Ciao, ciao my bella, bella China

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.

Sauro Angelini, owner of the Meeting Point restaurant, has lived in Beijing  for more than 30 years.

"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.