Student discovers China at old imperial park

Irivuzimana Felicien smiled as he helped an elderly woman retrieve an electronic ticket on her smartphone to enter one of Beijing's most-visited imperial ruins - Yuanmingyuan, also known as the Old Summer Palace - in the northwestern outskirts of the capital on Monday.

The volunteer ticket collector held the electronic gate open as the woman slowly passed.

Though what he can say in Chinese is limited to simple words such as ni hao, "hello", and xie xie, "thank you", it doesn't prevent the 29-year-old Rwandan graduate student from providing heartwarming services to large numbers of visitors who throng the imperial garden.