Being a Local Guide is something which allows me to help people discovering new places on Google Maps. This allows me to follow a mission I really care about: helping tourists and foreigners living in my country feeling like if they were at home. I have merged this mission with my passion for Chinese culture and food and with my experience with my local Chinese community. This made me improve many details on Google Maps about authentic Chinese restaurants tourists and foreigners can easily find during their staying in my city.
When Chinese come to visit my country and stay for long time, they are immediately attracted by our history, monuments and by our fashion brands. They also seem to enjoy Italian food very much. But after having discovered all of this, everyone should realize they are still far from their original home, they are maybe missing their original family, their friends… Little things like food may help these people not feeling so much far from their house, help them to maintain the ties to their tradition… Everyone knows many Chinese restaurants outside China mainly sell food adapted for Western tastes. You need to search in order to find an authentic Chinese restaurant and this is not always easy. That’s the reason why I have decided to merge my passion for Chinese food and my ties with local Chinese community, in order to start my adventure in my city. This has made me try many Chinese restaurants, accurately review them, taking photos and videos and publishing lists on Google Maps with references to particularities of the different restaurants I have tried. By doing this, I have provided Chinese people with helpful information about where to find typical and even regional dishes of their home in my country.
I am doing this because I have many Chinese friends and a deep experience with Chinese food. My dream is to meet people who pursue the same mission, everyone by caring about a specific kind of cuisine they mostly know. If every city has different Local Guides, everyone caring about listing authentic restaurants selling food of different traditions, many tourists and foreigners coming to this city would be easily advantaged. Food is just food, but even finding your childhood favorite dish in a foreign country may be a lot for people who are coming to a different country in order to study or work. I have done my little with Chinese community, in my local area (Milan, Italy). I hope in the future many people will follow my same mission in their local areas: people who have a passion for a particular kind of cuisine, people who have knowledge about food from specific countries, people who are ready to welcome new friends in their country, not only by proposing their local food, but also by making them feel like home by helping them find the most authentic food experiences in the area.
