The Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) will be held in Beijing on September 3 and 4. As an important warm-up event to the summit, “My Africa stories,” a contest of online works, co-hosted by the Secretariat of the Chinese Follow-up Committee of FOCAC and China Radio International (CRI), was rolled out last January.

Altogether, over 1,000 contributions were made, covering a wide range of topics on China-Africa cooperation. Each of the works embodied the passion for China-Africa friendship and cooperation, and demonstrated the commitment to building a community with a shared future between the Chinese people and African people. These works have attracted 900,000 hits on the internet, and nearly 250,000 people voted on them.

Is Africa wild? Is Africa poor? Is Africa happy? With all these questions, he decided to go on his own and experienced the real Africa. Today’s story is from Yuan Jianglei, a volunteer teacher at the Confucius Institute at Benin.

After teaching Chinese in Benin for two years, Yuan chose to visit Africa. He rode a bike from west Africa, cycling through 10 African countries and completed nearly 16,000 kilometers in a year. There were many amazing stories along the way, Yuan said. "It gave me a splendid experience and a new perspective of the world."

（Video by Yuan Jianglei）