Europe’s largest Chinese community in its most racist country. A beauty contest to make them meet Five aspiring beauty queens, five ordinary families of migrants. Between restaurants, textile factories, import export wholesalers. A trip through Italy following their traces. Only to discover that, between excruciatingly wearing shifts, those mothers we believed were working machines, get moved to tears in talking about their daughters. The same daughters who are certain only of one thing: they don’t want to repeat their parent’s tiresome life. Chinese girls in Italy with the same aspirations as any other teenager but facing the problems both of growing up and having to shoulder family responsibilities beyond their years. First and second generations facing each other. And Italians on the side who, forced to compare themselves with Chinese immigrants suddenly find that they are tired, dispirited, frightened and resentful - in fact it’s easier to fear the ‘other’ than to come to terms with yourself.