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Italian city tells Chinese community to 'remove lanterns, too Oriental'

news.scotsman.com — The local government of Treviso, in northern Italy, has ordered the city's Chinese restaurants to remove red lanterns from their windows because they look too 'oriental'. "It's spoiling the appearance of the city," said the head of the council's town planning department.

"The Chinese put up all sorts of stuff: lanterns, lions, dragons, there's even one (establishment) that did its whole front in oriental style."

Treviso, just outside Venice in the north-eastern Veneto region, is run by the populist, anti-immigrant Northern League. ...

"Treviso is a city of Veneto and Padania, it's certainly not an oriental city," deputy mayor Giancarlo Gentilini said, justifying the order to take down the lanterns within 10 days. ...

"From now on we'll be making regular checks and after the lanterns we'll be looking at all the other decorations around the entrances of the oriental restaurants," Marton warned.

Oh, the horror! What's next? Sushi bars with plastic sushi in the window?

Have those Italians forgotten where they got the idea for noodles and ravioli in the first place!? After all, it was the Chinese -- well, actually the Mongols who conquered China in 1280 and ruled it until 1368 -- who were nice enough to load Marco Polo up with lamian 拉麵 (Japanese: ramen, Italian: spaghetti) and jiaozi 餃子 (Japanese: gyoza, Italian: ravioli) so he wouldn't starve on the long trip back to Venice.

And this is the thanks they get?

What if China had put up a high fence along its border with the barbarians and kept Marco Polo and all the other illegal immigrants out. What would the Italians be eating now? Probably just boiled cornmeal (polenta) and a primitive grain called farro. Yummy.