Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

The Italian leather mogul Mr. Fu in front of his home in Fangshan, by Andy

We met Mr. Fu by pure happenstance in front of a little store outside his family’s colossal home in the mountain village of Fangshan, Zhejiang (浙江省芳山村).  Standing near 5′4″ (1.63 meters), a little round in the middle, wearing a modest suit of Chinese clothes, and speaking in a soft, slightly raspy voice, Mr. Fu is hardly what you’d call an imposing figure. Nevertheless, he is a distinctly Chinese success whose generosity moved us and whose account is worthy of retelling.

Mr. Fu’s story started just after the turn of the last century in distant metropolitan Wenzhou, at the opposite corner of Zhejiang province. His grandfather, then a young, poor man in the city, decided to forego the rat race and boldly moved all on his lonesome to bamboo-encrusted Fangshan, at the time completely uninhabited. Over time more Fu’s and other families moved into the area and developed the agriculture until eventually it became a Wenzhounese enclave among the mountains of Northern Zhejiang. Fast forward to the 1990’s, and in the true Wenzhou spirit nearly a hundred Fangshan’ers are living and doing business in Europe, mostly in Italy with smatterings in France and Germany. Not bad for a village of 800.

In 1995 Mr. Fu was 37 years old, living in his father’s house with his wife of 17 years, daughter, and son, and employed by the local government driving a tractor. It occurred to him that he had an obligation as the oldest male among his siblings — and as a responsible father — to find a means to provide for the well-being of his family. Most especially, he told us, he looked at his children and felt compelled to “consider their future (考虑到了他们的出路).” Driven by his sense of duty, the already nearly middle-aged Fu left his wife and children in Fangshan to travel alone, as had his grandfather before him, and with zero knowledge of Italian, to Milan, where he took up laboring in a leather factory owned by another overseas Wenzhounese. Most of his spare time outside of the factory was spent earning money any way he could, even washing dishes late night in Milanese restaurants. After a few solitary, back-breaking years in Italy, he felt he had acquired stable enough financial footing to bring over his wife, daughter of 18, and son of 13 to join him. A few more years of experience in the factory and a little capital injection from back home saw Mr. Fu open his very own factory outside of Florence. Now his factory, which produces leather bags and clothing for Italian brands to be exported across Europe, employs only Chinese labor. According to Mr. Fu, business had been booming until last year’s economic dip, which he’s confident will soon pass.

Nowadays Mr. Fu still can’t really speak Italian, but he’s all smiles when it comes to his adopted country (he got a real kick out of showing us his permesso di soggiorno at dinner). His kids, on the other hand, have a good handle on the language of Roberto Benini. According to Fu, they now prefer their adopted country and find Fangshan backward during their infrequent return visits. His daughter, now 30 and herself married to a Fangshan native, nevertheless, has sent her two children to live with her mother’s sister in Daixi, down the road from Fangshan, so they will “grow up Chinese.” As for his 24 year old son, Mr. Fu hopes he’ll be married soon since, “He’s already at the right age.” Ah well, no dad is perfect. Back in Italy the family cooks the vast majority of their meals at home from foodstuffs purchased in Chinese markets, opting for Italian maybe once or twice a month. Mr. Fu now divides his time about equally between Florence and Fangshan, making about six cross-continental flights annually — coming back to his mountain home mostly to be with relatives and have fun. It goes to show the power of Chinese solidarity that the Fu family first uprooted their clan to Fangshan from Wenzhou and now has to the most insular extent possible transferred their culture to a small bubble in Italy.

A view of the inner corridor linking the two halves of the Fu house in Fangshan, by Alexis

Back in 2005, a mere ten years after his relocation to Italy, Mr. Fu solely financed the construction of a ginormous concrete mansion on the family’s old property in Fangshan. Since he’s never revoked Chinese citizenship and officially still classified as a peasant, the land is apportioned to his family tax- and rent-free, and they even get the bonus of some farmland thrown in (talk about beating the system). The family has little use these days for the fields, which they let friends till free of charge — the only appropriate course of action, he told us. The house, though, which is actually two houses joined together by staircases and an outdoor corridor, is always occupied by Mr. Fu’s mother, aunts, and several other relatives — even though he’s got several empty rooms available for whatever foreign bike tourists happen to be passing through. There’s even a room out back devoted to production of his aunt’s fine rice wine.

Mr. Fu especially touched us by his generosity and the aura of sincere care for his friends and family that surrounds him. Hearing that we were looking for a camping spot, he immediately offered us a place to sleep in his house. Once our effects were settled, he gathered his visiting sister and brother-in-law (who come from nearby Huzhou to stay in the house almost every weekend), mother, old friend and his daughter together for a big banquet dinner to welcome us in a ritzy town restaurant in the shadow of Mt. Mogan. Throughout the dinner, which included all sorts of bamboo, wild vegetables, warm rice wine, and other local delicacies — the most scrumptious we’ve had in two months out of Beijing — the extraordinarily knowledgeable Mr. Fu was able to answer our every question about local agriculture, politics, customs, etc.

Throughout our sojourn Mr. Fu very frequently responded in local dialect to calls on his cell. It was clear our host has a lot on his plate. Whenever we passed through the streets of the village, Mr. Fu took aside and spoke to scores of his more rusticated LBX paisanos as old friends, despite the economic rift between them. Do the others ever get jealous of you, we asked as he drove us back to the house? “Oh yes,” was his quick answer, smiling all the while. One mitigating factor in his relations with his fellow Fangshan’ers might be that he’s not the only bigshot in town. On our drive back from the restaurant, he pointed across a little valley at a cluster of other huge houses. “Those families have gone to Italy to develop too,” he explained.

After he had again stuffed us to the gills at breakfast the following morning, he implored us to return whenever we could, and with as many friends as we wanted to. “We love to have friends visit!” Especially, he said, we should make it to Fangshan at the beginning of May, when the local tea will have just been picked and will taste its best. That night after we left him, in true fatherly fashion, he called us to make sure we had arrived safely at our destination of Anji, the white tea capital not far from his house. I personally will relish the memory of Mr. Fu and always remember him as the iconic Chinese male provider figure, whose heart is always big enough to take care of a few more. Whether you define success in terms of money, friends, family, or attitude toward life, our amico from Zhejiang fits the description.

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