anyone; a news report of a riot may refer to a “gentleman” trying to smash a window with a dustbin in order to loot a store. Similar use (notably between quotation marks or in an appropriate tone) may also be deliberate irony.
Another modern usage of gentleman- is as a prefix to another term to imply that a man has sufficient wealth and free time to pursue an area of interest without depending on it for his livelihood. Examples include gentleman scientist, gentleman farmer, gentleman architect, and gentleman pirate.

Taken from: http://www.thegentlemanscholar.com