Join us in welcoming four students from China this summer to study the city of San Diego from the perspectives of the Italians who moved here and live here and have become an integral part of the community!

The college-age students are volunteering with SDIFF through the Global Cultural Adventurers company and will work on educational projects with SDIFF. Italy has a long history of trading and commerce and there is a strong mythic connection already between Italian culture and China. In honor of this, the exchange has been called the Kublai Khan Project.

“The aim of the Kublai Khan Project is to have the students find and account for their version of San Diego as an Italian city,” said SDIFF Executive Director Victor Laruccia. “They will be asking who are the Italians in San Diego, what do they do, what marks do they make, what relations do they have with others, in what way does this place refigure the mythical, evanescent homeland—but narrated from the perspective of their own origins.”

The students are (left to right):

Yi Luan (Ada), 20, sophomore from Kewen College of Jiangsu Normal University, majoring in Geography and City Planning
Yujue Xiao (Shaw), 22, junior from Jiangsu Normal University, majoring in Language Translation and Interpretation
Xuyang Sun (Regina), 23, first-year-graduate from Hebei Normal University, majoring in Procedural Law
Han Li (Abby), 21, junior from Hebei Normal University, majoring in Broadcasting and Communication

They arrived on July 16 and will be in San Diego through the end of August.

SDIFF Associate Executive Director Diana Agostini, who holds a specialization in international education, will lead the project to help the students explore both SDIFF and San Diego through their travels and imagination and their efforts to shape their stories. SDIFF has as a goal two main outcomes from this project: A retelling from the students’ perspective about the presence of Italy in San Diego; and their messages to San Diego about their ongoing efforts with the SDIFF, in the form of photos and videos.

By, Stephanie Thompson