Non traditional Chinese and Italians
Love without Borders: Romance and Creativity Across Cultures
Men and women from different countries, cultural backgrounds, with vastly different lifestyles and ways of thinking, often find it more difficult to get along than average couples. However, in real life, love that transcends cultures, races, and nationalities happens almost every moment.
Love at First Sight
“We spotted each other in the crowd.”
Recalling her first meeting with her husband Rocco, Qiuya from Wuhan, China, described the beginning of their romantic story as “love at first sight.”
In 2013, Qiuya came to pursue her dreams at the Istituto Marangoni in Milan.
Three months after arriving in Milan, she met Rocco from the Politecnico di Milano at a fashion show.
The girl from southern China and the boy from southern Italy quickly fell in love.
Cupido
No one can escape Cupid’s arrow, and when Cupid shoots, he doesn’t care about skin color, gender, age, or nationality.
Love knows no borders.
From the tender age of 20 to the mature age of 30, Qiuya and Rocco have experienced getting to know each other, a long-distance relationship, and starting a business during the pandemic.
Getting to Know and Falling in Love
Qiuya believes they are not traditional Chinese and Italian people; where one is born does not completely determine their mindset.
Both she and Rocco love adventure and challenges and are deeply curious about new things with cultural differences, which attracts and accommodates each other.
When Qiuya first came to Italy, her language skills were poor, and she often couldn’t express her true feelings in Italian.
She remembers that during their first date, she anxiously typed out what she wanted to say using a translation app, while Rocco patiently smiled and reassured her not to worry.
Sometimes, communication with native speakers doesn’t guarantee a shared understanding, and interacting with people from different countries doesn’t necessarily mean there are huge differences.
Love does not disappear because of language barriers; it makes lovers more alike. Under Rocco’s patient and gentle influence, Qiuya believes her impatient nature has also become more mellow.
Love and Tolerance
After graduating from university in 2016, Qiuya chose to return to work in Shanghai, China, and they had to start a long-distance relationship.
Two years later, unable to bear the pain of longing, Rocco found a job in Shanghai as well. They spent two happy years in Shanghai, and Rocco fell in love with this unique and beautiful city. In the future, they plan to split their time between Milan and Shanghai.
Both families have shown tolerance and respect for their children’s relationships with foreigners. In their eyes, love and happiness are what matter most.
Rocco’s family showed great warmth and care towards Qiuya, making her feel the warmth of family even in Italy. When Qiuya and Rocco went to register their marriage in Wuhan, China, they encountered the outbreak of the pandemic. Rocco was locked down with Qiuya’s family for four months.
The anxiety brought by the pandemic was unsettling, but the four months of living together allowed Qiuya’s family to truly get to know this kind and gentle Italian man and to accept him genuinely.
Co-Founding hyperempty
They are not just friends, spouses, but also business partners.
Shortly after meeting Qiuya, Rocco found his true interest and decisively switched from aerospace engineering at the Politecnico di Milano to a market major related to fashion.
After graduating, Qiuya worked in the menswear department of the Italian brand Ferré, striving to improve herself. In 2017, Qiuya won the “Baihuabei” Excellence Award, one of the most prestigious awards in China’s arts and crafts industry. Having their own brand has always been their goal, and she was not alone in pursuing her dreams.
Combining dreams with reality, they returned to Milan and started their entrepreneurial journey. They co-founded the brand hyperempty. Qiuya serves as the brand’s creative director, and Rocco is responsible for market operations.
Hyperempty
hyperempty is an experimental brand founded in Milan in 2023.
It does not follow traditional fashion seasons, gender, age, or usage conventions, breaking traditional concepts in terms of season, gender, age, and occasion. The concept of hyperempty subverts fashion itself, expressing the creator’s fatal need for the unspeakable, silence, and emptiness.
Every creative act of the brand leans towards “meaninglessness,” envisioning a thoroughly emptied subject, forgetting self-identity, and abandoning representative thoughts. hyperempty never defines or distinguishes between fashion, art, craft product design, etc.
Therefore, the brand’s production is not limited to clothing and, in fact, has no other boundaries.
Ceramics are another medium of research, which may be presented in many different ways in the future. The handmade ceramics are the crystallization of further research by “hyperempty.”
Expression of Dreams
The brand is not confined to the traditions of any country, including Italy and China.
It operates without the constraints of time and space.
They use materials and thousand-year-old firing techniques from China in their ceramic products, all handcrafted in Jingdezhen, China. It is difficult to start a niche brand, especially after the pandemic, but Qiuya and Rocco are still full of confidence. The brand is their labor of love and the expression of their dreams.
At the wedding, Qiuya wore a white dress from hyperempty, stunning everyone. She wore her dream and walked into the hall of marriage with her beloved.
There are 8.1 billion people in the world, and two compatible souls surpass the so-called distance and space. Good love gives people the strength to become better and inspires them to turn dreams into reality.