Giuseppina Croci

Giuseppina Croci was born in Castano Primo in the province of Milan, in 1863. The first of nine children, she grew up in a large family and worked in a spinning mill.

In 1890 she agreed to follow in her former employer's footsteps: on the 9^th of June that year, she set off alone from the port of Genoa on a German sailing ship destined for Shanghai, China. During the 37-day voyage, she wrote a diary about life on board, amidst different cultures, traditions and languages: from her lone departure, entrusted by Mr Zoncada to the supervisors of the ship, to the difficulties of conversation made difficult by the fact that no one spoke Italian and that most of her fellow passengers were men.

From the deck of the ship, Giuseppina scanned the landscape she travelled through: she first saw the island of Stromboli, with mountains on both sides, then the island of Candia, and the city of Said, inhabited by Arabs from Abyssinia. It was here that a whole new world opened up to her, made up of people with customs and trades that were very different from those she had known back home.

Upon arriving in Shanghai and finding a sense of security, she stopped writing and began working.

She returned to Italy five years later with three thousand lire in her pocket, having learned two new languages and with many Chinese tales to tell.

Story collected in collaboration with the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale.