Capasso, best known in Kunming for his 11-year-old Italian restaurant Pizza da Rocco, is talking business. Mushrooms, to be exact. In recent years he has been busy exporting tons of mushrooms from Kunming to Europe and the US.

We first met Capasso in 2000 when we 'disovered' his restaurant, which was hidden in the back of a mud-brick building on Wenhua Xiang. The restaurant was only one year old, but word had quickly spread that in a hard-to-find courtyard home near Yunnan University there was a man from Naples making homemade mozzarella and cooking pizzas in a wood-burning oven – he even had real tiramisu. At a time when there was very little authentic Western food anywhere in China, it all felt a little too good to be true.

Back then, Capasso did almost everything at the restaurant, from greeting customers to taking their orders to cooking their meals. At the end of the dinner rush, he'd sit in his restaurant's small courtyard and have a smoke and a drink.

Photos from the original Pizza da Rocco on Wenhua Xiang

GK: When did you first come to Kunming?

Rocco Capasso: In September 1996 I first came to Kunming. I cannot forget arriving in Kunming airport, there was only one place to pick up luggage in the whole airport. I remember at passport check I didn't notice the red line on the floor and crossed it before it was my turn. I was quickly grabbed by a policeman, which was pretty surprising for me at the time.

That day I arrived at the main gate of Yunnan University on Cuihu Bei Lu, where I was going to study, with two large bags that were very heavy. I was trying to find the foreign students' dormitory and ended up walking up all those stairs and across campus with my heavy bags before eventually finding it. I had already studied some Chinese in Naples, but nobody could understand my Chinese that day.

GK: In 1996 most foreign students were studying in Beijing, why did you choose to come to Kunming?

Capasso: I chose Kunming because one of my teachers in Naples had been here for several weeks and recommended it. She told me to stay in Kunming because it was cheaper than Beijing. She also said Yunnan's minorities were interesting, and that the weather here was sunny and pleasant like Naples. And it was cheap.

GK: What was the foreign student scene in Kunming like in 1996?

Capasso: At that time there was only one foreign bar, Journey to the East [which was located on the northwest corner of the same building where Paul's Shop is today], we'd go there for lunch at noon and after class we'd go there to drink and exchange travel stories. The Western community was only about 20 people, mostly women, and there were about 10 Japanese and Koreans. But every night was a party. Our gate would get locked at midnight every night – we would often stay out later than that and have to climb over the gate to get back in.

GK: How did you make the transition from studying abroad to living and working in Kunming?

Capasso: I finished my semester in February 1997, went back to Italy and got my degree and six months later I returned to Kunming... I have been living here ever since.

My first paying job in Kunming was doing laundry for Bike Mike [former Kunming resident Michael Sutherland], but I also wrote some stories for Italian newspapers about the Three Gorges Dam, but the newspapers never paid me.

I met my wife at Journey to the East in 1998 and in November 1999 I opened my first restaurant on Wenhua Xiang in a small traditional house with a courtyard and several small rooms. There were not many Western restaurants in Kunming at the time, just Journey and Teresa's.

GK: Why did you decide to open a restaurant?

Capasso: My wife saw photos of my family's boulangerie in Naples, my family has been running it for more than 100 years. She encouraged me to open my own restaurant, so I used all the money I had plus some money that I borrowed, and I opened my restaurant with US$300. I would buy ingredients at the market myself, all the furniture and equipment came from the second-hand market.

GK: Wenhua Xiang rents are quite expensive now, how much was rent for your restaurant back then?

Capasso: 500 renminbi a month. We had no toilet. We didn't have a sign – I spray painted 'Pizza Da Rocco' on a wall with a big arrow. Later when I had money I bought a wooden sign. We also had one of the only lights on Wenhua Xiang, the other light was at the old public toilet on the corner of Wenhua Xiang and Wenlin Jie.

GK: How was business in the early days of the restaurant?

Capasso: When I started the restaurant I didn't have a license. We just started out with my foreign friends and some of my wife's Chinese friends. We were full every night because we didn't have many tables. In the beginning we had no menu, we'd just tell people what we had. After a few months we made our first small menu.

In 2001 we moved the restaurant to the Bird and Flower market because much of Wenhua Xiang was being demolished to make the buildings that are there now. That old house was beautiful.

The first Pizza da Rocco was demolished in 2004, long after the restaurant had relocated to the Bird and Flower Market

Capasso: I started in 2004. Some Italians with a factory in Italy would come to my restaurant – they were coming to Kunming to buy mushrooms from local people. I would help them with interpreting. After two years of helping them, I decided to start my mushroom factory in 2004 because I knew all the things that were important to my customers.

It all came from the restaurant, if there was no restaurant there would be no mushroom factory.

GK: How much are you exporting these days?

Capasso: In one year I'm exporting around 100 tons of dried mushrooms and 2,000 tons of frozen boletus edulis – which are usually called porcini – from Yunnan. We also export cultivated mushrooms from Fujian province. Our primary markets are Italy, France, Germany and the United States. Italy is our biggest market – we ship more than half our mushrooms there.

GK: What are the biggest challenges you deal with in the mushroom exporting business?

Capasso: One of the biggest challenges is teaching local employees the importance of hygiene – what might be ok in an open air market in the countryside in Yunnan will not be acceptable for export to Europe.

The courtyard of the Bird and Flower Market incarnation of Pizza da Rocco, which was located in a Qing Dynasty home

Capasso: [Laughs] I knew you were going to ask me this question...It's a completely different city from what it was in '96. It seemed like there were only 1,000 cars on the road then, now it's more like one million.

The entire city has changed – everything is different now. When I first arrived I did not imagine that the city would develop so fast. After 2002 or 2003 I started to understand what was happening to the city.

GK: In your early days in Kunming did you get out of the city much and visit other parts of Yunnan?

Capasso: In '96 I stayed in Lijiang for a month, several months after the big earthquake. I was working as a chef for the representative from UNESCO – I would translate for him. There was one old woman who kept offering me her courtyard home in the center of town next to a stream for 100,000 kuai. It was 300 square meters and very beautiful... now it would be several million renminbi. I haven't been back to Lijiang since then.

I used to also go to Dali and Jinghong often to buy traditional minority products. I would go back to Italy every August and sell the stuff. That's how I made my money for the first few years in Kunming. Back then it took 20 hours to get from Kunming to Jinghong by bus. It felt like being in Amazonia or the jungles of Africa.

GK: What's the best thing about being you?

Capasso: My favorite thing about my life now is that I am still a free man. [Laughs.] I have no boss bothering me. I can wake up at noon if I want and nobody will say anything. I like this a lot... I can't imagine any other way. I used to work at a restaurant with a Chinese partner and met everyone – the mayor of Kunming would go there, I met the mayors of Beijing and Shanghai too. They paid me great money. But I had to run away because I was always busy and couldn't have my own life.

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