A young student from the Dominican Republic has shared her colorful journey across major Chinese cities and sites during her one-year stay in the country for a master's degree.
Rua, a 23-year-old woman from the sunny Caribbean island nation, embarked on a solo journey to China in 2025, moving from Santo Domingo to Beijing.
In her recap of her travels, she said it has been a year of firsts for her as she became an actress, learned to ride a bicycle, and enrolled in a master's degree program in directing at the Beijing Film Academy.
"For the first time, I came to Beijing to study the career of my dreams, directing at Beijing Film Academy," she said.
Arriving in a new country, she naturally faced numerous challenges, but what she felt most was the joy of exploration. She made the most of her time in China by traveling extensively, from the seashore of Qingdao to the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and from cosmopolitan Shanghai to the ancient capital of Nanjing.
"More than ever before this year, I've had the opportunity to travel around China, and wow, what an experience it has been," she said.
Each city brought a unique charm to her journey, while all of her destinations showcased China's profound culture, which deeply fascinated her. The people, the harmony between tradition and modernity, and the country's broad development opportunities captured her heart in a short time.
Rua specially recalled her experience of celebrating the Spring Festival with a Chinese family, which left a deep and warm impression on her.
"This year, I also had the opportunity to celebrate Chinese New Year in Fujian, Fuzhou, with a family that more or less adopted me, or at least sentimentally," she said.
"I remember that on New Year's Eve, we went to their hometown in Fujian and together we cooked in the afternoon, preparing for the dinner. We watched TV, eating fruits, eating snacks. We talked and then when the night came, everyone in the family sat together in round tables enjoying a drink, eating the specialty seafood, laughing. And later on in the night, the young people assembled and we went to set off fireworks in the street. It was a really fun experience and also a very memorable day for me," Rua recalled.
With many adventures ahead of her, the young woman said she has made up her mind that China is where she wants to stay for many years.
Student from Dominican Republic shares colorful experience traveling around China
The newly established China (Inner Mongolia) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in north China will help improve the country's opening-up landscape and support high-quality development, while injecting more certainty into a volatile world, says a China Media Group commentary published on Saturday.
An edited English version of the commentary is as follows:
In China's opening-up drive, a new chapter has started. With the release of a plan for the establishment of the China (Inner Mongolia) Pilot Free Trade Zone, the total number of China's pilot FTZs has risen to 23. International observers believe that in the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), the addition of a new pilot FTZ will further improve China's opening-up framework featuring coordination between land and sea, and mutual reinforcement between eastern and western regions, which will not only help drive high-quality development, but also inject more certainty into a world marked by turbulence and change.
Why is the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region selected for the new pilot FTZ? The first reason lies in its unique geographic advantages. Historically, Inner Mongolia served as a key hub along the "Grassland Silk Road" and the "Tea Road". Today, it is a key node in Belt and Road cooperation and the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor. With a border stretching over 4,200 kilometers and 20 ports, the autonomous region links eight provinces at home and serves as a gateway to Eurasia, giving it natural advantages for opening up to the north.
What's more, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region also has a solid foundation for opening up. It currently maintains trade ties with 201 countries and regions globally, with trade with Belt and Road Initiative partner countries accounting for 78.6 percent of its total foreign trade.
Data showed that in 2025, the region's total imports and exports reached 220.67 billion yuan, hitting a record high, with growth 2.6 percentage points higher than the national average.
The plan proposes to build the Inner Mongolia Pilot Free Trade Zone into a center for information exchanges, transport and logistics, allocation of factors and resources, sci-tech innovation and industrial cooperation in key fields, linking domestic and international markets and radiating to surrounding regions.
Specifically, the Inner Mongolia pilot FTZ comprises three subzones in Hohhot, Manzhouli and Erenhot — each tasked with differentiated functions based on their respective strengths.
The subzone in Hohhot, capital of the autonomous region, will serve as a central hub, focusing on developing distinctive industries and strategic emerging industries.
The subzone in Manzhouli, a northern border city, will develop distinctive industries such as cross-border tourism and port services, building itself into an important window to Northeast Asia and Europe.
The subzone in Erenhot, a land port on the China-Mongolia border, will focus on developing industries such as international trade and act as a key node of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor.
The establishment of the Inner Mongolia pilot FTZ is the latest move in China's sustained push for reform and opening-up. Since the launch of the Shanghai pilot FTZ in September 2013, after more than a decade of exploration and development, China's pilot FTZ network has formed a new opening-up landscape covering the east, west, south, north and central regions, as well as coordinating coastal, inland and border areas.
The new pilot FTZ boasts abundant energy, agricultural, and livestock resources, as well as emerging growth drivers such as green computing power and the digital economy. These will provide more diversified investment options for global capital and offer broader market opportunities and a better business environment for companies worldwide.
Meanwhile, amid intensifying geopolitical tensions and rising global logistics risks, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, as the only provincial-level region in China hosting both the eastern and central corridors of the China-Europe freight train network, is seeing its role as a "golden corridor" become increasingly prominent.
The region handled a total of 9,557 China-Europe freight train trips in 2025, up 16.9 percent year on year and accounting for nearly half of the national total.
Following its establishment, the Inner Mongolia pilot FTZ will deepen economic and trade cooperation with neighboring regions through institutional opening-up, to further facilitate the "golden corridor" connecting China, Mongolia, Russia and Europe, and provide a more resilient trade route for the world.
More importantly, as certain countries pursue unilateralism and protectionism, China continues to refine the layout of its pilot FTZs and deepen institutional opening-up, setting a strong example for others.
This also demonstrates that despite rising undercurrents of de-globalization, advancing trade and investment liberalization and facilitation remains the shared aspiration of people worldwide and a necessity for the world.
China's new Inner Mongolia pilot FTZ boosts opening-up, adds certainty: commentary
