Cell Phone Sim Purchase in Italy

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, grusl wrote:

It appears to be a dispute over banning the use of hand carts. The
Chinese press did indeed cover it:

OK, things are like this :

- there is a chinese community in Milan since at least the '30s. It was
originally small and very well integrated (many of them spoke even
milanese, not just italian), they mainly ran crafts shops, specially
leather goods. It was located mainly in via Canonica and marginally
in via Paolo Sarpi (perpendicular to it). These roads are located in
an old "borough" (i.e. it was outside of the city walls, but in an
area mostly already built before 1800 ... so the roads are quite
narrow.

Paolo Sarpi was a "popular" area, with old "railing houses" ("case
di ringhiera", maybe DFM can explain what they are), inhabited by
italian craftsman (my father used to have his tailor there), and
lot of small shops.

- Recently there has a been a new burst of immigration from China.
According to the old milano-chinese, these people all come from
the same country area, and speak only dialect, and are not willing
to integrate ("they won't learn Italian nor Mandarin, they
won't integrate in Milan nor in Peking")

- these people do not run only retail shops but also larger depots
selling to retailers. They have bought most of the shops in the
area, paying high prices in cash.

- the roads are narrow and not suited for loading/unloading of
large quantity of goods. The chinese shopkeepers do not respect
the hours for loading/unloading, and make large use of these
hand carts.

Municipal authorities are thinking to declare the area a "limited
traffic zone"

- on the day of the troubles, a "vigilessa" (municipal policewoman)
fined a chinese lady for some traffic issue. The lady was carried
to the "police" station.

- a few hours later the chinese lady with her child saw the policewoman
on the same road, dropped her child, and hit the policewoman. The
local police car was surrounded by 300 chinese people. So the
national police had to be called, with lots of troubles

- apparently there are TV cameras controlling the area, but they
were somehow sabotaged

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
is a newsreading account used by more persons to
avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected.
Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.

"Giovanni Drogo" wrote in message
zoengr.vans.vg...

OK, things are like this :

[snip very informative summary of Milan Chinatown unrest]

Thanks very much for that, Giovanni.

Just out of curiosity, do you happen to know what areas of China are the
"old" and "new" immigrants mainly from?

Cheers,
George W Russell
Bangalore

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, grusl wrote:

Just out of curiosity, do you happen to know what areas of China are the
"old" and "new" immigrants mainly from?

No idea if the old ones came from a single area or from all over the
country.

For the new ones I read the name of the region in a newspaper article on
Corriere della Sera which interviewed one of the old ones, but the name
did not trigger my memory and I have forgotten it.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
is a newsreading account used by more persons to
avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected.
Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.

Make credence recognised that on Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:56:09 +0200,
Giovanni Drogo has scripted:

Paolo Sarpi was a "popular" area, with old "railing houses" ("case
di ringhiera", maybe DFM can explain what they are), inhabited by
italian craftsman (my father used to have his tailor there), and
lot of small shops.

Damn, that's a task!

Case di righiera are a type of council housing that was popular in the
area at that time.

In Milan, I guess the modern equivalent is the ****ty Quattro Oggiaro.
--
---
DFM - http://www.deepfriedmars.com
---
--

On Apr 20, 2:37 am, Deeply Filled Mortician
wrote:
Make credence recognised that on Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:56:09 +0200,
Giovanni Drogo has scripted:

Paolo Sarpi was a "popular" area, with old "railing houses" ("case
di ringhiera", maybe DFM can explain what they are), inhabited by
italian craftsman (my father used to have his tailor there), and
lot of small shops.

Damn, that's a task!


Thanks. Searching Google Images for "casa di ringhiera" explains it
all. Godawful, they look. They seem to have them in Venice, too.

Cheers,
George W Russell
Bangalore

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:56:09 +0200, Giovanni Drogo
wrote:

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, grusl wrote:

It appears to be a dispute over banning the use of hand carts. The
Chinese press did indeed cover it:

OK, things are like this :

- Recently there has a been a new burst of immigration from China.
According to the old milano-chinese, these people all come from
the same country area, and speak only dialect, and are not willing
to integrate ("they won't learn Italian nor Mandarin, they
won't integrate in Milan nor in Peking")

There are areas like this also in New York City. I think the
immigrants, both in New York and in Milan, are largely from Fujian
province. In New York, as in Milan, they mostly replaced an older and
wealthier Chinese community that had mostly arrived a generation
before, and that didn't exactly welcome their compatriots with open
arms.

Whenever there is a large mass of immigrants from any country,
especially if all from the same area, the first generation will not
easily integrate, because they are surrounded by people who speak
their mother tongue and have little need or opportunity to learn the
new language. This was also true of the earlier Puerto Rican migration
to New York, and the still earlier Italian immigration. However, the
second generation always integrated very well.

I used to live in what was originally an Italian immigrant quarter in
Princeton, NJ. This immigration mostly took place in the early 20th
century, and I moved to the neighborhood in 1982. There were still
some elderly people in the neighborhood who spoke only Italian, with
just a smattering of English words. However, their children were
perfectly bilingual and their grandchildren generally spoke no Italian
at all, which is a pity.

I mention all this to put some perspective on the situation. Italy has
had little experience with immigration and Italians tend to be rather
alarmist about the lack of integration. It will happen, don't worry,
but it will take a generation in the case of a large and homogeneous
immigrant community.

Most Italians are not very keen on renting apartments to foreigners,
which is also an impediment to integration. I see various municipal
proposals for constucting "housing for immigrants". This is a terrible
idea; a way should be found to insure that they can find housing in
the normal rental market.

I read in Corriere della Sera a letter to the editor, in which the
writer lamented that the Chinese invasion in Milan had destroyed a
vibrant neighborhood. However, in a related article, it was related
that the neighborhood had lost its vibrancy before the Chinese began
arriving in large numbers, and that the Chinese had bought up what
were mostly vacant shops. Your description of the neighborhood sounds
more like the article than the letter. The writer of the letter was
perhaps remembering his long-ago boyhood and blaming the Chinese for
something that had already happened before their arrival. In fact, the
Chinese merchants may have saved the neighborhood from a worse fate.
Trouble navigating the sidewalks is annoying, but it isn't as bad as a
neighborhood given over to drug dealers and petty criminals.

I think the problem from the Chinese point of view is that the mayor
(the former minister of education in the Berlusconi government) keeps
saying that "the laws are made to be respected". Anyone who has been
in Italy for some time could be forgiven for being a bit cynical about
her pronouncements. The Chinese feel, rightly or wrongly, as though
the laws are made to be respected more in some neighborhoods than in
others.

- these people do not run only retail shops but also larger depots
selling to retailers. They have bought most of the shops in the
area, paying high prices in cash.
- the roads are narrow and not suited for loading/unloading of
large quantity of goods.

According to a Chinese merchant I saw interviewed on TV, they were all
granted permission to open these wholesale outlets. If he is right,
someone should have thought about the suitability of the neighborhood
before granting the licenses.

The chinese shopkeepers do not respect
the hours for loading/unloading, and make large use of these
hand carts.

According to them, they make use of hand carts because of aggressive
ticketing of delivery trucks.


--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Deeply Filled Mortician wrote:

Giovanni Drogo has scripted:

Paolo Sarpi was a "popular" area, with old "railing houses" ("case
di ringhiera", maybe DFM can explain what they are)

Damn, that's a task!

Indeed. I do not think you got it right ... I hoped you had equivalent
examples understandable for non-italians, but probably there aren't (not
your fault).

Case di righiera are a type of council housing that was popular in the
area at that time.

I would not use the expression "council houses" if that is equivalent to
what we call "case popolari" i.e. house blocks belonging to the
municipality or to other public boards, and rented with low rents to
people who can't afford a "market" rent. Case popolari were started to
be built at the beginning of 1900 (there still are some areas in Milan
e.g. via Costa, via Aselli, Calvairate, Stadera) but also later (e.g.
Quarto Oggiaro or Gratosoglio). Some areas maybe ill-famed, some are
acceptable. Most are sort of run-down because of the maintenance
costs, but this is not true everywhere. Particularly in small towns it
was common during the 50-60's to have "case a riscatto" (lit. riscatto
is ransom) i.e. after paying the rent for that many year, one became the
owner. Of course these persons were more motivated about maintenance.

Conversely, "case di ringhiera" were *privately* owned, and rented to
the poor (or to the working class which was mostly poor then). They were
typically built in the last half of 1800, I dare say not after 1920.

They are called railing (ringhiera) houses because the apartments are
accessed via an external balcony and not via an internal staircase.
Also often toilet facilities were common to all apartments and located
at one end of the balcony.

Even oldest "case popolari" used to have toilet facilities inside the
flats, just to supply poor people a better housing than railing houses.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
is a newsreading account used by more persons to
avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected.
Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007, B Vaughan wrote:

just a smattering of English words. However, their children were
perfectly bilingual and their grandchildren generally spoke no Italian
at all, which is a pity.

I once met a rather old second-generation Texan of Italian origin who
spoke no italian at all (and confused Tito and Mussolini :-) ).

On the other hand my 12-year-old god-daughter speaks German with her
father and Italian with her mother and grandparents. I'm not sure
whether she forgot the Swedish she used to practice 5 years ago. But of
course her parents spoke respectively Italian, French, English and some
German and German, English, French (he now also speaks an excellent
Italian, better than the Pope :-)) before getting married. But these are
inter-EU exchanges, normality now.

I often see little children here in Milan, which are clearly of foreign
origin (and not adopted) which speak italian among themselves, and even
with their parents, which often use italian to address them, which I
think is a bit excessive (against "preserving memory").

I remember when I was a schoolkid, I had a schoolmate from South Tirol
who then had a strong German accent, and spoke only German with his
mother (she spoke Italian with mine).

Of course there are cases in which linguistic barriers are lower or
higher. E.g. spanish-speaking people from South America can very easily
switch to italian. People from slavic countries have a natural skill
for ANY language. But despite the linguistic barrier the OLDER chinese
community was the first and one of the best integrated.

I mention all this to put some perspective on the situation. Italy has
had little experience with immigration and Italians tend to be rather
alarmist about the lack of integration. It will happen, don't worry,

One of the reasons for the present alarm, at least in cities like Milan,
is the *amount*. There are schools with classes where 50% or more of the
children which are foreigners, and many do not speak italian. Of course
this hinders learning by the other children. So the parents tend to
subscribe children to another school, which increases the ratio of
foreigners.

The other is that integration won't happen if the persons are not
intending to integrate, i.e. not to stay for life. Probably the
children speaking perfect italian I mentioned above are from families
who want to stay (as the integrated 1930 chinese group). But for
instance the predominantly adult male immigration from north Africa and
middle East is a different story.


I read in Corriere della Sera a letter to the editor, in which the
writer lamented that the Chinese invasion in Milan had destroyed a
vibrant neighborhood. [...] Your description of the neighborhood
sounds more like the article than the letter.

Paolo Sarpi, as corso Buenos Aires and corso Vercelli, was one of the
"popular" (cheap) shopping areas with little shops when I was a child
(there were SOME chinese in Paolo Sarpi). They have been all "destroyed"
although in different senses (maybe the small shops have been replaced
by all-equal chain clothing and shoe stores ... now corso Buenos Aires
is as boring or more than Oxford Street was 20 years ago).

The only (physical and permanent) difference is that Paolo Sarpi is much
narrower.

I think the problem from the Chinese point of view is that the mayor
(the former minister of education in the Berlusconi government) keeps
saying that "the laws are made to be respected".

If you speak bad about the present or the former mayor of Milan, or of
their majority with me, you "rain on wet" :-)

According to a Chinese merchant I saw interviewed on TV, they were all
granted permission to open these wholesale outlets. If he is right,
someone should have thought about the suitability of the neighborhood
before granting the licenses.

I have no idea of the kind of licenses got and needed, or if there was a
"change of destination". Definitely the area, with old buildings and
narrow roads, was and is unsuitable to such activities. And think that
now, with the massive "liberalization" trend, the Region is relaxing the
license policy for shops, or even making licenses unnecessary.

According to them, they make use of hand carts because of aggressive
ticketing of delivery trucks.

Those streets are definitely too narrow for trucks. Even a van could
create problem. And loading/unloading is a problem everywhere even in
Montenapoleone (fashion and luxury shopping area).

But shopkeepers (italian or chinese, more italian than chinese)
everywhere continue to want loading/unloading at any time, continue
wanting their customers to park their car in front of the shop, and to
protest against planned "limited traffic zones" or "pedestrian zones".
Except changing their mind AFTERWARDS.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
is a newsreading account used by more persons to
avoid unwanted spam. Any mail returning to this address will be rejected.
Users can disclose their e-mail address in the article if they wish so.

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:22:24 +0200, Giovanni Drogo
wrote:

One of the reasons for the present alarm, at least in cities like Milan,
is the *amount*. There are schools with classes where 50% or more of the
children which are foreigners, and many do not speak italian. Of course
this hinders learning by the other children. So the parents tend to
subscribe children to another school, which increases the ratio of
foreigners.

This is once again proof that Italians have little experience with
immigration. There have always been schools in the US with almost 100%
children of immigrants, and similar percentages can be found in many
European schools.

Long ago, when I was young and living in New York, I used to volunteer
as a tutor for Puerto Rican children who were having trouble in
school. These children had little opportunity for learning English, as
their schools were almost entirely attended by children who spoke only
Spanish, and few of the teachers spoke any language but English. I had
studied Spanish at university, and our classes were regularly visited
by people looking for volunteers to help these children.

The other is that integration won't happen if the persons are not
intending to integrate, i.e. not to stay for life. Probably the
children speaking perfect italian I mentioned above are from families
who want to stay (as the integrated 1930 chinese group). But for
instance the predominantly adult male immigration from north Africa and
middle East is a different story.

People say the same thing of the present Mexican immigration to the
US, which is at a volume unlike any previous immigration and has
turned parts of the US into virtually Spanish language islands.
However, if the immigrants have children their children end up
learning English and their grandchildren are to all effects Americans.

On the other hand, if the immigrants are mostly single men who end up
returning home without starting a family, they end up having little
negative impact on the society. Every time they purchase something
they pay taxes, even if they don't declare income tax; they use almost
no social services; and they return home before they are old enough to
make heavy demands on health and social services.

A recent phenomenom in the US is that some Mexicans, to make it easier
to find jobs, have forged social security cards, with the number of
some actual person who may or may not be unaware of the imposture.
(Some people apparently offer their numbers for this purpose.) This
means that they are paying into the pension fund of another person and
have no intention of ever claiming a pension themselves.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

B Vaughan wrote:

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 11:22:24 +0200, Giovanni Drogo
wrote:


One of the reasons for the present alarm, at least in cities like Milan,
is the *amount*. There are schools with classes where 50% or more of the
children which are foreigners, and many do not speak italian. Of course
this hinders learning by the other children. So the parents tend to
subscribe children to another school, which increases the ratio of
foreigners.


This is once again proof that Italians have little experience with
immigration. There have always been schools in the US with almost 100%
children of immigrants, and similar percentages can be found in many
European schools.

Long ago, when I was young and living in New York, I used to volunteer
as a tutor for Puerto Rican children who were having trouble in
school. These children had little opportunity for learning English, as
their schools were almost entirely attended by children who spoke only
Spanish, and few of the teachers spoke any language but English. I had
studied Spanish at university, and our classes were regularly visited
by people looking for volunteers to help these children.


The other is that integration won't happen if the persons are not
intending to integrate, i.e. not to stay for life. Probably the
children speaking perfect italian I mentioned above are from families
who want to stay (as the integrated 1930 chinese group). But for
instance the predominantly adult male immigration from north Africa and
middle East is a different story.


People say the same thing of the present Mexican immigration to the
US, which is at a volume unlike any previous immigration and has
turned parts of the US into virtually Spanish language islands.
However, if the immigrants have children their children end up
learning English and their grandchildren are to all effects Americans.

On the other hand, if the immigrants are mostly single men who end up
returning home without starting a family, they end up having little
negative impact on the society. Every time they purchase something
they pay taxes, even if they don't declare income tax; they use almost
no social services; and they return home before they are old enough to
make heavy demands on health and social services.

A recent phenomenom in the US is that some Mexicans, to make it easier
to find jobs, have forged social security cards, with the number of
some actual person who may or may not be unaware of the imposture.
(Some people apparently offer their numbers for this purpose.) This
means that they are paying into the pension fund of another person and
have no intention of ever claiming a pension themselves.


One difference which I suspect to not live long enough to see the result
of is the wide distribution of radio & TV broadcasts in Mexican. At
least that appears to be the variant of Spanish used. This may drag out
the shift to english or even suppress it in some parts of the country.