By CGTN's Tao Yuan
An ancient trading route once brought Chinese silk, pottery and tea to Poland, and Polish amber traveled in the opposite direction to China. Now 2,000 years later, an express freight railway is reconnecting the two countries, transporting goods between the Polish city of Lodz and the southwest Chinese city of Chengdu.
Dozens of shipping containers travel between the two cities every day, taking electronics, heavy machinery, shoes and clothes from Chengdu to Lodz, and carrying back mostly food and drinks.
Tomasz Grzelak knows all about the demand for these products in China. His company Hatrans Logistics is the first Polish operator of the train. Initially, the train would run empty to China. Grzelak soon saw a business opportunity, using the return journey to transport goods.
CGTN Photo
Grzelak has now started a Polish food and beverage business in Chengdu, Polish Showroom, a daughter company of Hatrans. It would not have been possible if not for the railway.
Before the railway, goods came by sea – from Polish seaside cities all around Europe, Africa, through the Mediterranean, to finally reach Asia.
“If the product has a short validity period, say six months, and if two of that six months is spent on transport, then it really doesn’t have a chance to enter the Chinese market,” says Natalia Kosana Goldysiak, operations manager of Polish Showroom.
Goldysiak has been in China since 2009. She was studying in Chengdu when she heard news of plans to build the railway.
“I was excited,” she said. “That was a time when few people in China knew where Poland was. People would ask me, where is it? Is it a city?”
Little did she know several years down the road, she would become a part of the route that connects China and Poland. Nor did she envision the growth of relations between the countries.
“Thanks to the One Belt One Road Initiative, more and more similar trains are starting to emerge,” she said. “And it really gives Central and Eastern European countries a big chance to cooperate with China.”
Goldysiak says cooperation between China and Poland is going far beyond just trade.
“Polish presence in China is growing,” she said. “And vice versa.”
She certainly feels at home in Chengdu now, and hopes more Europeans will too.
1524km
