The evening of July 19th 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.
China! This word alone 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, Western
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 mix of
curiosity and fear put me in a weird state of mind. I was directed in China
with my books, my maps mostly drawn by me and took bythe cards of the
Geographic Society, my Goertz, my precious slabs of glass "Ilford",
and who knows how would I find new or find the silver to develop them to make
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 always boiling the
water before drinking, of being always on my guard, of not giving in to
drunkenness and avoid brawls and discords.
Dear, good so serious Michele with his grey eyes and his now grey beard, I seem
to see him read every day the newspaper in search of news of mine, drinking the
coffee with his napkin in his lap, he veterinarian appreciated and considered in
the lands near Chieri. Then visiting 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 China was a
little country a little farther away than Buttigliera or Asti. Serious and
calm, perfectly master of himself, with his grey and calm eyes, but unyielding
and insisted many times.
Poor Ministry when it will find itself bombarded by
his telegrams, to know how I am and what I do, when will I return, all the
things he does not dare to ask me directly in the letters.
The strange things you end up doing in the name of the affection and of the
responsibility that tie the older brothers to the minor... While appeared on
the bridge of the steamboat I observed the profile of the coasts of Naples to
remove itself, besides the nostalgia, I felt 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 good and the bad, with its ancient
civility ruled 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 China, and in the same
indecipherable manner, and filled me with a weird one... solitude! Could I
return home? I would have seen again my brothers, my mother, the friends,
"Barba" (Uncle) Angelo. I did not know it. I was espected to
stay in China months and instead I stayed here five years.
Five long years in which I saw things that with difficulty 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
and it is inevitable when the time separates us from the memories, to forget
but for how much I will do it will be very difficult for you not understanding
how much I loved China and the people that I met here, above all my Japanese
wife that I was not be able to bring 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.
