Feature: One Italian's China story

At his home in Chinelly, a small village some 70 kilometers from Rome, Giancarlo Panarella always has passion to talk about his experience in China when his friends get together.

An expert and businessman in wine producing technology in Italy, Panarella has been to China many times since 1983 when he got a chance to start his road for Sino-Italian cooperation on wine production.

Panarella's interest in China came from a book titled Silk, Spices and Empire. "It is a precious book about the millenniums old connections of China with the rest of the world," he said.

"It has also special significance as I bought the book at the Munich airport in 1963 when I first met a German girl Elke Schumacher who became my life partner later," Panarella said. Since then, Panarella started contacts with China.

Based on that book, Panarella wrote an article about China which was published by the Italian daily Espresso Sera on April 15/16, 1965 in six columns with the title "The mystery of China soul, more impenetrable than the Great Wall."

"My interest and attention for China were also ignited by my international studies as a political scholar when I conducted a historical research with (Italian) Professor Mario Toscano on modern China. It was as a continuous feed of information which nurtured not only my knowledge of China but a kind of secret remind of a past that was coming to new life," he said.

In the early 1980s, Panarella formed his own company which later achieved success in China. "My company was dealing with business of agriculture, food and wine," he said.

"When I first visited Beijing in 1983, I was given a Chinese name Pan Deng by a Radio Beijing reporter who interviewed me. That's a really interesting name which sounds like climbing in Chinese," Panarella said.

According to Panarella, his company started with the supply of a complete wine making plant in Lianyungang, Jangsu province, the very terminal of the Silk Road, in the middle of 1980s. In 1986, the Italian merchant established good contacts for future business with Xinjiang and Guangdong provinces.

"From 1987 to 1988 I successfully installed the first modern wine making factory in Xinjiang as an equipment provider," Panarella told Xinhua. Through the Italian equipment, those wines manufactured in Xinjiang under the control of wine maker Dynasty were transferred then by railway to Tianjin, bottled and honored as state banquet wines, he said.

"I spent those first years between Guangdong and Xinjiang provinces by introducing modern filling plants and advanced packing for fruit juices." At that time, "Xinjiang's Construction Group was our partner in the development of wineries and of tomato producing bases. Later on, our company succeeded in the first ever import to Italy of tomato paste produced in Inner Mongolia."

"I spent almost 30 years in China, getting connected to the Chinese wine world," he recalled. During that period, some provinces like Hebei and Xinjiang were the most advanced in viticulture and wine making with counties and places like Shiheze, Turpan, Changli and Funing planting grapes and developing modern wine making. "As Qinhuangdao showed a booming wine industry, I decided to establish there my second home and center of activity in 1999."

Stayed in Qinhuangdao for about 11 years, Panarella came back to Chinelly in 2010 for enjoying his retired life. But in fact he still attended various kinds of China-related activities, such as seminars, press conferences and celebrations.

As an expert on wine and wine-making technology, Panarella studied wine culture for a long time.

One of the papers Panarella wrote is "The Grape and Wine Road," which focused on the exchange of wine culture in prehistoric and classical times between Europe and China. In his findings, Panarella gave enough evidence to prove the prehistoric ancient "Grape and Wine Road," which existed prior to the "Silk Road."

The early trade carried by merchants and travellers linking Asia and Europe finally formed the "Silk Road," which currently is still playing vital role for development of world as Chinese President Xi Jinping has put forward the blue print of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road as core initiative for international trade and infrastructure projects, Panarella stressed.

He favors the ancient road to turn into the modern one. "In the occasion of the recent state visit to Pakistan by the Chinese President, an estimated 50 billion U.S. dollars worth of contracts were signed on road, railway and energy projects. The contracts are a small step of the initiative's greater ambition to better link China to the rest of the world," he said.

Born in August 1939, just before the breakout of the World War II, Panarella has seen some pivotal moments in the world and experienced changing times of ties between Europe and China.

But he especially mentioned his China-related destiny. "The name Chinelly, the village where I live, looks like the combination of China and Italy, it seems a kind of destiny. That's why I spent so many years in China," he said laughing out loudly. Endit