The evening of july 19 1900 I embarked myself on board of the steamboat Java of the Italian Navigation that followed the line of Suez and that had to carry me in China.
The China!!
Already alone this word evoked in me an exotic and mysterious world, a fantastic country in the most distant East. I was very young and full of enthusiasm, still shaken from news that came from those distant lands of missions burnt, west people deceased, women and children besieged in the diplomatic Legations of Beijing.
Already, but what I'll have found in reality?
Me, poor boy of the peaceful Piedmontese lands, of the sweet hills of the Langhe, of the vintages, of the "Freisa"?
I did not know . The mysterious and terrible China what was in reality? What dangers, mysteries, opportunity represented for me?
A mixed of curiosity and fear put me in a weird state of mind. I was directed in China with my books, my maps for the more drawn bu me and took bythe cards of the Geographic Society, my Goertz, my precious slabs of glass "Ilford", and who knows how I would have done to find of news or to find the silver to develop them made the photographs.
I was perhaps sad having close in the memory the shouting of the my parents and friends and the recommendations of my brother Michele, of making always to boil the water before drinking, of being always in guard, of not giving me to the drunkenness and of avoiding brawls and discords.
Dear, good so serious Michele with his grey and his now grey beard, I seem to see him read all of the days the newspaper in search of news of mine, drinking the coffee with his napkin in lap, he veterinarian appreciated and considered in the countries near Chieri. Then to visit the friends in the restaurant of Angelo, so proud of the "Bottiglieria" that has just open and to discuss of my journey with everyone those who know of my journey like if the China was a little country only more distant of Buttigliera or Asti. Serious and calm, perfectly owner of hiself, with his grey and calm eyes, but unyielding and insisted many times.
Poor Ministry when will be found bombarded from his telegrams to know how I am and what I do, when I return, all things that he does not dare to ask me directly in the letters.
That strange things you finish to do in name of the affection and of the responsibility that tie up the greater brothers towards the minor....
While appeared on the bridge of the steamboat I observed the profile of the costs of Naples to remove itself, besides the nostalgia, I warned really that I was in the beginning of a great adventure that would have changed all my life.
I was directed towards a land that, in the well and in the bad, with its ancient civility governed in Asia from immemorial times. Land for the most unknown, visited by the west voyagers very few times, land full of new itineraries to trace.
Above of me the stars glistened quiet, distant like the China, and to the same indecipherable manner, and coiled me of a weird one. ..solitude!!
I could returne at home? I would have reviewed my brothers, my mother, the friends, "Barba" (Uncle) Angelo. I did not know it. I was able to stay in China months and instead I stayed here five years.
Five long years in which I saw things that with difficult I could be believed if I told them.
But I have my photographs that document that it is all truth!!
The following relation is the story of my journey and of my adventures during these five years in China!!
For my beloved daughter Anna, my grandchilds Eugenio and Laurel, that plays always between the "papaveri da oppium" of the garden and make frighten my poor wife Giorgina.
I will omit something, I'm so sorry, but I am old, and is inevitable when the time separates us from the memories, to forget but for how much I will do will be very difficult than you do not understand how much loved the China and the people that met here above all my japanese wife that I did not be able to restore in Italy with me. In some manner I will carry all always inside of me wherever find myself and for how much time it is me still granted to live.
