Metro> Expats
|
Metro> Expats
|
|
Ciao, ciao my bella, bella China
By Alexandra Leyton Espinoza (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-14 08:37
Sauro Angelini has dined with Deng Xiaoping and watched locals weep at news of Mao Zedong's death. Now the Italian businessman who has watched first hand China's opening up to the world said there is no way he could ever return to his home country. The 67-year-old, who with wife Sun Xiaoju now owns Meeting Point, an Italian restaurant in Shuangjing, was one of the first foreigners to come to Beijing in the 1970s. He said he followed his Marxist ideologies to China, but he quickly learned its political system could not be duplicated in Europe. "It was so different from what the media in Europe had informed us. Beijing was just a village, a big one. When I asked people to take me downtown, it was the same as were I lived," he said. He was deeply affected by how the Chinese reacted to the death of their great leader, which happened two months after Angelini arrived. "I remember being in a shop when loud speakers announced the death of the Chairman. Without changing the expressions of their faces all people in front of me started to cry, it was silent tears. What was a noisy city, people riding their bikes and hooting their horns, turned deathly silent, it was unbelievable," he said. "I noticed that after the death of Mao people were scared of the future." One of the highlights of his time in China was an invitation to a group dinner with Deng Xiaoping. "Deng Xiaoping didn't converse with the foreigners, he spoke limited English but we all felt privileged to be in his company," he said. During that time, he was among about 200 foreigners living at the Friendship Hotel. He worked for the China foreign press and translated Chinese propaganda into Italian. "There were a lot of people from Europe, New Zealand, Africa and Latin-America, but no Americans of course," he said. "The Chinese people were very curious but I never felt in danger. It was difficult to have contact with the local Chinese people, they were not allowed to integrate with us and if they did they could get in trouble." By the end of the 1970s, when China started to reform and open its doors for foreign companies, he became a representative of the Italian Commimpex Companies. "The people I worked with from the Chinese import and export co-operation were very skilled; you don't find those kind of people here anymore," he said. He then established his own company, Sagec Asia, which imported machinery from Europe to China from 1985 until 2006. He said a new era emerged in China in 1992-93 when there was an influx of foreigners that arrived in Beijing, and that many of them had preconceived ideas about its culture and people. "People must stop seeing Chinese people as poor and China as a nation of manufacturers. China is continually developing, advancing in technology and producing an intelligent and hardworking population. It's not just an export country for low quality goods and cheap labor," he said. Sauro said the best way to do business is to respect all cultures and not impose Western culture on the Chinese. "I am Italian and I like my culture, Westerners must learn and understand others, and I think Chinese as one of the most important. This country has such a dominant culture, and you can see how Chinese are abroad, they don't change. Why should they?" |
