The man who should kill Mao, Paola Sechi

october 2008 \| nº 00			The man who should kill Mao Paola Sechi

Galileo. Images... Fashion at the Bardini Museum... International Flag Ships Store The man who should kill Mao Replay & Sons at Pitti Bimbo Caterina and Maria de' Medici... Award Italian Women...	Pitti Immagine Uomo 76 Chic. 26-29 March 2009 Trends - Spring Summer 09 Trends - Spring Summer 09 Creativity of Akiko Chiba Interview with Marco Scala Momaboma Back in China... - 1 part	Barbara Alighiero, Sinologist, graduated in Rome in History of China, where she has live for twenty years in three different moments, she was until 2001 head of the Ansa, she has been reporter in Afghanistan and Middle East and manager of the Ansa office in Cairo. Actually she's director of the Cultural Italian Institute in Beijing. In order to understand at all the real essence of the title "The man who should kill Mao", first book written by Barbara Alighiero, is necessary to read it without stopping and without skipping any line. "The man who should kill Mao" involves the reader for the way the characters are presented, until the final dedication of the author, passing through happening, emotions but also real feelings that culminate with the dramatic death sentence, that it is resulted to be the only death of foreign people during the regime of Mao: of the Italian arms-trader Antonio Riva and of the Japanese researcher Ruschi Yamaguchi, accused of the biggest politic conspiracy at expense of the Head of the State Mao Ze Dong. The episode really happened, but unknown to many Italians, takes place in China during the Fifties. Antonio Riva marries in Beijing the American Catherine, who lives in China too from many years. From this marriage born two sons. With the passage from the monarchy to the "Republic" of Mao, many members of the foreign community that live in China, decide to leave the city, in spite of them, and move in the near Hong Kong, in Taiwan or come back in their origin country. But the characters of the book take an other kind of decision, among them also a catholic priest, each of them with their own motivation (economic issues, professional relationship, politic mission) but everybody united in the expectation that the new government would be better than the past one. After a long watch Antonio Riva is taking into custody, with him also Yamaguchi, monsignor Martina and Cao Chunzhi. During the imprisonment the unfortunate know at first the weary interrogations of the local police born during the government of Mao, then the terrible and endless tortures inside the prison, and at the end the sad epilog: the execution by shooting of Riva and Yamaguchi. In that precise moment the thoughts of Riva are for his family, until the last instant of his life, to his wife and sons, who will be back in Italy, and won't go back in China anymore, even if that place remain, in their hearts, the China of the white and red lotus and the country of the pomegranates. The authoress reports textually what it has been officially published, from the articles of the local magazines of the period, to the statements of the local police, from the letters of the person involved in this absurd circumstance, to the witness of friends and relatives of the victims. A real chronological series of events that brings Antonio Riva, in spite of him, to become victim of a ruthless game, he can get out of it only with a confession that is only figment of the imagination of a regime with the obsession of the inferiority complex respect the Soviet allied and of the suspicious West. From the reading of the freezing episode, through the lecture of a real diary, emerges from one point the strong sense of supremacy of the Chinese people respect the "enemy", identified in all the unfriendly and averse population to the new Chinese politic, and from an other point the hope, common to many peoples that have seen various governments (as show romances like "the kites catcher" or "thousand wonderful suns") that the change could improve the actual situation of a country, that in many cases will result impracticable.
Fashion Design Lab Magazine · firenze, via de' bardi 36 · magazine@fashiondesignlab.com · iscrizione tribunale di firenze n. 5674 del 29.09.2008 · web design: blue klein