-- Antonio Tancredi Cadili, a nine-year-old Italian boy, performed a puppet opera during Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Italy in March 2019. The Chinese president gave him a hug after the performance.

-- Antonio said he will always remember that hug and he wrote a melody in memory of it.

-- Mayor Leoluca Orlando of the Sicilian capital of Palermo said that with Xi's visit, the region is poised to become the BRI's gateway to the Mediterranean.

BEIJING, Dec. 7 -- Antonio Tancredi Cadili, a nine-year-old Italian boy, is a big fan of puppet theater, a time-honored form of entertainment in his hometown, the Mediterranean island of Sicily.

Among his favorite puppet operas is the epic romance of "the Madness of Orlando." Since he found out that the fair princess in the war and love story, Angelica, was from China, he could not help thinking about the ancient country in the East.

When he came to know that Chinese President Xi Jinping would travel to Sicily during a state visit to Italy in March 2019, an idea popped up in his mind: how about a puppetry performance for the leader of China? He proposed it to Gianfranco Micciche, president of the Sicilian Regional Assembly, and, to his excitement, got the green light.

"I couldn't wait to see him," said the boy. He tried hard to picture how his encounter with Xi would be like. Yet what happened went far beyond what he had imagined.

Antonio Tancredi Cadili, a nine-year-old Italian boy, smiles when talking about his favorite puppet operas in Palermo, Italy, July 31, 2019. (Xinhua/Cheng Tingting)

A HUG BETWEEN "OLD FRIENDS"

In the medieval opera, Orlando, one of Charlemagne's paladins, lost his sanity after his beloved princess Angelica from Cathay, a poetic name for China, was married to Saracen knight Medoro. Like a furious beast, Orlando tore off his armor and threw away his sword.

That was the episode Antonio performed for Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at Palazzo dei Normanni, one of the oldest royal residencies in Europe and now the seat of the regional assembly. He had rehearsed repeatedly for the show.

The ardent fan of the Opera dei Pupi, or the Opera of the Puppets, owns a collection of some 40 puppets from Catania and Palermo, two different schools of puppetry in Sicily.

To Antonio, the puppets are like brothers. The boy would sit down with them on the floor and talk about his day at school.