Father Mella’s Pendulum

Father Franco Mella has an immaculate memory. We met last week at an interview hosted by Al Jazeera about Hong Kong’s mainland Chinese immigrants, and he reminded me accurately that 10 years had elapsed since we had last met, also at a forum with a pro-Beijing guy present.

I congratulated the Father for widening the slit-eyed horizon of most Hongkongers about his native country of Italy, teaching that there is a lot more to it than merely Prada and Gucci. After a brief chat about Umberto Eco and Bertolucci, he told me that he had recently been refused entry into mainland China because Beijing is in a diplomatic deadlock with the Vatican.

The Italians’ adventures in China have always been as colorful as Versace’s summer shirts. Marco Polo aside, Matthew Ricci first brought the torch of Christian civilization to the barbarous Ming Dynasty, in exchange for the Chinese export of noodles and wontons, which later became the Italians’ spaghetti and ravioli. But sometimes Italian experiences of China have ended in fatal adversities. Antonia Riva, for example, also a missionary, was arrested by Mao in Beijing in 1950, accused of hatching a plot to wipe out the whole of Mao’s ruling gang from atop Tiananmen Gate with a mortar on October 1 during the new National Day celebrations. Not a bad idea, but the Chinese ransacked his house and found only some drawings of Tiananmen—which Riva created out of admiration of Chinese classical architecture. Nevertheless, he was arrested together with some European missionaries and a Japanese citizen and was executed by a firing squad after being paraded through the streets in the former walled city of Peking.

Father Mella was simply refused entry, evidence that God has started working out His miracle in China. Jehovah’s rival in Beijing has been watching Father Mella’s humanitarian work in Hong Kong with dismay, including his campaign to help Chinese mainlanders settle in our territory. It’s all one country, so stop discriminating, Father Mella argued. Aren’t all Chinese the same? On that point I had to be the devil’s advocate—yes, but there are two systems, Father, like the biblical dichotomy of Heaven and Hell. The Roman Empire and Carthage were nearly one family, too, but the Libyans under the rule of Gaddafi preferred to remain in their own country to change their fate, rather than cross the Mediterranean to settle in Milan and give birth to a lot of babies. Father Mella smiled, and I stopped at this point before sounding too much like Marie Le Pen.

I could not help but whisper “Viva Italia” when I watched Father Mella’s persistent fight for human rights play out on local TV news all these years. The lone fighter came from the land of Bruno and Galileo, yet he sometimes reminds me of the line in Yul Brynner’s musical film “The King And I” when Anna the Victorian English teacher is snubbed by her Asian host: “An English schoolteacher like you, in the kingdom of Siam?” Siam has changed, and Sino-Italian friendship will change for the better if more Ferragamos are exported, rather than this odd fella called Father Mella.

Chip Tsao is a best-selling author, columnist and a former producer for the BBC. His columns have also appeared in Apple Daily, Next Magazine and CUP Magazine, among others.