China-Europe railway line offers more than economic benefits

Big boost to culture, technology and tourism expected to deepen friendly ties

"Look, it's the train from China!" The waiting crowd broke into a loud applause. Standing among them, Tomasz Gorzelak, chief executive of Polish Hatrans Logistics Company, waved at the train cheerfully with a bright smile on his face.

This was a moment captured at a midday Thursday at a railway station in the central Polish city of Lodz, where a freight train carrying dozens of cargo containers just entered the platform after a journey of merely 10 days from Chengdu, capital city of Sichuan province in Southwest China, to Poland.